Matthew 13:34-35

B. THE MULTIPLICITY AND JUSTIFICATION OF PARABLES

TEXT: 13:34, 35

(Parallel: Mark 4:33-34)

34 All these things Jesus spake in parables unto the multitudes; and without a parable spake he nothing unto them: 35 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying,
I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

Do you think Jesus preached this great sermon in parables with the express intent to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy (Psalms 78:2), or do you think that His preaching of this sermon resulted in its fulfilment? Or does this question even correctly state the case? What does Matthew mean by the word fulfilled here?

b.

When Matthew affirms that Jesus said nothing to the crowds without a parable, what are we to understand about Matthew's own insertion of Jesus-' explanation of His strategy as well as the explanation of the Sower Parable immediately following the public narration of that parable? That is, did Jesus publicly explain the Sower Parable? If so, how do we explain this present section (Matthew 13:34)? If not, how do we justify Matthew's insertion of the explanation at that point, i.e., out of order? (Matthew 13:10-23)

c.

From Matthew's assertion, All this Jesus said to the crowds in parables. and Mark's notice, With many such parables he spoke the word to them, what should we conclude about the number of parables told that day, in relation to the actual number recorded by the Gospel writers? What would this conclusion reveal, then, about the accounts of the three Evangelists who report the event?

d.

When compared with the Hebrew original and the Septuagint Greek version of Psalms 78:2, it appears that Matthew has altered the citation. How would you explain and/or justify this?

e.

Since Jesus had already justified His own use of parables (Matthew 13:10-17), is not Matthew gilding the lily to add this additional justification? What is he really adding to what Jesus had already explained?

PARAPHRASE AND HARMONY

Using many similar illustrations, Jesus presented the entire foregoing message to the crowds. To the degree that people were able to hear it with understanding He succeeded in speaking the Word to them. In fact, He told them nothing except in a story form. However, He explained everything privately to His own disciples.

This approach fits the pattern pioneered by the prophet Asaph (Psalms 78:2) who began:

I will speak to people, using parables.
I will declare things kept secret since the creation of the world.

SUMMARY

The Evangelists recount only representative stories the Lord used to communicate His truth. To the extent that individuals saw what He was driving at, His message was full of information. However, He gave no public explanations. The mysteries were cleared up for anyone who trusted Jesus enough to approach Him for solutions. This tactic used by the Lord has a well-known and approved Old Testament precedent in the great 78th Psalm.

NOTES

Matthew 13:34 All these things spake Jesus in parables unto the multitudes. While Matthew is consciously editing Jesus-' message, putting portions of it out of its normal chronological order for reasons suggested by the Spirit, this sentence, however, signals not merely the conclusion of His discourse, but what to the original reader must have been nothing less than amazing. Jesus really succeeded in proclaiming all the preceding information to the people in story form without telling them anything that He did not want them to know. The marvel is even greater, because Mark (Mark 4:33-34) not only agrees that this discourse was nothing but one story after another, but that the ones listed by the Evangelists are but typical samples! All these things are still the Word of God, whether people were able to understand it or not. (Cf. He spoke the Word to them. Mark 4:33)

Without a parable spake he nothing to them. Jesus knew His audience and followed this policy to handle the crowds on this occasion. (See on Matthew 13:1-2.) It cannot mean that He never used another type of instruction in other situations. (Cf. Luke 12 all; Matthew 14:25; John 7-10)

Matthew 13:35 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, See fuller notes on Matthew's use of this expression, because our author's use of this fixed phrase is far more general than ours. (Vol. I, pp. 81-86) Matthew is saying, What Jesus did fits perfectly (and in this sense, fulfills) the grand prophetic precedent established by the prophet Asaph in his teaching. This fact vindicates the method against any Hebrew scandalized by it.

Through the prophet Asaph, not Isaiah, as several important manuscripts have it. Since the practice for restoring the original text is to prefer the more difficult reading, the inclusion of the word Isaiah in the original text would for that reason be preferred, since so obvious an error on Matthew's part would have been corrected by scribes. However, Matthew may have placed no name in his original text. This is a real possibility since such omissions of the prophet's name appear elsewhere. (Cf. Matthew 1:22; Matthew 2:5; Matthew 12:4; Acts 7:48) Perhaps several copyists would have been tempted to fill in the gap by inserting the name of a famous prophet. It is conceivable that a scribe, not only aware of the original source of the quotation (Psalms 78:2) and the prophetic office of its author (2 Chronicles 29:30), added Asaph. Others, ignorant of both, corrected this to the more familiar Isaiah, thus producing the mistaken manuscript reading. (See Metzger, A Textual Commentary, 33.)

Asaph the prophet, famous musician contemporary with David and author of twelve of Israel's Psalms, left a high standard in educational technique. In the context of Psalms 78, as Delitzsch (Psalms, Vol. II, 363) observes:

He here recounts to the people their history, from that Egyptaeo-Sinatic age of yore to which Israel's national independence and specific position in relation to the rest of the world goes back. It is not, however, with the external aspect of the history that he has to do, but with its internal teachings.. The poet, however, does not mean to say that he will literally discourse gnomic sentences and propound riddles, but that he will set forth the history of the fathers after the manner of a parable and riddle, so that it may become a parable, i.e., a didactic history, and its events as marks of interrogation and notabene's to the present age.

So the seer Asaph was not inspired to predict anything about Christ's teaching methods. Rather, in the sense that he rehearsed Israel's past in order to point out a moral, his own method actually anticipated and paved the way for Christ to draw illustrations from nature and human life to predict and explain the nature of the Kingdom.

I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.

Asaph had really written: ... I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. (Psalms 78:2 b, Psalms 78:3) So, here again, Matthew consciously alters the quotation to render even more precise what would have been ambiguous or even untrue had he strictly followed the standard Hebrew or Greek text. In fact, Asaph intended only to reach back into five hundred years or so of Hebrew history, but Matthew wants his readers to note that the revelations Jesus gave antedate the creation of the world and come from the mind of God! To do this he rewords the latter sentence and chops off the mention of the traditional history of Israel, because he must affirm what is true of Jesus-' revelations. While His method finds its superlative antecedent in Asaph's approach, the content of His message absolutely surpasses that of the prophet. Matthew's Lord, in contrast to the great Asaph, reveals things hidden from the foundation of the world! This sudden change of text is calculated to shake the complacent Hebrew reader. Matthew says, To you who are accustomed to great teachers who reach back to the beginnings of things for their teaching (cf. ap archês, LXX Psalms 77:2), I present you a Teacher who reveals things unknown even before there was a beginning, (apò katabolês [kòsmou])!By so doing, Matthew nudges his readers to ask: Who IS this Jesus of Nazareth anyway?

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

How many parables did Jesus present to the multitudes in this one great sermon? How do you know?

2.

Did Jesus ever explain a parable to the crowds on this occasion?

3.

Name the prophet and locate his text that Matthew cites to justify Jesus-' use of parables.

4.

Explain why Matthew does not quote verbatim the text of the very author cited to prove Jesus-' method a sound approach. In what way(s) does Matthew's version of the prophecy differ both from the Hebrew text and its Greek translation?