Matthew 3 - Introduction

EXCURSUS ON NOTES TO ST. MATTHEW.
I. — ON THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD’S LIFE TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF HIS MINISTRY (Matthew 3).

A BRIEF review of the events that affected more or less directly the human life of the Christ will, it is believed, be helpful to most readers. Of the early childhood we have no record but the simple statement that “the Child grew, and waxed strong, being filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him” (Luke 2:40). Outwardly, we must believe, it presented no startling features. There was the simple life of home, and in due course the lessons given in the synagogue, and the worship of the Sabbath, and the habits of a devout household. The annual pilgrimage of Joseph and Mary to keep the Passover at Jerusalem (Luke 2:41) would be the one conspicuous break in the year’s routine of labour in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. At the age of twelve (A.D. 8) there was the first manifest unfolding of the higher life (see Luke 2:19), but, so far as we know, it stood absolutely alone, and the growth was quiet and orderly as before. Only in the absolute sinlessness, in the absence of the faults of childhood, could that growth have differed from the growth of other children of the same time and place. He too was subject to His parents, and worked with Joseph as a carpenter. And in that home (the question who they were being still reserved) were also the “brothers” of the Lord — James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55), and His sisters. The death of Joseph must have left Him, in the common course of things, as the head of the household, and we may believe that the other members of it, more and more, looked to Him for guidance, and depended upon Him for their support. It is at least probable that the yearly visits to Jerusalem were not intermitted, and that He who was made “under the Law,” gave the same proofs of His obedience to it as were given by every devout Israelite. Partly as claiming descent from David, partly from the devout habits of His own life and that of His reputed father, He must have been prominent in the small community of Nazareth, and probably exercised the function commonly assigned to devout laymen, of reading the Sabbath lessons in the synagogue (Luke 4:16). Thus much we may venture to picture to ourselves of the outward life. Of the veil that shrouds the growth of the inward life we may hardly dare to lift a corner. Prayer to His Father in Heaven, in part with the one necessary exception) after the manner of the prayer which He afterwards taught His disciples, the patient expectation that waited till His hour should come, gentle and loving care for His mother and His brethren, not without the power to reprove when reproof was necessary, delight in the solitude of the hills, the changing aspect of the skies, and the beauty of the dowers of the field, all these made up a life of harmony and noble holiness. But as it passed on. it hardly appeared likely to be more than this. The very tranquillity of its growth must have made His mother’s heart sink within her, as with the sickness of hope deferred. It was not till the preaching of the Baptist showed that His hour had come, that there was outwardly more than the life of a man of the peasant class, of blameless purity and intense devotion.

In the mean time events were passing round Him, which more or less affected those whom His ministerial work was afterwards to embrace. Archelaus, after the massacre referred to in the Note on Matthew 2:22, went to Rome to defend himself before the Emperor against the charge of cruelty, and to maintain his right to the kingdom against the claims of Antipas. Augustus, true to the balancing policy of Roman rule, made Antipas Tetrarch of Galilee, and Archelaus Ethnarch of Judæa. The latter ruled with as much cruelty as ever. Complaints again multiplied, and in A.D. 6 he was deposed and banished to Gaul, and Judæa, as a Roman province, was placed under the direct government of a Procurator. The immediate effect of this was to move the dormant fanaticism of a population who fondly flattered themselves that they had “never been in bondage to any man,” and when the census taken at the time of our Lord’s birth was followed by actual taxation (the “tribute” or poll-tax of Matthew 22:17), the discontent broke out in the revolt of Judas of Gamala, commonly known as “of Galilee” (Acts 5:37). That province furnished the greater part of his adherents, and they took as their watchword, “We have no master but God,” and refused to pay tribute. The insurrection was suppressed, Judas himself slain, and his followers dispersed; but the party was not extinct, and Josephus writing seventy years afterwards, in the time of Vespasian and Titus, enumerates it, together with Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, among the four sects of the Jews (Ant. xviii. 1, § 1). The question put by the Pharisees and Herodians, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar?” was one which must have been often discussed in Nazareth and the neighbouring villages from the time of our Lord’s childhood. The policy of the Tetrarch of Galilee led him, on the other hand, to court the favour of Rome. The new town of Tiberias (built A.D. 18), the new name, the Sea of Tiberias. which it gave to the Lake of Galilee, bore witness of Herod’s adulation of the Emperor who had succeeded Augustus in A.D. 14. Coming nearer to the time of the commencement of our Lord’s ministry we may note the Tetrarch’s divorce of his first wife, the daughter of Aretas; his incestuous and adulterous marriage with Herodias, the daughter of his brother Aristobulus, and the wife of his brother Philip; and the war with Aretas in which this act involved him. The government of Judæa, after the deposition of Archelaus, under five successive Procurators, presented no events of any striking importance, but in A.D. 25-26 we come to the more memorable name of Pontius Pilate. One of his first acts was to remove the Roman garrison from Cæsarea to Jerusalem. and the troops were accordingly stationed in the Tower of Antonius, which rose (as we see in Acts 21:34) from the precincts of the Temple. They brought with them the standards that bore the image of the Emperor, and this roused the population to a white heat of fury, to which Pilate at last yielded (Jos. Ant. xviii. 3, § 1). Other provocations, however, followed. Gilt shields bearing the names of heathen deities were suspended in the Procurator’s palace at Jerusalem, and were only removed by a special order from Tiberius. The consecrated Corban, or treasure of the Temple, was employed for the construction of an aqueduct, and the riot that followed (probably the insurrection which made Barabbas the hero of the people) was only suppressed by Pilate’s sending into the crowd soldiers in disguise, armed with concealed daggers, who massacred both rioters and unoffending spectators (Jos. Wars, ii. 9, §4). It is probable that the slaughter of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1), was connected with this outbreak. Such was the state of things when the voice of the Baptist was heard in the wilderness of Judæa. In the mean time the influence of Roman rule was seen in language, government, customs, in the employment of the publicans, in the centurions stationed with their troops at Capernaum, in the adoption of Roman manners at the feasts of the Tetrarch’s Court, in the forced service to which the peasants of Galilee were subject, in the frequent use of the Roman punishment of scourging, in the crosses upon which rebels and robbers were exposed in shameful nakedness to die the most agonising of all forms of death.