Jesus has been lost to the grave, but three days later reappears with all authority in heaven and on earth.  His brothers (28:10) follow Him to Galilee, and find Him on a mountain, where the eleven bow down and worship (28:17).  Some doubt.  Well they might, and not just the resurrection itself.  They might be doubting Jesus’ intentions.  After all, the last time He saw them, He saw their backsides as they fled from the garden.  They’ve all abandoned Him.... Read more

The Hebrew Bible ends with Cyrus’ decree.  It ends with a new beginning. Matthew ends with Jesus’ riff on Cyrus’ decree, the great commission.  It too ends with a new beginning. The Bible ends with the cry of Maranatha. Though the canon is closed, and the Bible promises a consummation.  But the Bible also continually frustrates our desire to close too quickly.  It continuously opens up again just when we expect closure.   Like an open tomb. Read more

Jesus’ final promise to His disciples consummates the covenantal promise of Immanuel: I will be with you, says the one who is “God With Us.” What is not so obvious in English is the way the Greek depicts this reality in the word order.  The statement begins with the unnecessary and emphatic first-person pronoun, ego , continues with the prepositional phrase “with you” ( meth humon ), and ends with the verb, eimi , which can stand alone as “I... Read more

In the “great commission,” Jesus instructs His disciples to “teach” the nations to keep all that He has commanded and taught them.  From the first, Matthew shows, there is an alternative gospel, with an alternative form of discipleship, an alternative teaching.  Just as Jesus instructs the disciples to do all He commands, so the Jewish leaders “teach” the soldiers to proclaim an alternative gospel, that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body. Read more

Chief priests and elders assemble ( synago ) repeatedly in the Passion and resurrection narratives of Matthew, always with nefarious intent.  They gather to plot Jesus’ death (26:3-4), for Jesus’ trial (26:57), before Pilate to convince the governor to kill Jesus (27:17) and to request a guard for Jesus’ tomb (27:62). After the resurrection, they gather ( synago ) one last time.  Out of their first gathering came the payment of blood money to Judas; out of their final gathering... Read more

The word archiereus , “chief priests,” is used twenty-five times in Matthew.  They are always cast in the role of villains.  They first appear as advisors to Herod (2:4), then as the ones who will cause Jesus to suffer many things (16:21).  They appear in person again only in 21:15, when Jesus enters Jerusalem and does wonders in the temple, and from that point they dominate the action. The 25 uses of the word point to the 25 chief priests... Read more

Some of the guards from the tomb go back to the city to report to the chief priests ” all that had happened.”  Presumably, tbhey said, “there was a severe earthquake, and an angel descended from heaven, and rolled away the stone, and he looked like lightning with garments like snow, and we fell down like we were dead.  Then some women came and the angel told them that Christ has risen” (cf. Matthew 28:2-7). That is, the soldiers turn... Read more