Commentary on Matthew 1–3

The step of descent that Matthew set out in the order of royal succession, Luke reckons in the priestly line. While each counts it, each signifies that in the Lord there is kinship of both tribes. And rightly is the step of generation placed there: because the fellowship of the priestly and royal tribes, begun through David by marriage, is now confirmed by descent from Salathiel into Zerubbabel. And so, while Matthew recounts the paternal origin that came from Judah, and Luke shows the descent received through Nathan from the tribe of Levi, they proved by their own fathers that our Lord Jesus Christ, who is eternal king and priest, had the glory of both lineages even in his birth in the flesh. That Joseph’s descent rather than Mary’s is recounted makes no difference: for the whole tribe is one and the same kindred. Matthew and Luke also gave an example, calling men one another’s fathers not so much by birth as by family: because a tribe begun from one man is contained in a family of one succession and origin. For since he had to be shown to be the son of David and of Abraham (for so Matthew began: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham”), it makes no difference who is placed where in the number and order of descent, provided that the family of all is understood to have begun from one. So, since Joseph and Mary are of the same tribe, when Joseph is shown to have come from the stock of Abraham, Mary too is taught to have come from it. For this rule was kept in the law: if the head of a family had died without sons, a later brother of the same kindred should take the dead man’s wife and enter the sons born into the family of the one who had died; and so the order of succession remained in the firstborn, while the fathers of those born afterward were counted either by name or by descent. Next, since we have said that, according to the facts, the order of this genealogy agrees with itself neither in number nor in succession, the reason for this too must be given. For it is no light matter that one thing should be in the narrative and another in the events, and one thing reported in the total and another kept in the count. For from Abraham to David fourteen generations are listed, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, whereas in the books of Kingdoms seventeen are found. But in this there is no lie or carelessness. Three were passed over for a reason. For Joram begot Ahaziah, Ahaziah begot Joash, Joash then Amaziah, and Amaziah Uzziah. And in Matthew Joram is written to have begotten Uzziah, though he is fourth from him. This was so because Joram begot Ahaziah from a Gentile woman, namely of the house of Ahab; and it had been said through the prophet that no one of the house of Ahab would sit on the throne of the kingdom of Israel except in the fourth generation. So, the family of Ahab having been purged of its Gentile stain and three passed over, the royal line is now counted in the fourth of the following generations. And as for its being written that there are fourteen generations up to Mary, when only thirteen are found in the count, there can be no error for those who know that the origin of our Lord Jesus Christ is not only that which began from Mary, but that in the bodily procreation the significance of the eternal birth is included. The account of the birth is simple. For that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary is the work of all the prophets. But many irreligious people, quite alien to spiritual teaching, seize an occasion to think shamefully of Mary from what was said: “Before they came together, she was found to be with child,” and this: “Do not fear to take Mary your wife,” and this: “He did not know her until she gave birth”; not remembering that she had been betrothed, and that this was said to Joseph when he wished to put her away, because, being just, he did not wish the law to be applied against her. So, lest there should be any doubt about her childbearing, he himself is taken as witness that Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit; then, because she was betrothed, she is received as wife. So she is “known” after childbirth, that is, she passes into the name of wife: for she is known, not joined with. Accordingly, when Joseph is warned to go over into Egypt, it is said thus: “Take the child and his mother,” and: “Return with the child and his mother,” and again in Luke: “And Joseph and his mother were.” And whenever both are spoken of, she is called the mother of Christ, because that is what she was, not the wife of Joseph, because she was not. But this rule too was kept by the angel: that when he indicated her as betrothed to the just Joseph, he called her wife. For he says thus: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife.” So the betrothed took the name of wife, and after the birth, recognized as wife, she is shown only as the mother of Jesus: so that, as a marriage with the same Mary in virginity was assigned to the just Joseph, so her virginity might be shown venerable in the mother of Jesus. But most perverse men take the authority for their opinion from the tradition that our Lord had many brothers. If they had been sons of Mary, and not rather sons of Joseph born of a former marriage, she would never at the time of the passion have been handed over as mother to the apostle John, the Lord saying to each: “Woman, behold your son,” and to John: “Behold your mother”; except that he was leaving to the desolate woman, for her comfort, the love of a son in the disciple. The rising of the star, first understood by the Magi, indicates that the nations would soon believe in Christ, and that men of a profession far turned away from the knowledge of divine understanding would come to know the light that appeared at once at his birth. Then the offering of the gifts expressed an understanding of his whole nature: confessing in gold the king, in frankincense God, in myrrh the man. And so through their veneration the knowledge of the whole mystery was completed: in the man, of death; in God, of resurrection; in the king, of judgment. And that they are forbidden to retrace their way and return to Herod in Judea means that we are permitted to seek no knowledge and understanding from Judea, but, placing all salvation and hope in Christ, we are warned to keep away from the way of our former life. When Herod was preparing the death of the little one, Joseph is warned through an angel to carry him over into Egypt: Egypt, full of idols and worshiping the monstrous forms of every kind of god. Now, after the persecution by the Jews and the consent of the profane people to destroying him, Christ passes over to the nations given up to the emptiest religions; and, leaving Judea, he is brought to be worshiped by a world that did not know him, while Bethlehem, that is, Judea, overflows with the blood of martyrs. The fury of Herod and the slaughter of the infants are a figure of the Jewish people raging against the Christians, thinking that by the slaughter of the blessed martyrs they could extinguish the name of Christ in the faith and profession of all. But glorious honor is rendered to their death through the prophet, who says: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great wailing, Rachel weeping for her children; and she would not be consoled, because they are not.” Rachel, Jacob’s wife, was long barren; but she lost none of those she bore. Rather, in Genesis she bore a figure of the church. So it is not her voice and weeping that is heard, she who had no grief for lost sons, but that of the church, long barren but now fruitful. Her weeping over her sons is heard not because she grieved that they were killed, but because they were being killed by those whom she had first wished to keep as her begotten sons. So she who grieved would not be consoled. For those who were thought dead were not “not”; they were being carried forward into eternity through the glory of martyrdom. Consolation had to be given for a thing lost, not for a thing increased.

After this, when Herod had died, Joseph is warned through an angel to return to Judea with the child and his mother. And returning, when he heard that Archelaus son of Herod was reigning, he was afraid to go there; and he is warned through an angel to pass over into Galilee and live in a city of that region, Nazareth. So he is warned to return to Judea, and having returned he is afraid. And again, warned in a dream, he is ordered to go over to the region of the Gentiles. But either he who had been warned ought not to have feared, or the warning ought not to have been brought through an angel only to be changed soon after. But a typological meaning was kept. For Joseph bears the figure of the apostles, to whom Christ was entrusted to be carried about. They, as if Herod were dead, that is, his people having perished in the Lord’s passion, were ordered to preach to the Jews; for they had been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But since the dominion of inherited unbelief remained, they are afraid and withdraw. Warned through a vision, that is, beholding the gift of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles, they carry Christ over to them, Christ who was sent to Judea but named the life and salvation of the Gentiles. “In those days John came preaching in the desert of Judea, saying: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near,” and so on. In John we must look at the place, the preaching, the clothing, and the food; and in such a way that we remember that the truth of the events is not corrupted if a reason of inner understanding underlies the things done. For a more convenient place, more useful clothing, and more suitable food could have been had by a preacher; but an example underlies the things done, and in this the action itself is meditation. For he came to the desert of Judea, deserted by God’s visitation, not by people, empty of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not of men: so that the place of preaching might testify to the desolation of those to whom the preaching was sent. He also proclaims repentance as the kingdom of heaven draws near, through which there is return from error, recourse from crime, and, after the shame of vices, the profession of ceasing: so that deserted Judea might remember that it would receive him in whom is the kingdom of heaven, and would not be empty thereafter if it purged itself of its old vices by the confession of repentance. His clothing too, woven of camels’ hair, signifies the foreign dress of this prophetic preaching: the preacher of Christ is clothed with the skins of unclean beasts, to whom we are reckoned equal; and whatever in us was before either useless or filthy becomes sanctified by the dress of the prophet. The girding of the belt is preparation effective for every good work, so that we may be girded with will for every ministry of Christ. Locusts too are chosen for food, which flee from men and fly away at every sense of our approach: we, namely, who were carried away from every word and meeting of the prophets as if by certain leaps of our bodies. Wandering in will, useless in works, querulous in words, strangers in faith, we are now the nourishment of the saints and the satisfaction of the prophets, chosen together with wild honey: about to offer from ourselves the sweetest food, not from the hives of the law but from the trunks of wild trees. Preaching, then, in such dress, John calls the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to baptism a brood of vipers; he warns them to bear fruit worthy of repentance and not to boast that they have Abraham as father, because God is able to raise up sons to Abraham from stones. For what is sought is not descent of the flesh but the inheritance of faith. The dignity of origin, then, consists in the example of works, and the glory of lineage is kept by imitation of faith. The devil is unfaithful, Abraham faithful. For the one was faithless in the transgression of man, while the other was justified by faith. So each person’s character and life gains the nearness of kinship: those who are faithful are Abraham’s offspring through faith; those who are unfaithful are changed by unfaithfulness into the devil’s offspring: since the Pharisees are called a race of vipers, they are forbidden to glory in their holy parent, sons of Abraham are raised up from stones and rocks, and they are warned to bear worthy fruits of repentance; so that those who had begun to have the devil as father might again become sons of Abraham through faith, together with those raised up from stones. The axe laid to the roots of the trees testifies to the right of the power present in Christ, signifying by the felling and burning of unfruitful trees that the destruction of useless unbelief is being prepared for the burning of judgment. And since the work of the law was now ineffective for salvation, and John had appeared as the messenger to those to be baptized for repentance (for it was the office of the prophets to call back from sins, but the proper work of Christ to save believers), he says that he baptizes for repentance, but that a stronger one is coming, whose sandals he is unworthy to carry: leaving to the apostles the glory of carrying about the preaching, to whom, with beautiful feet, it was due to announce the peace of God. So he points to the time of our salvation and of judgment in the Lord, saying: “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire”: because for those baptized in the Holy Spirit it remains to be completed by the fire of judgment. “His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will clean his threshing floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” The work of the fan is to separate the fruitful from the unfruitful. That it is in the Lord’s hand indicates the judgment of his power, as he stores in his barns his wheat, that is, the perfect fruits of believers, and burns in the fire of judgment the chaff, that is, the emptiness of useless and unfruitful men. “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him,” and the rest. In Christ Jesus there was the whole man; and therefore the body assumed into the service of the Spirit fulfilled in itself the whole mystery of our salvation. So he came to John, born of a woman, set under the law, and made flesh through the Word. He himself was not in need of washing, because it was said of him, “He committed no sin”; and where there is no sin, its forgiveness is also idle. But he had taken from us both the body and the name of our creation; and so it was not that he had any need of being washed, but through him the cleansing of our washing was to be sanctified in the waters. Then he is forbidden by John to be baptized, as God; and he teaches that it must be done to him, as man. For all righteousness was to be fulfilled through him through whom alone the law could be fulfilled. And so, by the prophet’s testimony, he does not need the washing, and by the authority of his own example he completes the mysteries of human salvation, sanctifying man both by his assumption and by washing. The order of the heavenly secret is also expressed in him. For when he had been baptized, the entrances of heaven being unbarred, the Holy Spirit is sent and is recognized as visible in the form of a dove, and he is anointed with this kind of fatherly love. Then a voice from heaven speaks thus: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” The Son of God is shown to hearing and to sight, and to the unfaithful people disobedient to the prophets, testimony is sent about their Lord by both sight and voice; and at the same time, so that from the things completed in Christ we might know that after the washing of water the Holy Spirit also flies down upon us from the gates of heaven, that we are anointed with the anointing of heavenly glory, and that we become sons of God by the adoption of the Father’s voice; since the truth has prefigured by the very effects of the events the image of the mystery thus arranged for us.

The leading into the desert, the fast of forty days, the hunger after the fast, the temptation of Satan, and the Lord’s answer are full of the effects of a great and heavenly plan. For his being led into the desert signifies the freedom of the Holy Spirit, now offering his man to the devil and permitting him the opportunity of tempting and attacking, which the tempter would not have had unless it had been given. So in the devil there was suspicion arising from fear, not knowledge arising from suspicion: for he was disturbed by the fast of forty days. He knew that for that many days the waters of the abyss were poured out, the land of promise was explored, and the law was written by God for Moses, and that the number of the years in which the people remained in the wilderness in the life and condition of angels had also been this. So, from fear of this period, in tempting him whom he saw to be a man, he took up rashness. For he had enticed Adam and by deceiving led him into death. But it was fitting to his wickedness and crime that he should be conquered in a man, in whose death and calamities he gloried; and that he who had envied man the benefits of God should not be able, before the temptation, to understand God in the man. The Lord, then, is tempted immediately after baptism, indicating by his temptation that the devil’s assaults rage most against us when we have been sanctified, because victory over the saints is more desired by him. He hungered not for the food of men but for their salvation: for he hungered after the forty days, not during the forty days, whereas Moses and Elijah did not hunger in the same period of fasting. So when the Lord hungered, it was not that the effect of going without food crept up on him, but that power, unmoved by the fast of forty days, left the man to his own nature. For the devil was to be conquered not by God but by the flesh; which he would certainly not have dared to tempt unless he had recognized in it, through the weakness of hunger, the things that belong to man. Sensing this in him, he spoke thus: “If you are the Son of God.” The words are uncertain, “If you are the Son of God.” Though he saw him hungry, he still dreaded the forty days’ fast in him. By this course of events he indicates that after the forty days’ sojourn which he would spend in the world after the passion, he would have a hunger for human salvation. At that time he carried back to God the Father the awaited gift, the man he had taken up. We must now consider what questions he used. He says: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves.” The deceitful devil, the most cunning craftsman of misleading, knew that Christ could do all things, and he sensed hunger in the man from the very length of the fast, not knowing what he was hungry for. So in tempting him he proposed the condition of a work by which he might both recognize in God the force of his power, from the change of stones into loaves, and in the man mock the endurance of hunger with the delight of food. But the Lord, hungering not for bread rather than for the salvation of men, says: “Man does not live by bread alone”; because he himself, not only man but also God, though he abstained from human food until the day of temptation, was nevertheless nourished by the Spirit of God: showing that the nourishment of eternity is to be hoped for not in this solitary bread but in the Word of God. The following question is this, when he had lifted him to the top of the temple: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down,” and the rest. He labors by temptation to bring the Lord down from the heights to lower things, and to confine in lowly things him who was set on the top of the temple, that is, rising above the law and the prophets. He knew that the ministries of angels were ready for the Son of God and that he could not strike against a stone of stumbling, since he would walk upon the asp and the basilisk and trample the lion and the dragon. About the things said against himself he was silent; but by recalling the earlier words he wishes somehow to draw out obedience from the one he tempts, intending to carry off glory from it if the Lord of majesty had obeyed him, even from confidence. But the devil got no occasion for so great a fraud, as the Lord himself testified at a later time, when he says: “The prince of this world came and found nothing in me.” So a worthy answer of the Lord followed this insolence of his: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Crushing the devil’s attempts and assaults, he declares himself both God and Lord, teaching that boasting must be far from the faithful, because, though all things are possible to God, nothing is to be dared in tempting him. But now, the third time, the whole ambition of the devil’s power is set in motion. The Lord having been set on a high mountain, he offered all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, if only he himself were worshiped. By the two answers he had already gone beyond the opinion of suspicion. He had enticed Adam with food and led him down from the glory of paradise into the place of sin, that is, into the region of the forbidden tree; the third time he corrupted him by ambition for the divine name, promising he would be like gods. So now the fight against the Lord is waged with all the power of the world, and the possession of this universe is offered to its Creator: so that, keeping the order of the ancient fraud, he might now at least corrupt by ambition him whom he had neither enticed by food nor moved from his place. But the Lord’s answer made a step worthy of the earlier ones. For he says: “Go, Satan. For it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” He met an end fitting such rashness, when he both heard the name of his crimes in “Satan” and recognized the Lord his God to be worshiped in the man. By the effect of this answer the Lord also gave us a great example: that, despising the glory of human power and setting aside the ambition of the world, we should remember that God and the Lord alone is to be worshiped, because all the honor of the world is the devil’s business. After this flight of the devil, then, angels minister to Christ, showing that when the devil’s head has been conquered and trampled by us, neither the ministries of angels nor the services of the heavenly powers toward us will be lacking. “When Jesus heard that John had been handed over, he withdrew into Galilee.” The passage into Capernaum and the prophecy of Isaiah are the order of events. In the choosing of fishermen, the work of their future office is shown from the men’s craft: as fish from the sea, so henceforth men are to be drawn out of the world into a higher place, that is, into the light of the heavenly dwelling. As they leave their craft, their homeland, and their homes, we are taught that, if we are to follow Christ, we must not be held by the cares of worldly life or by the ways of our father’s house. In the choosing of four apostles first, besides the truth of events (for so it happened), the number of the future evangelists is prefigured. So he goes around Galilee and preaches the gospel of the kingdom in the synagogues; and by healing the infirmities of all sicknesses he shows himself by deeds, so that they might behold present in his works him whom they were accustomed to read in the volumes of the prophets.