Commentary on Matthew 16.12–16.17

Since Mark and Luke, according to some, set out the same narrative, but according to others another, similar one, it is worth looking at theirs too. And first we must consider the account in Mark, who recorded the passage thus: “And he comes to Jericho; and as he was going out from there with his disciples and a considerable crowd, behold, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind man,” and so on, up to “and he followed him on the road.” The one who stands by the bare narrative, and does not wish the evangelists to disagree, will say that what is in Matthew and what is in Mark did not happen at the same time, but that the events concerning the two blind men who recovered their sight happened at one visit to Jericho, those concerning this one man, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, at another, and those in Luke at another. For if we believe that the Gospels were recorded accurately, with the Holy Spirit working together with the writers, and that those who wrote them did not err in their recollections, then clearly—since it cannot be true at one and the same visit that two blind men were healed and that one was—one visit is indicated by Matthew, another by Mark, and yet another by Luke, as one who has considered it can confidently declare from the difference between it and the others. And it is nothing surprising that one of those in Jericho, having observed the earlier healing, should have wished to be healed by the same words and a like request, and in the same place. Someone might speak in this way; and he might say also that the blind man healed in Luke is another. But one who seeks a deeper explanation of all these will say that one and the same matter is presented in different words. For there are two blind men, as was explained, Israel and Judah; but the people made up of all these is one, when one blind man is shown being healed. While a considerable crowd from the nations goes out with Jesus and his disciples from worldly things, a certain Israelite remnant, sitting by the road, poor in thoughts and begging for what the soul needs, having heard that it is Jesus the Nazarene, comes crying out loudly, asking the Saviour, as son of David, to grant it mercy. And when you see the faith about the Saviour of those from the Jews who believe in Jesus—sometimes thinking him to be the son of Mary and Joseph, sometimes of Mary alone and the divine Spirit, yet without the theology concerning him—you will see how this blind man says, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” and many rebuke him. For many are those from the nations who go out from Jericho, rebuking the poverty of those from the Jews who seem to believe. And if you refer such things to the noble soul that has become poor and come even to begging, you will not altogether miss the meaning. And since Mark saw fit to record also the name of the blind man’s father, that it was Timaeus, and that of the blind man, that he was called Bartimaeus, we ask whether Mark perceived something deeper in the passage, and perhaps of necessity took the name from the narrative and added it—or, someone might say, made use of it as something useful. And if we shall not seem to be over-subtle in going so far as to examine such things, we inquire into Timaeus, named from honour, and his son Bartimaeus, which means son of Timaeus. Perhaps, because of the honour of the patriarch Jacob and Israel, he, figuratively, is Timaeus; and those who have obtained their good birth from him are Bartimaeus, blind for the reasons stated before, and likewise sitting by the road and begging. Then, since, when he said, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” many rebuked him to be silent, I ask whether you can say that the many who rebuke the Ebionite—who is poor as regards faith in Jesus—to be silent are those from the nations, who, all but a few, have believed that he was born of a virgin, and who rebuke, to silence him, the one who thinks that he is from the seed of a man and a woman tracing their descent from David. But though many rebuked him, he cried out much more, believing in Jesus, but believing in a more human way; and crying out he says, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” But the humane Saviour stopped, and no longer calls him himself, as in Matthew, but said that he should be called; and those who were bidden said to him, “Take heart, rise”; for they say to him, as he sits and has sunk down, “Rise,” and they say, “He is calling you.” After this Mark says that, throwing off his cloak, he leapt up and came to Jesus. Did he, then, record without any thought that he threw off his cloak and leapt up and came to Jesus, and shall we dare to say that these things were thrown into the Gospel in vain? I, for my part, do not believe that one iota or one stroke is empty of divine teachings; but I think that to succeed in interpreting them needs much reasoning, because the matters are hard to interpret. Perhaps, then, the coverings of a blind man and a beggar, in which Bartimaeus was wrapped, are indicated; these the blind man threw off when he heard, “Take heart, rise, he is calling you.” And throwing off the coverings and wraps of begging, he leapt up and rose to come to Jesus; and obtaining from him the answer to his request, “What do you want me to do?”, he too spoke a greater word than “Son of David, have mercy on me.” For something greater is conceived by the one who says “Rabbouni” than “son of David,” and who sets out the kind of mercy he seeks by saying “that I may recover my sight.” And the Saviour does not give the benefaction for “Son of David, have mercy on me,” neither while the cloak of begging was around him, nor while he sat by the road begging; but for “Rabbouni, that I may recover my sight,” he said to him, “Go, your faith has saved you.” And the Saviour said to him, “Go”; but he did something better than this command; for he did not go away, but followed Jesus on the road, since he immediately recovered his sight.

Let us look also at Luke’s account, which runs thus: “And it came to pass, as he drew near to Jericho, a certain blind man was sitting by the road begging,” and so on, up to “And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.” What this has in common with the other accounts, which have already received the explanation that appeared to us, we shall not take up again; but what is timely and peculiar to it we shall set out as well as we can. And first observe that Matthew and Mark recorded that the events concerning the blind men, or the blind man, took place as Jesus was going out from Jericho with the disciples; but Luke says, “And it came to pass, as he drew near to Jericho.” According to Luke, then, he carries out the ordering concerning the blind man as he is entering Jericho and has come near it. And someone might say, according to the mystical sense, that Luke’s account is first, Mark’s second, and Matthew’s third; for one must first draw near to Jericho, then enter it, and then go out from it. Luke, then, recorded, “It came to pass, as he drew near to Jericho”; Mark, “And he comes to Jericho; and as he was going out from there”; while Matthew recorded neither the drawing near to Jericho nor that he comes to Jericho, but only that “as they went out from Jericho, a great crowd followed him.” He can therefore have done what is in Luke as he drew near to Jericho, what is in Mark as he came into Jericho, and what is in Matthew as he went out from it. You see also that the blind man in Luke, “hearing a crowd passing through”—and not, mark you, Jesus—“inquired what this might be”; the one in Mark, “hearing that it is Jesus the Nazarene, began to cry out”; and the two blind men in Matthew, sitting by the road, hearing that Jesus was passing by, cried out. And for the blind men in Matthew he is not “Jesus the Nazarene,” but he is for the others: the one in Mark hears that it is Jesus the Nazarene, and the one in Luke, when he inquired of the crowd what this might be, learned from those who told him that Jesus the Nazarene was passing by. Next to this, observe that when the blind man cried out, saying, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” those who went in front rebuked him, that he should be silent; as if it said: those who believed first rebuked the one who said “son of David,” that he should be silent and not proclaim him by the lesser name, but say, as it were, “Son of God, have mercy on me.” But he cried out much more, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Then, it says, “Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to him.” And see whether, as we have observed, this blind man is not lower than the others; for Jesus neither called him nor said that he should be called, but, since he could not receive these things, commanded that he, who could not come to him by himself, be brought to him. Then, it says, “when he had come near, he asked him, saying, What do you want me to do for you?” And he did not ask him before,

… until the one who was asked had come near to him; and since he had come near, being asked for this reason, he said: “That I may recover my sight, Lord.” Then, it says, “Jesus answered and said to him, Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.” The blind men in Matthew have more, for of them it is written that Jesus, moved with compassion, touched their eyes; but he touched neither the one in Mark nor the one in Luke. Yet again the one in Luke has a certain advantage, since when he immediately recovered his sight he not only followed him but had something more than the others: “he followed him,” it says, “glorifying God”; and the outcome of this, in the man who followed and glorified God, was that all the crowd, when they saw it, gave praise to God. These are the things we have seen for the present on these passages, whether by our own knowledge or by receiving them; but may God give to whom he wills a richer word of wisdom and a clearer word in the light of knowledge, so that these things, compared with what comes from such gifts, may be found to be like a lamp beside the sun. [On the ass and the colt.] “And when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives,” and so on, up to “upon an ass and a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” And Mark recorded the passage thus: “And when they draw near to Jerusalem and to Bethany, to the Mount of Olives,” and so on, up to “and he will send it at once”; and Luke, saying these things in this way: “He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem,” and so on, up to “Thus you shall say: The Lord has need of it.” It is worthwhile, especially with such sayings of the Gospel, to attend to the intent and purpose of those who recorded them: with what aim they recorded, besides the wonderful and extraordinary things done by the Saviour, things that show nothing of that kind. For granted that the evangelists treated of the recovery of sight by the blind, the healing of the paralysed, the raising of the dead, and the cleansing of lepers, to build up faith in Jesus in those who would read their writing, what do they mean by the saying before us: that when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem with his disciples and came to Bethphage, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples, commanding them about an ass and a colt, that they should untie them and bring them to him—he who sometimes did not shrink from going a longer way on foot and finishing the journey on his own feet, as when, passing from Jerusalem through Samaria, he reached the well and, wearied from the journey, sat down beside it? And what was Jesus’ own purpose in ordering an ass that was tied with a colt to be untied, and in commanding them to say to anyone who said anything about it that the Lord has need of them, and that he will send them at once? For let so great a Lord, having need of an ass and a colt that had long been tied, show something worthy of his magnificence. The prophet Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, heightens the inquiry on this passage, having prophesied about these things a prophecy worth attention. It is written in these very words: “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your King comes to you, just and saving; he is meek, and mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt.” And if you wish to learn from the Prophet how the things prophesied are worthy of joy for the daughter of Zion, so that “Rejoice greatly” is said, hear: “And he will destroy chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be destroyed, and a multitude, and peace from the nations; and he will rule the waters as far as the sea, and the rivers to the ends of the earth. And you, by the blood of the covenant, have sent out your prisoners from a pit that has no water. You shall dwell in a stronghold, prisoners of the synagogue, and for one day of your sojourning I will repay you double.” And so as not to lengthen the discourse further, let us leave it to anyone who wishes to compare the prophecy with the narrative of the Gospel, and to examine everything in these passages, the text lying at hand. We have noted, as in other cases, that Matthew and John did not set out the prophecy in its very words. For “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion” is not the same as “Say to the daughter of Zion.” And after “Behold, your King comes to you,” Matthew did not set out the words that precede “meek,” which run, “just and saving is he”; and further, in place of “and a young colt”—or, as in some copies, “a colt of a beast of burden”—he has “and mounted on an ass, and a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” And John, in place of “mounted on a beast of burden,” has made it, “sitting on an ass’s colt he comes”; and he, showing that the passage needs knowledge, adds: “These things his disciples did not understand at first.”

… how reasonably, according to the Prophet, the daughter of Zion is commanded to rejoice greatly, and the daughter of Jerusalem to proclaim, because of the one mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt, when a little later, seeing Jerusalem, he wept: “You who kill the prophets,” and so on. Consider, then, whether you can say that Zion, now called the daughter of the one who commands her to rejoice, and Jerusalem, called in turn the daughter of the one who bids her proclaim, are the heavenly things, about which it is written in the Letter to the Hebrews: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels in festal gathering”; and in the Letter to the Galatians: “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” For perhaps these things are symbols of the Saviour’s having loosed from their bonds, through his disciples, his own mounts—those who then believed from that people and those from the nations. For the Synagogue of old was bound by sins; and bound with her was the colt, the people from the nations who later became new. And as the Saviour drew near to the ascent to the Jerusalem above, he commanded both of these to be loosed by the disciples through their teaching, giving them the Holy Spirit and saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” And the disciples, “whom he made sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit,” always loose the tied ass and the colt and lead them to Jesus, who wishes to use as his mount those who have been loosed from their ancient bonds by his true disciples. And it befits the Son of God so to have need—for he loves humankind—of the tied ass and of the colt tied with her; and he has need of them so that, sitting upon them, he may give rest to those on whom he sits rather than take rest himself.

But someone will ask how the words that follow will be consistent with what has been explained; they run: “And he will send them at once,” and, “And he will send it back here at once.” You will solve the difficulty by inquiring into the sending of either the two animals in Matthew or the colt in Mark. That the Lord of the tied animals was none other than our “one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” whom none of those who said, “Why are you untying the colt?”, or anything else, was going to oppose at all, is clear. For the Saviour spoke as of people who would not oppose him: “And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say that the Lord has need of them”; or, “If anyone says to you, Why are you untying the colt? say that the Lord has need of it”; and according to Luke, “If anyone asks you,” he says, “Why are you untying it? you shall say thus: The Lord has need of it.” And you will inquire whether, after Jerusalem and after the Saviour had mounted these animals, or this one, there was to be some sending of them to some necessary work in the place, so that the ass and the colt might do some work according to what is left unsaid—implied, but not clearly shown. I gain a notion of such a thing by attending to the order of the beatitudes in Matthew, in which after “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” there is written next, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” For observe in these that first the kingdom of heaven belongs to the blessed, and second they shall inherit the earth—not so as to be on it for every age; for having been comforted, and having been filled with righteousness through their hunger and thirst for it, and having obtained mercy, and seen God, and been called his sons, they are restored again to the kingdom of heaven. And if the ass and colt on which the Saviour mounts are those we have explained, do not stumble at the saying that compares to irrational beasts of burden those who carry Jesus riding upon them. For perhaps the Prophet too, understanding something of this kind, spoke of having become like a beast—not absolutely, but before God or before Christ—in the words: “And I became like a beast before you.” For in comparison with the Word himself and with the majesty of God, we are beasts—not only we, but also those far more rational and wiser than we. So too, in comparison with the reason of the shepherd we are his sheep, since the reason in men, even the most perfect, compared with the Word himself, is further removed from him than the soul of an ass or a sheep is from a man. And perhaps, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the beast of burden, or the colt, is such; but having come there, it no longer remains a beast of burden or a colt, but is sent back changed and benefited, having shared in the divinity of the Word and the excellence of knowledge, so that they are sent, to the glory of God, to the place from which they were first loosed, the Lord having transformed them and given them such a change as their wage for having carried him; so that they are sent back to their former place, but no longer to their former works. For our humane Lord, having once received them and honoured them both by releasing them from their bonds and by riding on them, was not going to send them back to their bonds, or to works lesser than the work they had done in receiving the Son of God on their backs. It was fitting, at such a mystery and at the words spoken with it, for God’s daughter Zion to rejoice greatly and to heighten her joy, the fruit of the Spirit, and for his daughter Jerusalem to proclaim. For her King was coming to her, just and saving—but keeping his justice, and saving with righteousness, and preparing for salvation those who are being saved. He came to Zion and Jerusalem meek and mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt, as we have explained, visiting Israel, by destroying the chariots from Ephraim, which were like the chariots of Pharaoh when he cast Pharaoh’s chariots and his army into the sea; and he came also destroying the horse, the animal of war, from Jerusalem, so as to make peace for Israel, turning back his lost sheep, and peace for Jerusalem too, bringing back her children who had fallen away. How should it not be worthy of great joy that the just King, saving and meek, should come thus to Jerusalem, when every bow of war was to be destroyed, so that no longer “do sinners bend the bow, and prepare arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the moonless night at the upright in heart”? And then there was to be a multitude and peace from the nations that believe and are saved, the Saviour ruling the waters as far as the sea, and ruling also the rivers through the outlets of the earth, which make passages through it and water much of it. But the one who wishes to take “daughter of Zion” and “daughter of Jerusalem” more simply, of the people among whom the Saviour dwelt, will say that the word commands the daughter of Zion to rejoice and the daughter of Jerusalem to proclaim; but if some disobeyed, not doing what was worthy of rejoicing nor accepting the command to proclaim, they themselves became the cause of their suffering what they suffered, so that it was said to them: “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you; since you judge yourselves unworthy, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.” One must know this too, that, having come upon five editions of Zechariah, we found in the Seventy and in Aquila, “He is meek, and mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt,” or, “on an ass and a colt, the son of she-asses”; in Theodotion, “He is hearkening, and mounted on an ass and a colt, the son of an ass”; in Symmachus, “He is poor, and mounted on an ass and a colt, the son of a she-ass”; and in the fifth edition, “He is poor, and mounted on a beast of burden and a colt, the son of asses.” And one can fit these to the narrative of the Gospel passage under examination, since the Saviour came to Jerusalem meek, and hearkening, and poor; for though he was rich he became poor, so that those who hear him who hearkens to us might become rich through his poverty.

Let us look at Bethphage in Matthew, Bethany in Mark, and Bethphage and Bethany in Luke. These were near the mount called the Mount of Olives. We say that Bethphage means “house of jaws,” and it was a place belonging to the priests; and Bethany “house of obedience.” To the house of obedience, then, the loosed animals, or the loosed animal, are led, so that from there Jesus may mount them; and to the house of the jaw, about which one may speak, taking a starting point from Judges, where there is a spring called “of the jaw,” from which Samson drank when he was thirsty. Or perhaps, since to the one who strikes us on the jaw we must offer the other also, Bethphage was a symbol of the forbearance of those who are saved, the place where Jesus sat upon the animals loosed by the disciples at his command. And it is the mount of the olive trees, which, bearing fruit, say, being good olive trees, “But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God”; and those who are beginning and being brought in are among them, “like young olive shoots around” the “table” of Christ, being his little children and sons. And if we must also attend to the two disciples whom Jesus sent to the tied ass and the colt with her, so that they might untie them and bring them to him, we should say that perhaps the two disciples are Peter and Paul, who gave each other the right hand of fellowship, so that Peter might go to the circumcision, to the beast of burden that had been under the yoke of the law, and Paul to the nations, the young and untamed colt. And both of them—I mean the beast of burden and the colt—were, before Jesus came, in a village and not a city, where they were tied. But the disciples of Jesus loose them and lead both to Jesus. And further, raising the meaning of the two disciples, you will say that there is one order of those who minister to those of the circumcision and another of those who minister to those from the nations. Yet there is a fellowship in their works, as they loose what Jesus has commanded to be loosed; and while they loose them, if anyone says to them, “Why are you untying the colt?”, or anything else, he says about both: we preach that the Lord has need of these that were bound before. And he has need of them, mounting them when they have been loosed from their sins and have received forgiveness of them; for Jesus does not sit on those who are still bound and “held fast by the cords of their own sins.” According to Mark and Luke, however, “there is a colt tied, on which no one of men has ever sat”; for nothing rational and fittingly done had been done or seated on the colt from the nations; and this colt, on which nothing rational had sat before, had the good fortune that God sat on it, the Word, the Son of God, so that, led by him as he drove it, it might arrive at the Jerusalem of God. So much we have seen on the passage for the present; but let the one who is able, and who receives greater grace for the passage, say greater and better things, and let him rather be heard by those who thirst for the clear meaning of the Gospel.