New Testament · The Gospels
Κατὰ Ματθαῖον
The King of the Jews, fulfillment upon fulfillment, the Sermon on the Mount, the Great Commission.
Matthew opens the New Testament with a genealogy on purpose: Jesus is son of David, son of Abraham, the promise of Genesis kept. It is the Gospel written with Israel's Scriptures constantly in hand, quoting them at every turn with the formula that it might be fulfilled, and it gathers the teaching into five great blocks, which many readers take as a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses. Two details are easy to miss. The genealogy names four women, and each one is either a foreigner or attached to a scandal, which is a strange way to open a royal pedigree unless the point is who this king came for. And the book closes on a mountain with all authority claimed and a commission to all nations, having opened with foreign astrologers arriving to worship: the Gentiles are there at both ends.
If you remember one thing
Matthew organizes Jesus' teaching into five great blocks, which many read as an echo of the five books of Moses. It opens with a genealogy and ends with all authority and a commission.
“Go and make disciples of all nations.”
Matthew 28:19
Matthew 27:25
His blood be on us and on our children. A line with a horrifying history of use against Jewish people, and one that Christians should never quote without naming that history.
Matthew 5:31-32
The exception clause on divorce, which is absent in Mark and which traditions weigh very differently.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Taken young into the Babylonian court, Daniel rose by wisdom and unbending faith, refusing the king's food, reading dreams and the writing on Belshazzar's wall, and emerging unharmed from the lions' den. His later visions map the rise and fall of empires to the end.
The one righteous man of his generation, who built a ship on dry ground on the strength of a warning about weather he had never seen. After the flood God set the rainbow as the sign of a covenant made with every living creature.
A prostitute in Jericho who hid Israel's spies and asked for mercy for her household, and got it. Matthew names her in the genealogy of Jesus, and both Hebrews and James hold her up as an example of living faith.
The woman David saw from his roof, in an episode the text presents as the king's sin rather than hers, and whose husband Uriah he had killed to cover it. She later secured Solomon's succession, and Matthew lists her in the genealogy of Jesus.
The prophet who confronted Ahab and Jezebel head on: three years of drought at his word, fire on the altar at Carmel, and then a collapse into despair under a broom tree. He did not die but was taken up in a whirlwind, which is why later Jewish expectation looked for his return before the day of the LORD.
The carpenter from Nazareth whom the New Testament proclaims as the Messiah promised to Israel and the Son of God. He taught for roughly three years in Galilee and Judea, was executed under Pontius Pilate, and was raised on the third day. Christians across every tradition confess him as fully God and fully man, the formula the Council of Chalcedon settled on in 451.
A prophet in camel's hair who preached repentance at the Jordan and baptized Jesus. He named himself the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah, and was beheaded by Herod Antipas for condemning the king's marriage.
A Galilean fisherman who spoke first and thought later, walked on water and sank, confessed Jesus as the Christ, denied him three times, and was restored on a beach over breakfast. He preached the sermon at Pentecost and opened the door of the church to Gentiles at Cornelius' house.
One of the twelve, who kept the money box and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, then threw the money back into the temple and hanged himself. The Gospels report his motives sparingly and do not speculate.
The Roman official who tried Jesus, judged him innocent, and sentenced him anyway under pressure from the crowd. A stone inscription found at Caesarea in 1961 carries his name and title, confirming the office the Gospels give him.
A client king under Rome, a prodigious builder who expanded the temple into one of the wonders of the ancient world, and a ruler so afraid of rivals that he executed members of his own family. Matthew reports his order to kill the children of Bethlehem.
The high priest who presided at Jesus' trial and had already reasoned that it was better for one man to die for the people. John records that line as unintentional prophecy.
A wealthy member of the council who had not consented to its decision. He went to Pilate and asked for the body, which took nerve, and buried Jesus in his own new tomb. All four Gospels record it.
A Gentile mother who asked Jesus to free her daughter and was answered with a hard saying about not giving the children's bread to the dogs. She took the image and turned it: even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs. It is the only exchange in the Gospels where someone answers Jesus back and is commended for it.
He asked for his servant to be healed and then said not to bother coming, because he understood chains of authority: he gave orders and they were obeyed, so a word would be enough. Jesus said he had not found faith like that in Israel.
Forgiven a debt so large it could never have been repaid, he walked out and seized a colleague over a trivial sum. Jesus told it when Peter asked whether forgiving seven times was enough.
Ten bridesmaids waiting with lamps for a bridegroom who was delayed. Five had brought extra oil and five had not, and the ones who left to buy more arrived after the door was shut. The point is stated plainly at the end: keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
Three servants entrusted with different sums while their master traveled. Two traded and doubled what they had; the third buried his in the ground and explained that he had been afraid. A talent was an enormous weight of silver, so even the smallest share was a fortune.
Judah's widowed daughter-in-law, denied the marriage the law owed her, who disguised herself and secured a child from Judah himself. He admits she was more righteous than he was. She stands in the genealogy of Jesus. A second Tamar, David's daughter, is raped by her half-brother Amnon.
Tamar's twin sons and their descendants, the line that runs from Judah to Boaz to Jesse to David. Perez's name refers to the breach he made in being born first, out of the expected order, which by now is a Genesis habit.
A craftsman of Nazareth, betrothed to Mary, who was told in a dream to take her as his wife despite a pregnancy that was not his. He named the child, which in that culture was the act of claiming him as a son, and it is through Joseph that Jesus is legally of David's line.
The apostles the gospels say least about. Andrew, Peter's brother, is the one who keeps bringing people to Jesus: his brother, the boy with the loaves, the Greeks who came asking. Thomas is remembered for one sentence of doubt and forgotten for another, let us also go, that we may die with him.
The deuterocanonical books, and the King James New Testament, often carry names in their Greek shapes: Josias is Josiah, Jeremias is Jeremiah, Elias is Elijah, Esaias is Isaiah, Noe is Noah, Booz is Boaz, Jonas is Jonah, Zorobabel is Zerubbabel, Nave is Nun.
A Moabite widow who refused to go home. When Naomi told her daughters-in-law to return to their mothers' houses, Orpah went and Ruth would not, answering with the speech that has outlived everything else in the book: where you go I will go, your people will be my people, and your God my God.
The fathers, mothers, and relatives named around the Twelve. Zebedee is left in the boat with the hired men when James and John walk away from the family fishing business, a detail Mark includes without comment.
The tax collector called from his booth at Capernaum, on the road running from Damascus to the coast. Mark and Luke call him Levi; Matthew's gospel calls him Matthew and adds the detail that he was a tax collector, which the others leave out of the apostle list.
A landowner of Bethlehem who let Ruth glean in his fields, protected her from harassment, and then acted as kinsman-redeemer to marry her once a nearer relative declined. Their son Obed was the grandfather of David.
The Hebrew word satan means adversary or accuser, and in its earliest uses it is a role rather than a name, complete with the definite article: the accuser, standing in the heavenly court to press a case, as in Job and Zechariah.
James son of Zebedee, John's brother, one of the inner three, and the first apostle martyred, killed by Herod Agrippa. James son of Alphaeus, of whom almost nothing is recorded. And James the brother of Jesus, who did not believe during the ministry and became the leader of the Jerusalem church.
A young woman in Nazareth who answered the angel's announcement with consent, and whose song of God lifting up the lowly is one of the earliest Christian hymns. She appears at the wedding in Cana, at the cross, and with the disciples in the upper room.
A quiz for Matthew is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
