NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER THREE

Part II (con’t)

Verses 5-6: “People came to John from Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and from all the areas along the Jordan River. They confessed their sins, and John then baptized them in the Jordan River.”

One modern Jewish polemic writer raises the same question the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law brought to John the Baptizer on his immersing believers in water to confirm their repentence: “Why was this done? Who commanded John to administer this baptism? In what Testament did he find it? Not in the old one nor in the new one. Furthermore, when he did baptize them, he did so in a river.”¹ But his point was not necessarily to criticize John the Baptizer, but the Church that existed in his day. So he asks: “Why, then, don’t these Gentiles who learned from him do so in a river? The fact is that we see that they are not careful about this but immerse themselves in water that has been drawn using vessels to fill a pool.”² This skeptic need only read at the end of Matthew to find out Jesus did not specify that the water for baptism must be conducted in a river. In fact, using water in pools for Jewish purification rites is well established in Scripture.³ One Jewish scholar taught that such purification was a blessed event. He says: “Fortunate are you O Israel! Before whom you do purify yourselves? And who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven! As it is said: ‘I will sprinkle upon you pure water and you will become pure,⁴ and it is further said: ‘The hope of Israel is the Lord,’⁵ just as a pool purifies the defiled, so too does the Holy One, Blessed is He, purify Israel.”⁶

Another reason why the Jordan River may have attracted John the Baptizer for his ministry is because of what happened to the Aramean General named Naaman.⁷ If its water could cleanse someone from leprosy, certainly it could cleanse them from sin. Also, Jewish historian Josephus tells us that even during very tense and stressful times among the Jews and Romans during those days, being purified was a must before undertaking any action that involved entering a holy place. He shares how Ananus, the son of the high priest Ananus “…did not think it was fit to make any attack against the holy gates, although the other threw their stones and darts at them from above. He deemed it unlawful to introduce the multitude into the temple court before they were purified.”⁸ So as we can see, it played an important role in the life of every dedicated Jew. Also, we find that on the Day of Atonement: “…the priest stood in the east with his face to the west and he pressed both his hands upon the sacrifice and made confession. And thus he would say: ‘O LORD! I have done wrong, I have transgressed, I have sinned before You, I and my house. O LORD! Forgive the wrongdoings, the transgressions, the sins which I have committed and transgressed and sinned before You, I and my house. As it is written in the Torah of Moses Your servant: for on this day will atonement be made for you to cleanse you; from all your sins will you be clean before the Lord.⁹”¹⁰ One Jewish Rabbi tells us how he composed a parable in which to illustrate this point: He relates the story this way:

“A king decreed to his kingdom that his subjects conduct their lives in accordance with the constitution he had passed. The king had appointed different levels of the judiciary and law enforcement officers to ensure that his will would be carried out. As the head of his law enforcement officers he appointed someone known as being efficient, stern, and quick to prosecute. He was charged to summon any of the subjects who were derelict to appear before him for judgment. He also picked a certain day in the calendar when such trials of accused subjects would be held and the chief law enforcement officer would present the charges brought against the wrongdoers. On that same day the king was also in the habit of handing out prizes to subjects who had been loyal to him throughout the year. It so happened that this king had a close friend, whom he loved as much as his own life, and to his embarrassment, this friend had been accused of murder as well as of robbery, and therefore the enforcement officer wanted to find him innocent when he came up for judgment. In spite of the king’s great love for this friend, the enforcement officer ordered this friend to pay ten thousand talents of silver to the king’s treasury prior to his appearance in court. This was intended as a fine designed to wipe out his guilt. When the day arrived on which the king was in the habit of rewarding all the loyal citizens of his kingdom, the very same day on which justice would be meted out to the subjects guilty of various felonies, the king, as was his custom, sent the annual gifts to all the loyal citizens, but he did not send anything at all to the chief prosecutor. However, some ten days later he sent the annual gift to his chief prosecutor, choosing as his messenger for delivery of the gift his former friend, the very person who had been accused of murder and robbery. He had chosen this man accused of murder and robbery as his messenger in order to make the chief prosecutor aware that the accused had not fallen out of favor with his king, but had become the means by which the chief prosecutor would receive his due, although a little later than usual. The chief prosecutor now realized that the king had decided to forgive his onetime friend, and that if he did not respect his employer’s wishes in the matter, his own life might well be in jeopardy. When the trial was about to begin, the chief prosecutor presented his case so unconvincingly that the king’s tribunal found the accused not guilty. In this parable, the king was God. The chief prosecutor, otherwise known as Satan, showed how the devil is always bent on finding everyone guilty without making allowances for human weakness.¹¹

I’ve included this story to show you that telling a parable in order to drive home a spiritual point was already a part of teaching among the Jews. Therefore, not only does this story show how our Lord’s own parables were an acceptable form of teaching truths and morals, but even bears some resembles to a number of Jesus’ parables in that it involves a king, judgment and forgiveness. Perhaps this is why John the Baptizer had people seek forgiveness by praying and confessing their sins before baptizing them. This no doubt has contributed to our present belief requiring that sinners pray for forgiveness and receive salvation before immersing them in water.

For John the Baptizer, baptism was not a simple method for figuratively washing away the stains on one’s record from some transgression or other breaking of the law. This could be done through the Levitical laws of purity. John’s baptism was to initiate a life of holy living and open the door to attain closer communion with God. Josephus, the Jewish historian, records this: “John, that was called the Baptizer: commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for the washing would be acceptable to him if they made use of it, not in order to put away some sins, but for the purification of the body; supposing that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when others came, they were very greatly moved by hearing his words.”¹² Therefore, John’s ministry symbolized the call to repentance before baptism in the Jordan River;¹³ and the same measure for attaining to holiness was employed by the Essenes, whose ways of life John also observed in all other respects. Josephus, who spent several years with the Essenes, said of his instructor named Banus, that he “…lived in the desert, and used no other clothing than what grew on trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both by night and by day, in order to preserve his purity.”¹⁴ This same practice was observed by all the Essenes. Since the Jordan River is the main water tributary that runs north to south, from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, there is no question that this was the river chosen by John the Baptizer to carry out his ministry.

As I mentioned before, some among the Jewish critics during the medieval period did not see why John the Baptizer did to Jesus was not now being carried out by those in the church who claim to be his followers. This German Rabbi does have a point, and that is: how did the method that John the Baptizer used to baptize Jesus, evolve into sprinkling, christening, and immersion in baptismal pools? As a boy I remember how most Pentecostal and Baptists would not use a baptismal pool, but would always find a river or lake nearby. We also find that the Jordan river was very important to the Jewish people, because it not only served as a source of water, but also for transportation. Some Rabbis once had this exchange in which they mention “A little ship used for riding on the Jordan.”¹⁵ So there were ships going up and down the Jordan delivering produce. Then we find this ancient geographical information about the Jordan River as taught in the Baraitha:¹⁶ that the Jordan river issued from a cavern to the north near Caesarea Philippi, flowing down to the Sea of Galilee, and then onto the Dead Sea. And on one occasion a Rabbi asked: “Why is it called the Jordan river?” The answer: “Because the word “Jor” means “down”, and the word “Dan” means the territory given to the tribe of Dan,¹⁷ when they settled the Promised Land.”¹⁸ So put together you get Jor-dan. Today, the water from this cavern no longer gushes up from the bedrock as it did before, because an earthquake some centuries ago blocked it.

But one thing that comes out of this is how water baptism has become in many branches of Christianity a substitute for true repentance. The Pharisaic belief that immersion in water to cleanse the external part of the body was also sufficient to cleanse the internal part. If you were to stop many people who call themselves Christians and ask them when did they become believers, many will point to their baptism as a child or even as an adult. We could say, that’s the concept John the Baptizer came to eradicate before the Messiah who would follow him came to preach a new baptism in the Spirit which did the process in reverse. In other words, the inside is made clean and pure first, and then purity on the outside follows.