NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER SIX

Part V

On the subject of how God cares and provides for His creation, in one Jewish commentary it is pointed that when Noah left the ark that God told the humans to go first and the animals last.¹ In that way, they would know there were on their own. While our Lord certainly indicates that God created both life and the necessary sustenance, He does not imply that animals, birds and fish are not responsible for searching to retrieve such nutrients. So if God cared that much about them, how much more would He care about those He created in His image. All such worrying, says our Lord, cannot add one foot to a person’s height. Both the New American Standard Bible and the Complete Jewish Bible, render this last phrase as “able to add a single hour to his life.”

In their commentary on this verse, British scholars, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown say that: “Stature” can hardly be the thing intended here: first, because the subject is the prolongation of life, by the supply of its necessaries of food and clothing: and next, because no one would dream of adding a foot to his stature.” But if we take the word in its primary sense of “age” (for “stature” is but a secondary sense) the idea will be this, “Which of you, however anxiously you vex yourselves about it, can add so much as a step to the length of your life’s journey?” To compare the length of life to measures of this nature is not foreign to the language of Scripture.² So understood, the meaning is clear and the connection natural. In this the best critics now agree. The bottom line is that no matter how much a person worries or frets, it cannot do the impossible by making a person grow taller or live longer. Therefore, worrying and being anxious is a waste of time, so Jesus wanted His followers to use their time more wisely.

Verses 28-29: “And why do you worry about clothes? Look at the lilies in the field. See how they grow. They don’t work or make clothes for themselves. But I tell you that even Solomon, the great and rich king, was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers.

The first mention of lilies is where the Temple built by Solomon was being described, “The capitals on top of the columns in the hall had shapes like lilies and were seven feet high.”³ And we find the last mention where it reads: “I will be like the dew to Israel. Israel will blossom like the lily.”⁴ The Hebrew word may have come from the Egyptian language for “lotus.” These flowers can be found growing wild in Lebanon and other regions of northern Palestine. In the Mishnah the word for lily is used of a nail-head and the knob on the Etrog⁵ used in the Feast of Tabernacles; in the Targum it connotes “flower” in general. It is also interesting that Jesus tied the lily in with King Solomon. When the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, it was recorded this way: “The queen of Sheba saw that Solomon was very wise. She also saw the beautiful palace he had built. She saw the food at the king’s table. She saw his officials meeting together. She saw the servants in the palace and the good clothes they wore. She saw his parties and the sacrifices that he offered in the Lord’s Temple. She was so amazed that it took her breath away!”⁶ The whole point is that if the lily was elevated to such a high status, and Solomon was crowned with such beauty, how much more will God take care of those He has redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

After Isaiah talks about the one who would come to prepare a way for the Lord, then he said, “A voice said, ‘Speak!’ So the man said, ‘What should I say?’ The voice said, ‘People are like grass. Any glory they enjoy is like a wildflower. When a wind from the Lord blows on them, the grass dies and the flower falls. Yes, all people are like grass. Grass dies and flowers fall, but the promise of our God lasts forever.’”⁷ Could it be that this Scripture was on Christ’s mind when He spoke these words? Perhaps the listeners had heard King Solomon used before as an example of extravagance and glory. For instance, one Rabbi once told his son to go out and find out how the workers were doing. He saw that they were thirsty and hungry, and so he promised them that he would supply all the food they needed. When he came back and told his father, his father told him: “My son, should you even prepare for them a banquet like Solomon’s when he was in his glory, you could not fulfill your undertaking.”⁸ So even Solomon in his finest could not compare to the flowers of the field.

Verse 30: If God makes what grows in the field so beautiful, what do you think he will do for you? It’s just grass—one day it’s alive, and the next day someone throws it into a furnace. But God cares enough to make it beautiful. Surely He will do much more for you. Your faith is so small!

So why should the followers of Jesus be concerned their dress. If God can make the flowers look better than Solomon, He can provide for His children to look good as well. The beauty of the flowers was in the simplicity. Solomon sought beauty in adornment that was gaudy and expensive, but he was out done by God’s handiwork. So them, the believer’s glory is not in their dress, but in the beauty God puts in them.

I’ve rendered the term “fire” as “furnace” because in Jewish literature we read: “an oven wide at the bottom and narrow at the top was heated with stubble or rakings.”⁹ This is understandable, because anyone who has gone to Israel knows how scarce and valued trees are, so stubble from the threshing floor or weeds from the fields were used. Again our Lord shows by comparison the value of the one’s He redeemed. Apparently there had been some complaining by those who followed Him either about food and lack of accommodations, so He uses these illustrations to show their lack of faith. One Jewish commentator points to Noah as one who lacked faith. He says: “Noah, too, was of those who had little faith, believing and not believing that the Flood would come, and he did not enter the ark until the waters forced him to do so”.¹⁰ Also, another Rabbi said: “The Israelites of that generation, who were part of the Egyptian exodus, were men of little faith.”¹¹

I can only imagine what would have happened if God had not provided a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night as a sign of His guiding presence.¹² And we also read that when Elisha was going up to Bethel, he caused bears to come out against the little children who were mocking him, calling him “old bald head.” So someone asked, “What do you mean by ‘little children’?” Rabbis explain: “children means they had no principles, and ‘little’ means they were lacking in faith.”¹³ Jewish Rabbis interpreted the calls of “bald head” to actually mean that because of his power to stop the rain he had made the ground bald. And this worried them because they were no longer able to sell water to make a living.¹⁴

Also in the Jewish Book of Light, we read this description of faith: “The Creator is above all human wisdom, and thereby He rules, and He bids you to work for Him in faith and purity, and have no doubts about Him, for the human mind cannot grasp Him.”¹⁵ Then one Rabbis stated: “One who says their prayers so they can be heard is of little faith.”¹⁶ And another notes: “Whoever has a piece of bread in his basket and says, ‘What shall I eat tomorrow?’ belongs only to them who are of little faith.”¹⁷ So when we put all of these together it gives us a better idea of what the listeners of Jesus may have thought when He called them people of little faith. It all has to do with not having any expectations for tomorrow.

Early church teacher and orator Chrysostom put his impression of what Jesus is teaching here, this way: “Having spoken of our necessary food, and having signified that not even for this should we take thought, He passes on in what follows to that which is more easy. For clothing is not so necessary as food. Why then did He not make use here also of the same example, that of the birds, neither mention to us the peacock, and the swan, and the sheep? for surely there were many such examples to take from thence. Because He would point out how very far the argument may be carried both ways: both from the cheapness of the things that partake of such elegance, and from the liberality allowed to the lilies, in respect of their adorning. For this cause, when He has decked them out, He does not so much as call them lilies any more, but ‘grass of the field.’¹⁸ And He is not satisfied even with this name, but again adds another circumstance of their vulnerable condition, saying, ‘which are here today.’ And then He does not say, ‘are not here tomorrow,’ but something harsher yet, ‘is cast into the oven.’ And He does not merely say, ‘clothed,’ but ‘so clothed,’ as to be brought to such an end. See how He abounds in amplifications and intensifications. And He does this so that He may drive home His point: and therefore He also added, ‘shall He clothe you even better?’ For this too has much emphasis: the force of the word, ‘you,’ being no other than to indicate covertly the great value set upon our existence, and the concern shown for it; as though He had said, ‘you, to whom He gave a soul, for whom He fashioned a body, for whose sake He made all the things that are seen, for whose sake He sent prophets, and gave the law, and wrought those innumerable good works; for whose sake He gave up His only begotten Son.’ And not until He had made His proof clear, did He proceed also to rebuke them, saying, ‘O ye of little faith.’ For this is the quality of a counselor: He not only admonishes, but also demonstrates in words, that He may awaken more hearers to the persuasive power of His words.”¹⁹

Jesus ends this part with a phrase known in rabbinic literature as “light verses heavy”. In Latin it was called “fortiori,” which means, “even stronger.” The Jewish principle was based on the superior attributes of God as seen in this Scripture: “Adonai is God, merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace and truth; showing grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving offenses, crimes and sins; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and grandchildren, and even by the third and fourth generations.”²⁰ And Jesus applied it to His point of explaining that if God will take care the flora and fauna of His creations with such care, will He not exert an even stronger effort to take care of those whom He called to Himself through His Son. I like the way Dr. David H. Stern put it when discussing this verse:

“I have heard the objection that Yeshua came to bring newness, so that “old” rabbinic principles are not to be taken into account in understanding the New Testament, that its writers had “freed themselves” from rabbinic attitudes and practices and were no longer “bound” by them. Just as in Chapter 5:18 I said it was superficial to invoke Yeshua’s “originality” to justify assuming that Yeshua’s “Amen” has a novel meaning, so I say it is likewise superficial to invoke his “newness” to justify ignoring the historical, social, religious and intellectual ambiance of the time and place in which he lived, and imagining instead a hothouse environment insulated from the Judaism and Jewishness of his surroundings. The middot²¹ were surely part of everyone’s conscious or unconscious background in approaching Scripture, and it is gratuitous to suppose that Yeshua, Paul or the other New Testament writers constituted an exception. Traditional, rabbinic viewpoints are an essential element to take into account in understanding the text of the New Testament.”²²

In other words, had Jesus been introducing a totally new concept using unfamiliar words, first of all the crowds listening would have walked away in a fog by being overwhelmed by such out of this world talk, and secondly His message would not have gotten across the point He was trying to make. So He took what He knew the people were already familiar with and drove home the fact that if all we do in this life is worry about ourselves, not only is it another way of saying God doesn’t care about His creation, but it will keep us from caring about others who need the light and guidance the Holy Spirit has given to those who believe on His Son as the true Messiah and Savior of those who are still lost.