NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Part XIII

Verse 39: Now comes the final edict: “I tell you, you will not see me again until that time when you will say, ‘Welcome! God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’¹”

I am willing to believe there were tears in the Master’s eyes as His heart ached because of their stubbornness and unwillingness to accept God’s only Son who came to be their Savior. It sounds similar to the cry of Jeremiah, “O Jerusalem, wash your heart clean of wickedness so that you may be saved. How long will your evil schemes lodge within you?”² You would think that after being saved from Egyptian bondage and sustained in the wilderness through the miracles of God, once the children of Israel entered the Promised Land they would be forever faithful and true.

But Nehemiah tells another story. He says, “They were disobedient and rebelled against you and threw your law behind their backs and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.”³ In Jewish history, we read about the death of a priest named Zechariah son of the priest Jehoiada; who stood above the people and said to them, “Thus says God: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper?” But instead of being convicted of the wrongs and repenting, it says, “They conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the LORD.”⁴

The prophet Jeremiah also faced the potential of death because of his speaking the truth, as well as another man named Uriah son of Shemaiah from Kiriath-jearim. who also prophesied in the name of the Lord. He warned Jerusalem and Israel in words exactly like those of Jeremiah. But instead of seeing this as a second call to repentance, we are told that King Jehoiakim sent Elnathan son of Achbor and men with him to Egypt, and they arrested Uriah and brought him to King Jehoiakim, who struck him down with the sword and threw his dead body into the burial place of the common people.⁵ You don’t do this to someone just because they are a prophet but in response to what they prophesy.

Rabbi Kahana tells us that Uriah was from a Gibeon city along with ‘Gibeon and Chephirah’,⁶ and that “To set the record straight, Scripture finds it necessary to indicate his lofty pedigree. The Lord told Isaiah: ‘I found some men who could be trusted to serve as witnesses: Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberekiah’⁷.”⁸ So is it any surprise that they treated Jesus of Nazareth the way they did? Then Jesus repeats a phrase found in the Apocrypha: “I gathered you together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings: but now, what shall I do to you?”⁹ The idea of God having wings by which He sheltered and protected His children was not a new metaphor. In Ruth, we read, “May the LORD reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”¹⁰

But, even more troubling, was the foretelling of their house being left completely empty until He returns from His heavenly Father. We find this similarly spoken of in a non-canonical book: “I sent you my servants the prophets, whom you have taken and slain, and torn their bodies in pieces, whose blood I will require of your hands, says the LORD. Thus says the Almighty LORD, Your house is desolate, I will throw you out as the wind does to stubble.”¹¹

Many Jewish writers feel that the term “house” here, and in Jeremiah,¹² is a reference to the Temple, even as late at Rabbi Solomon Ḳimcḥi, a Turkish rabbinical author who lived in Constantinople during the middle of the nineteenth century. Most scholars believe that Jesus is talking about the event that would take place some 40 years later in 70 AD when Roman General Titus would encircle Jerusalem and end the Jewish State until it was reestablished in 1948. But prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple had been made before.

In the Jewish Chronicles we read this chilling warning, “But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from the land that I have given you; and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And regarding this house, now exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished, and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this house?’”¹³

We know this happened when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came and razed the city and Temple. According to one author, Jerusalem has been the subject of at least 118 conflicts over the years, beginning with one in 1350 BC between Abdi-Heba, the ruler of Jerusalem, and a people he called the “Habiru” (later “Hebrews”). In his letter to the king of Egypt (one of the Amarna tablets), he asks for help because all of the surrounding areas had been captured by the Hebrews. This corresponds well with the record found in Joshua 10 and frames the beginning of Israel’s control of Jerusalem.

Eric Cline states that the city was completely destroyed at least twice, once by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar¹⁴ and again by the Romans under Titus in AD 70.¹⁵ Isaiah lamented this: “Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.”¹⁶ So you would think that after all this they would not want to anger God again by putting another one of His prophets to death. But they were so blinded by animosity and pride they could not see the horror that would come.

And this same spirit is alive today among those who feel that humanity has outgrown its need for religion and a childish imaginary God who lives up in the sky and watches over them to make sure they don’t do anything wrong. To them, the Bible is considered an outdated book full of fairy-tales and fictional accounts of how the world was formed and the human race began. And as soon as mankind recognized their aggressive tendencies that brought strife and chaos, they invented an angry god to establish order in society. And this Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, oh yes, he may have been a historical figure in Jewish history, but his disappointed disciples invented all the tales about his miracles and resurrection. If it is still possible, the tears in our Lord’s eyes may still be lingering because such people continue to turn away from Him. But, to those who believe and receive Him as their Lord and Savior, His promise to return is now closer to reality than ever before.