Matthew Chapter 21
by Jameison-Faussett-Brown
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Verse 1
- CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK.
( = Mr
11:1-11; Lu 19:29-40; Joh 12:12-19).
For the exposition of this majestic
scene--recorded, as will be seen, by all the Evangelists--see
on Lu
19:29-40.
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Verse 10
Matthew
21:10-22.
- STIR ABOUT HIM
IN THE CITY--SECOND CLEANSING OF THE
TEMPLE,
- AND
MIRACLES
THERE
- GLORIOUS VINDICATION OF THE CHILDREN'S
TESTIMONY
- THE BARREN FIG TREE CURSED, WITH LESSONS FROM IT.
( = Mr
11:11-26; Lu 19:45-48).
For the exposition, see on Lu
19:45-48; and Mr
11:12-26.
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Verse 23
Matthew
21:23-46.
- THE AUTHORITY
OF JESUS QUESTIONED
AND THE REPLY
- THE PARABLES OF THE TWO SONS, AND OF THE WICKED HUSBANDMAN.
( = Mr
11:27-12:12; Lu 20:1-19).
Now commences, as ALFORD remarks, that series of parables and
discourses of our Lord with His enemies, in which He develops,
more completely than ever before, His hostility to their
hypocrisy and iniquity: and so they are stirred up to compass
His death.
The Authority of Jesus Questioned,
and the Reply (Mt
21:23-27).
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Verse 23. By what authority doest thou
these things!--referring particularly to the expulsion of
the buyers and sellers from the temple,
and who gave thee this authority?
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Verse 24. And Jesus answered and said
unto them, I also will ask you one thing, &c.
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Verse 25. The baptism of
John--meaning his whole mission and ministry, of which
baptism was the proper character.
whence was it? from heaven, or of men?--What wisdom
there was in this way of meeting their question will best
appear by their reply.
If we shall
say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then
believe him?--"Why did ye not believe the testimony which
he bore to Me, as the promised and expected Messiah?" for that
was the burden of John's whole testimony.
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Verse 26. But if we shall say, Of men; we
fear the people--rather, "the multitude." In Luke (Lu
20:6) it is, "all the people will stone us"--"stone us to
death."
for all hold John as a
prophet--Crooked, cringing hypocrites! No wonder Jesus
gave you no answer.
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Verse 27. And they answered Jesus, and
said, We cannot tell--Evidently their difficulty was, how
to answer, so as neither to shake their determination to
reject the claims of Christ nor damage their reputation with
the people. For the truth itself they cared nothing whatever.
Neither tell I you by what
authority I do these things--What composure and dignity of
wisdom does our Lord here display, as He turns their question
upon themselves, and, while revealing His knowledge of their
hypocrisy, closes their mouths! Taking advantage of the
surprise, silence, and awe produced by this reply, our Lord
followed it up immediately by the two following
parables.
Parable of the Two Sons (Mt
21:28-32).
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Verse 28. But what think ye? A certain
man had two sons; and he came to the first and said, Son, go
work to-day in my vineyard--for true religion is a
practical thing, a "bringing forth fruit unto God."
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Verse 29. He answered and said, I will
not--TRENCH notices the rudeness of
this answer, and the total absence of any attempt to excuse
such disobedience, both characteristic; representing careless,
reckless sinners resisting God to His face.
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Verse 30. And he came to the second, and
said likewise. And he answered and said, I go,
sir--"I, sir." The emphatic "I," here, denotes the
self-righteous complacency which says, "God, I thank thee that
I am not as other men" (Lu
18:11).
and went
not--He did not "afterward repent" and refuse to
go; for there was here no intention to go. It is the
class that "say and do not" (Mt
23:3) --a falseness more abominable to God, says STIER, than any "I will not."
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Verse 31. Whether of them twain did the
will of his Father? They say unto him, The first--Now
comes the application.
Jesus saith
unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the
harlots go--or, "are going"; even now entering, while ye
hold back.
into the kingdom of God
before you--The publicans and the harlots were the first
son, who, when told to work in the Lord's vineyard, said, I
will not; but afterwards repented and went. Their early life
was a flat and flagrant refusal to do what they were
commanded; it was one continued rebellion against the
authority of God. The chief priests and the elders of the
people, with whom our Lord was now speaking, were the second
son, who said, I go, sir, but went not. They were early
called, and all their life long professed obedience to God,
but never rendered it; their life was one of continued
disobedience.
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Verse 32. For John came unto you in the
way of righteousness--that is, calling you to repentance;
as Noah is styled "a preacher of righteousness" (2Pe
2:5), when like the Baptist he warned the old world to
"flee from the wrath to come."
and
ye believed him not--They did not reject him; nay, they
"were willing for a season to rejoice in his light" (Joh
5:35); but they would not receive his testimony to Jesus.
but the publicans and the harlots
believed him--Of the publicans this is twice expressly
recorded, Lu
3:12; 7:29. Of the harlots, then, the same may be taken
for granted, though the fact is not expressly recorded. These
outcasts gladly believed the testimony of John to the coming
Saviour, and so hastened to Jesus when He came. See Lu
7:37; 15:1, &c.
and ye,
when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might
believe him--Instead of being "provoked to jealousy" by
their example, ye have seen them flocking to the Saviour and
getting to heaven, unmoved.
Parable of the Wicked
Husbandmen (Mt
21:33-46).
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Verse 33. Hear another parable: There was
a certain householder, which planted a vineyard--(See on
Lu
13:6).
and hedged it round
about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a
tower--These details are taken, as is the basis of the
parable itself, from that beautiful parable of Isa
5:1-7, in order to fix down the application and sustain it
by Old Testament authority.
and
let it out to husbandmen--These are just the ordinary
spiritual guides of the people, under whose care and culture
the fruits of righteousness are expected to spring up.
and went into a far
country--"for a long time" (Lu
20:9), leaving the vineyard to the laws of the spiritual
husbandry during the whole time of the Jewish economy. On this
phraseology, see on Mr
4:26.
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Verse 34. And when the time of the fruit
drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen--By
these "servants" are meant the prophets and other
extraordinary messengers, raised up from time to time. See on
Mt
23:37.
that they might receive
the fruits of it--Again see on Lu
13:6.
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Verse 35. And the husbandmen took his
servants, and beat one--see Jer
37:15; 38:6.
and killed
another--see Jer
26:20-23.
and stoned
another--see 2Ch
24:21. Compare with this whole verse Mt
23:37, where our Lord reiterates these charges in the most
melting strain.
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Verse 36. Again, he sent other servants
more than the first; and they did unto them likewise--see
2Ki
17:13; 2Ch 36:16, 18; Ne 9:26.
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Verse 37. But last of all he sent unto
them his son, saying, They will reverence my son--In Mark
(Mr
12:6) this is most touchingly expressed: "Having yet
therefore one son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also last
unto them, saying, They will reverence My Son." Luke's version
of it too (Lu
20:13) is striking: "Then said the lord of the vineyard,
What shall I do? I will send My beloved Son: it may be they
will reverence Him when they see Him." Who does not see that
our Lord here severs Himself, by the sharpest line of
demarcation, from all merely human messengers, and
claims for Himself Sonship in its loftiest sense?
(Compare Heb
3:3-6). The expression, "It may be they will
reverence My Son," is designed to teach the almost
unimaginable guilt of not reverentially welcoming God's
Son.
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Verse 38. But when the husbandmen saw the
son, they said among themselves--Compare Ge
37:18-20; Joh 11:47-53.
This
is the heir--Sublime expression this of the great truth,
that God's inheritance was destined for, and in due time is to
come into the possession of, His own Son in our nature
(Heb
1:2).
come, let us kill him,
and let us seize on his inheritance--that so, from mere
servants, we may become lords. This is the deep
aim of the depraved heart; this is emphatically "the root of
all evil."
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Verse 39. And they caught him, and cast
him out of the vineyard--compare Heb
13:11-13 ("without the gate--without the camp"); 1Ki
21:13; Joh 19:17.
and slew
him.
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Verse 40. When the lord therefore of the
vineyard cometh--This represents "the settling time,"
which, in the case of the Jewish ecclesiastics, was that
judicial trial of the nation and its leaders which issued in
the destruction of their whole state.
what will he do unto those husbandmen?
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Verse 41. They say unto him, He will
miserably destroy those wicked men--an emphatic
alliteration not easily conveyed in English: "He will badly
destroy those bad men," or "miserably destroy those miserable
men," is something like it.
and
will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall
render him the fruits in their seasons--If this answer was
given by the Pharisees, to whom our Lord addressed the
parable, they thus unwittingly pronounced their own
condemnation: as did David to Nathan the prophet (2Sa
12:5-7), and Simon the Pharisee to our Lord (Lu
7:43, &c.). But if it was given, as the two other
Evangelists agree in representing it, by our Lord Himself, and
the explicitness of the answer would seem to favor that
supposition, then we can better explain the exclamation of the
Pharisees which followed it, in Luke's report (Lu
20:16) --"And when they heard it, they said, God
forbid"--His whole meaning now bursting upon them.
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Verse 42. Jesus saith unto them. Did ye
never read in the scriptures-- (Ps
118:22, 23).
The stone which
the builders rejected, &c.--A bright Messianic
prophecy, which reappears in various forms (Isa
28:16, &c.), and was made glorious use of by Peter
before the Sanhedrim (Ac
4:11). He recurs to it in his first epistle (1Pe
2:4-6).
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Verse 43. Therefore say I unto you, The
kingdom of God--God's visible Kingdom, or Church, upon
earth, which up to this time stood in the seed of Abraham.
shall be taken from you, and given
to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof--that is,
the great evangelical community of the faithful, which, after
the extrusion of the Jewish nation, would consist chiefly of
Gentiles, until "all Israel should be saved" (Ro
11:25, 26). This vastly important statement is given by
Matthew only.
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Verse 44. And whosoever shall fall on
this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder--The Kingdom of God is here a
Temple, in the erection of which a certain stone,
rejected as unsuitable by the spiritual builders, is, by the
great Lord of the House, made the keystone of the whole. On
that Stone the builders were now "falling" and being "broken"
(Isa
8:15). They were sustaining great spiritual hurt; but soon
that Stone should "fall upon them" and "grind them to
powder" (Da
2:34, 35; Zec 12:2) --in their corporate capacity,
in the tremendous destruction of Jerusalem, but
personally, as unbelievers, in a more awful sense
still.
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Verse 45. And when the chief priests and
Pharisees had heard his parables--referring to that of the
Two Sons and this one of the Wicked Husbandmen.
they perceived that he spake of
them.
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Verse 46. But when they sought to lay
hands on him--which Luke (Lu
20:19) says they did "the same hour," hardly able to
restrain their rage.
they feared
the multitude--rather, "the multitudes."
because they took him for a prophet--just as
they feared to say John's baptism was of men, because the
masses took him for a prophet (Mt
21:26). Miserable creatures! So, for this time, "they left
Him and went their way" (Mr
12:12).
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Copyright Statement
These files are a derivative of an electronic edition
prepared from text scanned by Woodside Bible Fellowship.
This expanded edition of the Jameison-Faussett-Brown
Commentary is in the public domain and may be freely used and
distributed.
Bibliography
Information
Jamieson, Robert, D.D.
"Commentary on Matthew 21". "Commentary Critical and
Explanatory
on the Whole Bible".
<http://www.studylight.org/com/jfb/view.cgi?book=mt&chapter=021>.
1871.
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