59. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, 183.
60. This language comes from Allison, New Moses, 285.
61. Orton, Understanding Scribe, 174.
62. See Alkier, “Intertextuality and the Semiotics” and “Categorical Semiotics.”
63. Kaiser, “Lord’s Anointed.”
64. As Sequeira (“Eschatological Fulfillment in Christ,” 5) says, “Although the author’s use of a text may transcend its original meaning, it is always a legitimate outgrowth of this original meaning.”
65. Moo and Naselli, “Use of the Old Testament,” 727–28.
66. D. Brown, Boys in the Boat, 368.
67. As quoted in Billings, Word of God for the People, 166.
68. Yet the Torah also points forward to Jesus. In Jesus’s ministry, he constantly asks, “Have you not read?” “Do you not see?” “Have you not understood?” Perhaps the best way to put it is in Matthew’s explicit language: “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (5:17). Matthew’s strategy of reading shows us how he sees the new and the old interacting in complex ways, but the new seizes priority and reinterprets (or clarifies) the old while, at the same time, the old informs the new. Both of these statements must be held in tension, something Matthew does throughout his Gospel.
69. Bruner, Churchbook, 56.
70. See Matt. 9:16–17; 2 Cor. 5:17; Heb. 8:13; and 1 John 2:7 for other references where the new is mentioned before the old.
71. Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 2.73. The Latin is “quamquam et in Vetere Novum lateat, et in Novo Vetus pateat,” which could also be translated “The New Testament in the Old lies concealed, the Old in the New is revealed.”
72. Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 2.73.
73. This chapter has focused more on theory, while the following chapters will examine how this theory is put to use in the different pictures of the messiah.
74. Like all analogies, this one breaks down at certain points. In one sense the Hebrew Bible produced its own light, which pointed to the greater light.
75. Dodd, According to the Scriptures, 109–10.
76. Dodd, According to the Scriptures, 110.
77. Knowles, “Scripture, History, Messiah,” 69–70.
78. Saying that fulfillment is more of a presupposition than a method does not mean principles can’t be garnered from what Matthew and other NT authors do. But that it is a presupposition also explains why so many people argue about which “methodology” and description is actually the correct one. This probably proves that we try too hard to fit these ideas into neat modern boxes rather than being comfortable with some fluidity.
79. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, 182.
PART 2
The Scribe
AT WORK
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Jesus (Luke 6:40)
3
Jesus and the Journey of the Davidic King
In the ancient world people used seals to make deep impressions on surfaces. The purpose, whether it was on a document or stone, was for authentication, communicating a message, or giving representation. We get this sense from Heb. 1:3, where the author says Jesus is “the exact imprint” (χαρακτήρ) of God’s “nature.” Jesus is the seal, representation, and distinctive mark of God’s nature. Even though we don’t use signet rings anymore in America—though some official documents may receive an authenticating stamp or seal—we know that the seal of a signet ring attests to the authority and veracity of its bearer. In the same way Matthew molds his impression of Jesus through seals, stamps, and images. This method authenticated Jesus’s ministry, communicated a message, and gave a representation so that people could read the life of Jesus through a familiar image.
Though Matthew is most famously known for his portrayal of Jesus as the new Moses, Matthew also shapes and impresses Jesus’s life in the mold of a Davidic king.1 I intentionally begin with David because Matthew’s first descriptions of Jesus are that he is the messiah, the son of David (1:1). The inaugural images function as the threshold through which readers are required to pass before entering the house of Matthew’s Gospel. They set the tone and tenor for the rest of the narrative; to neglect them, or not let them direct the rest of Matthew’s picture, is to distort the image. Matthew is the scribe trained by his teacher and is convinced that Jesus fulfills the life of David. The wisdom that the scribe learned from his sage is that while Jesus’s coming was new, it also reached far back into Jewish history. For Matthew, presenting Jesus as the Davidic messiah was a high priority, maybe the highest.2
However, if you read some modern scholars, you might suppose that they have not ventured far into Matthew. James Charlesworth says, “The NT writings do not elevate Jesus as a type of David. Jesus was not celebrated by his earliest followers as ‘a’ or ‘the’ new David.”3 Alan Richardson claims that paltry evidence exists for the new-David theme in the NT: “It is truly astonishing, in view of the weight of OT prophecy concerning the Davidic messiah, how little the NT makes of the matter. The evangelists represent Jesus as the new Moses, the new Joshua, the new Elijah, and so on; but there is perhaps only one pericope in the tradition which sets forth Jesus as the new David, viz. the Walking through the Cornfields on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28).”4
Other scholars do affirm the importance of Davidic traditions.5 For example, W. D. Davies says, “Of all the New Testament writers it is Matthew who most emphasizes that Jesus is of Davidic ancestry. . . . It was apparently Matthew’s most characteristic designation for the earthly Jesus, the Messiah.”6 Donald Verseput similarly says, “Matthew has placed the Davidic Messiah at the heart of his presentation. This for him is of central importance. It determines the dynamic of the gospel’s plot, it explains the mission of Jesus, and it remains of confessional validity.”7 I line up with the latter scholars, who think David is at the heart of the scribe’s presentation.8
In the following two chapters my aim is to trace Matthew’s management of Jesus as the Davidic messiah and demonstrate that he operates from a monarchal worldview. The traditions of David, his life and his writings, form the ballast by which the animation of Jesus is stabilized. Matthew employs the life, writings, and traditions of David to a great extent to define and delineate Jesus’s life, thus exploring Jesus as the Davidic messiah who brings the kingdom, wisdom, and righteousness. This chapter more specifically concerns the geographic journey of the Davidic king. Without seeing Jesus’s journey to the cross, readers will miss how the wise king installs and reunites the kingdom. Matthew presents Jesus as the enthroned, faithful, and suffering son of David (both like David and Solomon). However, there is an order to these descriptors: Jesus is the revered-contested-exiled-faithful-sorrowful one and then enthroned as the Davidic king.9 This pattern should not be surprising, because David’s life follows a similar arrangement.
David is also appointed, contested, exiled, and then enthroned. Samuel anoints David as king (1 Sam. 16:1–13), and Saul accepts David at the beginning when he defeats Goliath (17:1–54). However, Saul becomes jealous of David and banishes him from his court (18:6–30). Although David and Jonathan covenant together at Ramah (1 Sam. 20), David must flee to Nob to escape Saul (1 Sam. 21). David then flees to Gath, a Philistine city; he hides at the cave of Adullam (22:1–5), and Saul pursues David at Engedi (Ps. 54). David flees to Gath a second time (1 Sam. 27:4) and then moves to Ziklag with his men (1 Sam. 27:6). David serves the Philistines for over a year (1 Sam. 29:3). Notice that even after David has been anointed as the king, he is constantly on the run (or exiled). Even after being appointed as king, David must leave his city because of his son Absalom’s revolt (2 Sam. 15–19).
If the Jews were expecting a red carpet to be rolled out for the new Davidic king, then they have not been paying close attention to the story of David’s kingship. David’s journey to his king
ship is anything but smooth. This chapter will therefore examine the progression of Jesus’s Davidic kingship—looking first to the king’s lineage, then to his birth and infancy, where he is worshiped and rejected as king. This leads to the exile of the king, where he reunites what Solomon’s son split; yet on his return to the city, he is not installed on the throne but suspended on the cross for the sins of the people and to unify the nation. The journey of the king is one of deportation and distress. He suffers righteously as the king and is enthroned on the cross. This specific movement, this journey that Matthew traces, is the way the kingdom is inaugurated. To miss the journey of the Davidic king is to neglect how kingdom hope is fulfilled and thereby bypass the insight the scribe learned from his teacher of wisdom.
The King’s Lineage
Both Matthew and Mark begin in an odd way. Maybe you have read the opening lines of Matthew and Mark so many times that it does not strike you anymore. Yet they both begin by fronting their conviction about Jesus. Mark begins with declaring that Jesus is the messiah, “Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Matthew also starts with his beliefs, but they are stated differently from those of Mark. He launches his Gospel with Jesus’s family line and three titles meant to help readers understand who this Jesus figure is. The titles he uses for Jesus are arranged as a triad: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus, [1] the messiah, [2] the son of David, [3] the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1 AT). All three interpret one another. The messiah is the son of David, and the son of Abraham is the messiah. While Mark begins his Gospel by declaring that Jesus is the messiah and Son of God, Matthew interprets Jesus’s life through the window of specific Jewish figures.
Though three titles are employed in Matthew, there may be a special emphasis on the center of the triad, the “son of David.” Three indicators point in this direction. First, while the genealogy follows a chronological order, the title at the beginning reverses that trend. Matthew lists David before the patriarch Abraham. This unexpected order places special prominence on the person of David. According to the description that Matthew employs right after honoring Jesus as messiah, Jesus is of the lineage of David. He is not only the messiah, but the Davidic messiah.10 Second, David’s importance is evident by the way Matthew arranges the three sets of fourteen generations. The forty-two generations are divided into three periods of Israel’s history:
Abraham to David: growth of Israel into a kingdom
David to Josiah: the decline of the kingdom
Jechoniah to Jesus: destruction of the kingdom until Jesus’s arrival
Matthew has evidently omitted many generations, and therefore this is a theological retelling. Many are convinced that Matthew’s emphasis on the number fourteen is purposeful and an example of gematria. Gematria is a form of biblical interpretation using the numerical value of the letters to make a theological point. In Hebrew, David consists of three letters and has the numeric value of fourteen (dalet [4] + waw [6] + dalet [4]). The periods are divided to emphasize both the kings and the success or failure of the kingdom of Israel. This fits Matthew’s theological retelling of the OT story in the triadic structure of three.
Third, the name David is placed at the fourteenth and fifteenth spot in the genealogy, putting David right at the pivot of the list (1:6). David is also named at the beginning and the end of the genealogy (1:1, 17). Jesus is the fivefold son of David.11 Thus, the genealogy is in some sense the Davidic genealogy. Right at the outset of his Gospel, therefore, Matthew wants readers to see Jesus through the person of David and see David through the person of Jesus. The genealogy—and the entire Gospel, for that matter—is about how Jesus is David’s son. This point is reinforced in the immediate narrative aftermath when the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream and addresses Joseph as the “son of David” (Matt. 1:20), fortifying Joseph’s Davidic lineage and thus the identity of Jesus as a legal descendant of David.
Matthew begins his Gospel this way because he is the scribe who is well read in the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew hears the sounds of the OT and assaults and arrests his narrative with these hopes. Numerous passages in the OT speak of another king who is coming in the line of David.12 When Matthew thinks of Jesus, he thinks of the promises in the Hebrew Scriptures. More specifically, he contemplates the promise given to David that one of his sons would sit on the throne forever. The forever-Davidic messianic king has arrived, claims Matthew. Therefore he begins his narrative with numerous indications that to understand Jesus’s life, readers need to see it through the lens of the hopes for the Davidic kingdom. While all this is interesting, fewer go on to ask the harder question, the why question. Why does Matthew begin this way? Is it just to let us know that Jesus is like David? A deeper answer exists and must be plumbed.
Implications of the First Words
At least two interrelated reasons for Matthew beginning this way rise to the surface. First, most obviously, it teaches us that when the scribe draws Jesus, the most noticeable feature is the crown on his head. Through the genealogy Matthew is indicating that readers should view Jesus as the king, more specifically as a king in the line of David. Just as Samuel comes to the house of Jesse to anoint David as king “in the midst of his brothers” (1 Sam. 16:13), so too Matthew anoints Jesus as king in the midst of his brothers in the genealogy.
Kingship is thus the “root metaphor” for Matthew, the one image he wants all other images to revolve around. This suspicion is confirmed by Matthew’s continual emphasis on the kingdom of heaven / gospel of the kingdom (ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν / ὁ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας) as the driving summary for Jesus’s ministry (4:23; 9:35). Since Jesus’s message is encapsulated in the term “kingdom,” the natural corollary is that there must be a king. Every aspect of Jesus’s life in Matthew should be interpreted through the lens of monarchy and kingdom.
Second, by linking Jesus to David’s line in the genealogy, Matthew indicates that Jesus is the wise messiah, who will bring the people out of exile, unite their kingdom, and sit on the throne promised to a son of David (2 Sam. 7). The forever kingdom and wisdom are paired in Wis. 6:20–21: “So the desire for wisdom leads to a kingdom. Therefore if you delight in thrones and scepters, O monarchs over the peoples, honor wisdom, so that you may reign forever” (NRSV). Through the genealogy, Matthew announces to his readers that Jesus fulfills God’s covenant with David. Matthew’s portrait is the royal book of origin. The advent of the son of David ends the exile and brings the people to their long-awaited kingdom. But while the Davidic title at the beginning informs readers about Matthew’s portrait, it also raises the question of how Jesus will restore the kingdom.13 At the narrative level, it tells us that the Davidic king is on the scene, but it does not explicitly clue readers in on how the king will usher in his kingdom. The veiled hint might be that he is like David’s son Solomon, who has wisdom and builds the temple but does not embody Solomon’s flaws. Rather than splitting the kingdom, he will unite it through his wise teaching and deeds. Overall though, while Matthew reveals in his first words, he also conceals and makes readers wade through the Gospel to see the kingdom enacted. In some ways, the first words reveal enough to make the reader curious to see the journey of the Davidic king.
Matthew opens by establishing Jesus as the appointed king, but he is not the enthroned king yet. He will inaugurate the new covenant and establish his people forever. God did not lie to David (Ps. 89:35), and “his offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before [Yahweh]” (89:36). Yahweh is no longer hiding; he is fulfilling his promises to David in the birth of Jesus. Yet we still don’t know exactly in what way this will happen. Matthew, as the scribe, makes his confessional stance on Jesus plain through beginning his scroll by naming Jesus as the son of David. Jesus wears the Davidic crown, and he will restore the kingdom, but we must journey with Matthew to see how this will be accomplished.
The Wise King Revered and Rejected
The lineage crystallizes
the thought that Jesus comes as a king like David, but the genealogy tells readers little about the realization of the kingdom. Therefore, Matthew continues the parallels to David to fill out the picture. Though Matt. 2 is usually noted for its Mosaic parallels, David and Solomon also make convincing appearances. Matthew not only begins his parchment by defining Jesus as the Davidic messiah; he also carries these similarities into Jesus’s infancy. Not just the lineage points to Jesus as the Davidic messiah but even the circumstances of his birth. The scribe continues to relate the life of Jesus to David, and at least four indicators in Matt. 2:1–23 point toward Jesus as the revered but also the rejected wise son of David. First, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, the city of David. Second, Matthew quotes the prophet who says a ruler shall come from Judah. Third, the wise men see a star in the east and bring gifts to the new sage-king. Fourth, Jesus is called a Nazarene (the branch) who will be filled with wisdom.14 Jesus is therefore born in the city of the king, but largely rejected and therefore exiled into Galilee. As David was accepted by some and rejected by others, so too Jesus must first be challenged before he sits on the throne. Most of the texts Matthew alludes to (or quotes) have strong messianic interpretations in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early Jewish and Christian writings. Each reaches back to the life of David, confirming Jesus as the Davidic messiah for whom the people of Israel have been waiting. The king is not just born as the king; Yahweh continues to enact his kingship, yet in a surprising way.
Matthew, Disciple and Scribe Page 11
