Finally, Moses is given the sign of resurrecting dead flesh: healing a leprous hand. The first miracle that Matthew records in Jesus’s ministry is the cleansing of a man with leprosy (8:1–4). There are a number of indications that Matthew uses this introductory miracle to point to Moses.37 Two different times in Moses’s ministry the leprosy theme arises. The first miracles in Moses’s ministry are the transformation of a rod into a snake and the healing of leprosy (Exod. 4:1–9). In Exod. 4:6–7, God commands Moses to place his hand inside his cloak. Leprosy covers his hand when he withdraws it. However, when he withdraws it a second time, his hand is cleansed. The second example of a leprosy healing story takes place in Num. 12:1–16: Miriam is struck with leprosy for speaking against Moses. Moses intercedes for her, and she is healed.
Matthew employs a particular phrase to explain how Jesus performs this healing of the leper. Jesus “stretched out his hand” (καὶ ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα, Matt. 8:3). Although this term occurs over a hundred times in the OT, it appears in Exodus by far the most. Moreover, many of those occurrences appear in Exod. 3–14. Interestingly, the story concludes with Jesus telling the leprous man, now healed, “Go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (8:4 NIV, emphasis added). In his inaugural miracle in Matthew, Jesus imitates the characteristic gesture of Moses and heals leprosy (both uniquely identified with Moses).
These miracles in Exodus are enclosed by the larger narrative of Moses leading his people out of Egypt. They are enacted so that the people might go to worship Yahweh and obtain their own land. In many ways, these miracles are meted out to those who are needy, sick, and in slavery. In Matt. 9:12 Jesus says, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but those who are sick” (AT). This could be seen as the major motif of chapters 8–9, where Jesus goes around healing those who need his help. The miracles show not only his divinity but also his healing power in delivering his people from their oppressors. As Matthew begins Jesus’s life and teaching as mirroring Moses, now as Jesus begins to perform miracles, these are also patterned after Moses.
Manna from Heaven
Another miracle in Jesus’s life that matches Moses is the provision of food. Twice in Matthew’s narrative, Jesus feeds people (14:13–21; 15:29–39). Both of these stories recall the miraculous provision of manna in the wilderness. When the people grumbled against Moses in the wilderness, Yahweh rained bread from heaven on them (Exod. 16:4). The text in Exodus repeatedly notes that the people were filled with bread (16:12, 15). In the same way, Matthew’s first feeding story is in the wilderness (14:15). Jesus feeds them with bread and fish. Manna is identified as a sort of “bread” (Exod. 16:8; Deut. 8:3; Neh. 9:15) or “bread from heaven” (Exod. 16:4). Both feeding stories in Matthew are followed by a water-crossing miracle, certainly reminiscent of Exodus imagery.38
In the first miracle there is mention of five thousand men being present, besides women and children. Similarly, in Exod. 12:37, the number of people in the wilderness was six hundred thousand men on foot; as Dale Allison notes, the Hebrew original indicates this count as being “besides women and children.”39 As Matthew has two feeding stories, so the Pentateuch contains two different accounts of the miracle of manna (Exod. 16; Num. 11). In Matthew’s second account of a feeding story, there are clear parallels with the Sermon, where Jesus goes up on the mountain, sits down, and the people come to him. This mirrors Moses’s ascent to Sinai after leading Israel through the sea and feeding them.
Modern commentators are divided over why Matthew includes two feeding stories. Some posit that the two feedings are a doublet, two accounts of the same event, but this seems implausible for several reasons. First, there are a number of differences in the stories themselves: (1) only the second story takes place on a mountain; (2) here the initiative lies with Jesus and not the disciples; (3) only here in chapter 15 is the crowd said to be with Jesus for three days; (4) the numbers are not the same; (5) the word for baskets is different.40 Second, as Carson remarks, “Even if one of Mark’s or Matthew’s readers knew there was only one miraculous feeding, and that of Jews, the point about the gentiles would be lost and the credibility of the two evangelists impugned. . . . The validity of the theological point depends here on the credibility of the historical record.”41
Carson’s point is that early readers would have been confused by the inclusion of two feeding stories if they knew there was only one. Even so, why would Matthew include two feeding stories when they are so similar? Would not one do to make a connection with Moses? Matthew uses the two feeding narratives as an opportunity to bring out treasures new and old. Jesus surpasses Moses by feeding the whole world and not only Israel.42 The feeding of the five thousand stands for Israel, while the feeding of the four thousand stands for gentiles. Moses fed his people in the wilderness; Jesus feeds the whole world.
Implications for the New Exodus
Without recognizing that Jesus mimics Moses’s miracles, it is hard to realize that Jesus is more than a wonder-worker or a food distributor. As Pitre says, “Jesus’ act of feeding the multitude . . . is best explained as a prophetic sign to signal Jesus’ identity as the long-awaited ‘prophet-like-Moses,’” who will redeem them.43 In Jewish tradition, eschatological hope was accompanied with new manna. Second Baruch 29.6 says, “And it will happen at that time that the treasury of manna will come down again from on high.” One of the Dead Sea Scrolls known as the Songs of the Sage says, “With the lyre of salvation [may] they [op]en their mouth for God’s kindness. May they search for his manna.”44 Each miracle of Jesus connecting with Moses points both to Moses and past Moses. His feeding in the wilderness points back to Moses and the exodus, but it also points forward to the eschatological exodus.
A second aspect of these feedings deserving mention is the double-natured aspect of them. By including two feeding stories when one could have sufficed, Matthew shows how Jesus constitutes the people of God anew, made up of both Jews and gentiles. As Moses fed the people of God in the wilderness, so Jesus feeds the whole world, which both transcends Moses (new) and fulfills OT prophetic passages (old). In the OT, Yahweh shows his people that he will invite all peoples to come to him. Matthew indicates that Jesus is not merely Moses but the better Moses. Moses works wonders for Israel, while Jesus works them for the whole world. Matthew reads the OT as a whole, seeing the forward movement, the advancing progression that begins in the garden and has high points in Moses yet goes beyond Moses. Jesus comes to fulfill this messianic feast, where all nations are gathered before him on the mountain. As Dale Allison says:
In Matthew’s Jewish-Christian world the exodus from Egypt, the last supper, and the messianic banquet were not three isolated events. An intricacy of association rather obtained among them. . . . Matthew therefore did not envisage the exodus, the eucharist, and the messianic banquet as three [discrete] events on the world’s time line; instead they were for him superimposed images, and all three reproduced a fundamental pattern of Jewish religious experience, one involving redemption, bread, and covenant.45
On the mountain, Jesus provides for Jews and gentiles alike. In the same way, his healing of the leper and his other miracles point both to and beyond Moses. The lepers whom Moses healed still died. The people whom Moses brought out of Egypt were still enslaved to their own sin. However, Jesus’s healings bring in the new creation.
Whereas Moses conquered the water at one point through Yahweh’s power, the water also ultimately conquered him. Moses grasped snakes, but it is Jesus who crushes the snake. Moses resurrected dead flesh, but Jesus’s own dead flesh is resurrected to eternal life. In Jesus, it is not only the hand or the head that is healed but the entire body. Moses’s miracles were pointers to the resurrection coming in Jesus. The type foreshadowed the antitype, which is a fuller and more complete revelation of what God is doing in Christ. The imagery of healed flesh in the Exodus narrative was a sign of what was to come in Christ.
Matthew inte
ntionally evokes Moses’s miracles as he narrates the miracles of Jesus to indicate that Jesus inaugurates the new exodus. This is a point often missed, but when seen, people regularly run to that pole and remark that the miracles do not merely show Jesus’s divinity. Jews are not expecting that. While there is some truth to this claim, it is important to see that while Moses mediated the miracles of Yahweh, Jesus does not need to mediate the miracles. He performs them of his own authority. The miracles show both that Jesus is restoring Israel and that he is divine. These two options don’t need to be pitted against one another. Through the miracles of Jesus, Matthew instructs his readers about what is new in Jesus and what was spoken of old. Not only that, but the feedings also anticipate what Jesus will accomplish at the Last Supper. The memories of the exodus will culminate in Jesus’s words and actions when he again eats with his disciples.
The Mediator on the Mountain
We have seen how Jesus leads his people on a new exodus as the new Moses in the infancy narrative (redeemer-king), in his teaching (teacher-prophet), and miracles (miracle worker). Another vibrant comparison to Moses arises in the transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8). Through this scene Matthew indicates to his readers that Jesus is the new mediator on the mountain. For Jews and early Christians, Moses was the mediator between God and his people on Sinai. Particular laws are even introduced with phrases like “Moses said” or “Moses commanded” (Mark 7:10; Matt. 8:4; Luke 20:28). Through the transfiguration scene, Jesus is portrayed as the new mediator of revelation. This revelation is in continuity with what came before it, yet the revelation is also superior to what came earlier.
All three Synoptic Gospels include the account of Jesus and three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. In each of them, the event is interpreted by using Sinai motifs (from both Exod. 24 and 34). Matthew, in particular, seeks to associate Moses and Jesus. Unlike Mark, Matthew lists Moses first in the naming of Moses and Elijah (cf. Mark 9:4). He also is the only one with a reference to Jesus’s shining face. Like the other Gospels, Matthew also includes the allusion in the divine utterance about the prophet like Moses in Deut. 18:15. Except for the addition of the command “Listen to him” (ἀκούετε αὐτοῦ), the statement spoken of Jesus is identical to the one at Jesus’s baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” In Deut. 18:15, Moses commands the people that when the prophet like him comes, “To him you shall listen” (αὐτοῦ ἀκούσεσθε). The forms of these phrases are nearly identical in Greek. These are merely the overt allusions; there are many others. We will discuss the other correspondences below.46
Parallels between the Transfiguration and Sinai
Matthew’s description of the transfiguration Mount Sinai in Exodus 24 and 34
On a high mountain (17:1) On a high mountain (24:12, 15–18; 34:2–3)
After six days (17:1) The cloud covers the mountain for six days (24:16)
Three individuals are given special privileges: Peter, James, John (17:1) Three individuals are given special privileges: Aaron, Nadab, Abihu (24:1)
A cloud descends and covers the mountain (17:5) A cloud descends and covers the mountain (24:15–18; 34:5)
Jesus’s face shines like the sun (17:2) The skin of Moses’s face shines (34:29)
The voice speaks from the cloud (17:5) Yahweh calls out to Moses from the cloud (24:16)
The disciples are terrified (17:6) Israel is afraid when they see Moses’s face (34:30)
The disciples are comforted by Jesus’s voice (17:7) The congregation is comforted by Moses’s voice (34:31)
Matthew’s transfiguration narrative divides into three sections—introduction, body, and conclusion—each corresponding with Sinai in some way. His introduction contains three statements pointing to Sinai.
First, Jesus and three disciples go up on a high mountain (ὄρος ὑψηλόν).47 Sinai is the “highest” mountain in the Jewish Scriptures, thematically and theologically speaking, the space where heaven and earth meet and God reveals himself. Second, they go up after six days. Similarly, in Exod. 24:16 the glory of Yahweh dwells on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covers it six days. Third, Matthew notes the exclusivity of the group involved: just Jesus, and with him are Peter, James, and John. Matthew explicitly says they are by themselves (κατ᾿ ἰδίαν, 17:1). This corresponds to Exod. 24:1, where Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu alone draw near while the others worship from afar.
The body of the narrative in Matthew also matches a few of the details on Sinai. The three descriptions Matthew uses for the transfiguration are that (1) Jesus’s face shines like the sun, (2) his clothes become white as light, (3) Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus. Only Matthew notes that Jesus’s face “shone like the sun” (Matt. 17:2). This is a reference to Exod. 34:29–35. When Moses came down from the mountain, his face shone because he had been talking with God. From then on, Moses put a veil over his face when he came out from speaking with the Lord because of the brightness of his face. Next, as Yahweh called out to Moses from the clouds in Exod. 24:16, so also a voice speaks out of the cloud in Matt. 17:5.
Finally, the conclusion to Matthew’s narrative or the resulting action echoes Sinai. Matthew 17:6 says that when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. In a similar way the people of Israel were afraid when they saw Moses’s face (Exod. 34:30). The Israelites returned to Moses once he had comforted them, and likewise the disciples are comforted and return to Jesus at the sound of his voice (Matt. 17:7–8).
The correlations between Matthew’s transfiguration account and the text of Moses going up to Mount Sinai are numerous, varied, and occur in each section of the narrative. Matthew undoubtedly wants the Sinai imagery to be the filter through which the transfiguration is read. Because of the prevalence of Sinai themes in this section, some have even proposed that this event was fabricated. Instead, we must realize that Matthew is doing his favorite thing: telling a shadow story. The new narrative is shaped and molded by what has come before it. This is not disingenuous but enlightening. As any good historian does, Matthew not only recounts the past but interprets it. The Gospels were never meant to give the bare facts; they are inspired readings of Jesus’s life.
The Transfiguration and the Goal of the Exodus
Careful readers will rightly ask, “How does the transfiguration relate to the new exodus?” This question can be answered only by going back to the original context of the exodus. When Moses received the law and was himself transfigured, this revealed the aim of the law all along: transfiguration coram deo (in the presence of God). The goal of the exodus was to place Israel in their land under the rule of Yahweh, beholding his face and thereby becoming like him. Therefore, the giving (or receiving of the law by Moses) was part and parcel of the goal of the exodus. God did not bring them out of Egypt to simply let them go back to their old ways in Egypt. He brought them out to be a new people. When Jesus is transfigured before the disciples and Moses shows up beside him, this all points to an eschatological hope of the people living under the rule of Yahweh. As Moses revealed the will of God in the law, so Jesus reveals the will of God in his person. The transfiguration is the goal of the exodus.
Second, and related, as God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, so too Jesus reveals himself on this high mountain. Moses went up on the mountain to meet with God and see his glory, and through the eyes of the disciples Matthew invites readers up on the mountain to see the revelation of God. However, what happens on the mountain is unexpected: God is revealed through the face of Jesus Christ. God showed his back to Moses but is revealed in and through Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration; Jesus himself is the revelation of God. A cloud descends in both narratives, but Matthew’s pen clears the fog.
The old covenant was about God revealing himself to Moses through the covenant, and now God reveals himself through Jesus in the new covenant. Moses and Elijah appear, which help the disciples understand that this revelation is the fulfillment of the L
aw and the Prophets. The old is feeding into and buttressing the new. This emphasis on revelation makes Jesus the prophet of whom Moses spoke. Formerly the prophets received the Word of God; Jesus is the Word of God. The interplay between these two mountaintop experiences is key to how Matthew understands Jesus’s role. As Moses was the mediator of the old covenant, who went in and spoke with God for the people, so now Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant, where all people will know God.
The old covenant is closely associated with Moses and was frequently called “the law of Moses.” When Moses appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples should have immediately seen Jesus did not abolish the Law and the Prophets; he fulfilled them. This fulfillment comes in the inauguration of the new covenant, where the people will see God face-to-face. So Jesus is a prophet like Moses, revealing God; he is a mediator like Moses, standing between the people and God; and like Moses, he is associated with a particular covenant.
While Moses’s face reflects God’s glory, Jesus’s face is God’s glory. A shining face is used in the Scriptures as a metaphor to denote grace and compassion, usually in reference to Yahweh making his face shine upon individuals (Num. 6:24–26; Eccles. 8:1).48 As Yahweh allows his grace and compassion to shine forth from his being, so too Jesus allows the three disciples to see his shining face. Jesus stands as Yahweh to his people; he bestows grace and compassion on them through the new covenant. He gives them new hearts that can serve him. Unlike Moses, who gave them a ministry of death, Jesus is giving them a covenant of life. However, the Law and Prophets paved the way for this covenant. They are not opposed to one another; rather, Matthew shows Jesus and Moses and Elijah—the Law and Prophets—conversing on the mountain. A significant question remains as the transfiguration light fades: How will the new covenant, new exodus, and transfiguration for Jesus’s followers be established? The answer comes through suffering and blood. As Moses came down from the mountain and threw the blood of the covenant on the people of Israel (Exod. 24:8), so too God’s servant will sprinkle the people with blood. Moses was a passionate intercessor (32:11–13, 31–32), but the servant “makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12).
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