The King comes to his city: the entry, the temple, the fig tree and the rejected stone

With chapter 21 the long road to Jerusalem ends and the last week begins. Matthew, whose Gospel church tradition ascribes to the apostle Matthew the tax collector (9:9), is here following the outline of Mark 11-12, as most scholars who accept Marcan priority hold. Defenders of Matthean priority read the similarities the other way, and some critical scholars doubt the apostolic authorship and see an anonymous Jewish Christian scribe. The date is therefore debated: after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 on the usual view, earlier on others. The first readers were probably Jewish Christians in a mixed church, and they would hear this chapter against the background of the Jewish leadership's refusal of Jesus.

The events take place in or near Jerusalem in the week of Passover, when the city swelled with pilgrims. Jesus comes from Jericho by way of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives (21:1). Each Gospel tells the entry. Mark and Luke mention a colt, while Matthew mentions a donkey and her colt together and, unlike them, quotes the prophet. John 12:12-19 gives a shorter account and notes that the disciples understood it later. Matthew has the cleansing of the temple on the day of the entry, whereas Mark places it the next day, and John places a temple cleansing at the start of the ministry (John 2:13-22). Some scholars think there were two cleansings, others that John has moved the event for theological reasons. Mark sets the fig tree around the clearing of the temple so that each explains the other.

The parables at the end, the two sons (unique to Matthew) and the tenants (also in Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19), are spoken to the temple leaders themselves.

Matthew 21 mixes narrative, prophetic action and parable. A prophetic action is a deed that says what words say, as when Jeremiah broke a jar (Jeremiah 19). The entry, the clearing of the temple and the withering of the fig tree are of this kind, and each needs both its Old Testament background and its surrounding story to be understood. The parables are told to hostile hearers who understand them as aimed at themselves (21:45), which fixes the target of the stories. The interpreter's question is therefore twofold: what would the original hearers have seen in the Old Testament imagery, and what does Matthew make of it for his readers.

The chapter is also a chain of Scripture. Matthew draws on Zechariah 9:9 and Isaiah 62:11 in the entry, Psalm 118:25-26 in the crowd's shout, Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 in the temple, Psalm 8:2 in the children's praise, Isaiah 5:1-7 in the vineyard and Psalm 118:22-23 at the end. The two psalms and the two vineyard images frame the chapter. A careful reader follows each citation to its context and asks what the original passage said before asking how Jesus uses it.

A further caution concerns 21:43, where the kingdom is taken from the leaders and given to a people who bear its fruit. It is aimed at the leaders in the story, not at the Jewish people as a whole. The disciples and the crowds of the story were themselves Jews, and Matthew's church was probably Jewish too.

Verses 1–11

Jesus sends two disciples to the village for a donkey and her colt. Matthew explains that this took place to fulfil what the prophet said, and he combines Isaiah 62:11, a word to the daughter of Zion, with Zechariah 9:9, in which Zion's king comes humble and riding on a donkey. In the ancient Near East a king who came in peace rode a donkey, and a king who came to war rode a horse. The crowds spread cloaks and cut branches on the road, an act of homage like that for a king (2 Kings 9:13). Their shout is 'Hosanna to the Son of David', followed by words from Psalm 118:26, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord'. 'Hosanna' began as a Hebrew cry, 'save, please' (Psalm 118:25), and had become a shout of praise. When the whole city asks 'Who is this?' the crowds answer that he is the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. They see less than they have shouted.

Verses 12–17

In the temple courts Jesus drives out those who buy and sell, overturns the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers, and quotes two prophets: God's house is to be a house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7), but they have made it a 'den of robbers' (Jeremiah 7:11). Jeremiah's temple sermon had warned that the building would not protect a people who oppressed the poor. Isaiah 56 had promised that foreigners would pray in God's house, and the trading was probably in the court where the nations were meant to gather. Then the blind and lame come to him in the temple and he heals them. Children cry out 'Hosanna to the Son of David', and the chief priests are indignant. Jesus answers from Psalm 8:2: God has prepared praise from the mouths of infants. He then leaves for Bethany.

Verses 18–22

Returning in the morning, Jesus finds a fig tree with leaves and no fruit and curses it, and it withers at once. Mark says that it was not the season for figs (11:13), which shows that the act is symbolic. Israel's prophets compared the nation to a fig tree that should bear fruit (Jeremiah 8:13; Hosea 9:10; Micah 7:1), and the leafy tree with nothing on it matches the temple with its activity and no fruit of righteousness. The disciples are amazed. Jesus turns it to a lesson on faith: whoever has faith and does not doubt can say to 'this mountain' that it be thrown into the sea, and whatever is asked in prayer with faith will be received. Many take 'this mountain' to be the temple mount, where they stand, which would make the saying about faith that sees what God is judging.

Verses 23–27

The chief priests and elders challenge him: by what authority is he doing these things? Jesus asks them a question first. Was John's baptism from heaven or from men? They reason that either answer will hurt them: if from heaven, why did they not believe him; if from men, they fear the crowd, who held John to be a prophet. They say they do not know, so Jesus declines to say.

Verses 28–32

A man asks two sons to work in the vineyard. One says no and goes; the other says yes and does not. The leaders answer correctly that the first did the father's will, and Jesus applies it: tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom ahead of them, because they believed John and the leaders did not. The manuscripts vary on the order of the sons and on which one is said to have obeyed, but the point is the same: doing the will matters more than the pledge.

Verses 33–46

A landowner plants a vineyard, builds a wall, a winepress and a tower, and leases it. The details follow Isaiah 5:1-2, so the hearers would know that the vineyard is Israel. The tenants beat and kill the servants he sends, then kill the son, whom they throw out of the vineyard, a detail that matches Jesus' death outside the city. Jesus asks what the owner will do, and the leaders answer that he will destroy the wretches and let the vineyard to others. Jesus then quotes Psalm 118:22-23, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and says that the kingdom will be taken from them and given to a people who produce its fruit. Verse 44 about the stone falling and crushing is missing in some manuscripts, and translators disagree about it. The chief priests and Pharisees understand that he is talking about them and look for a way to arrest him, but fear the crowds, who consider him a prophet.

The chapter is built on the Old Testament picture of God's coming to his city and his house. Zechariah 9 and Psalm 118 both describe a king who comes in the name of the LORD, and Malachi 3:1 had said that the Lord would come suddenly to his temple. Matthew shows these promises being met in Jesus' arrival, and shows too that the arrival is a judgment on those who tend the temple without producing what God wants from it.

The vineyard image carries the theology of Israel's election and its failure. Isaiah 5 had sung of a vineyard that God planted and tended and that gave wild grapes. Jesus sharpens the story: now the fault lies with the tenants, the leaders, who treat the owner's messengers, the prophets, with violence (compare 23:34-37), and finally his son. The parable assumes that God's patience is long and that his judgment is real. Nothing in it says that God has finished with Israel. Paul, thinking on the same issue, says that God has not rejected his people (Romans 11:1-2).

The question about John's baptism places the Baptist where the whole New Testament places him, as the forerunner whose message the leaders refused. The praise of children in the temple recalls the way that God's work is often seen first by the humble (11:25).

The chapter presents who Jesus is on three levels. He is the king of Zechariah 9:9, the humble king who enters on a donkey and whom the crowds salute as the Son of David. He is also Lord of the temple. In clearing it and healing in it he acts as one with authority over the house of God, and he will say that something greater than the temple is here (12:6). His reply to the leaders, refusing to name the source of his authority while pointing to John, shows that he stands where John's testimony pointed.

In the parable of the tenants he is the son, the last and the beloved messenger, sent after the servants and killed outside the vineyard. Mark 12:6 calls him the beloved son, and Matthew has already spoken of his sonship at his baptism and transfiguration (3:17; 17:5). His death is told in advance, and it is told as the act that decides the question of ownership. The quotation of Psalm 118:22-23 adds the other half: the rejected stone becomes the cornerstone. Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:6-8 apply the same psalm to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, and Paul uses cornerstone imagery of him in Ephesians 2:20.

The fig tree shows the Messiah's right to judge and his claim that obedience, not outward religion, is the fruit God looks for.