Who can forgive sins? The paralytic, Matthew's call and the harvest

Matthew 9 continues the collection of deeds that began in chapter 8 and adds the first sustained conflict with Jesus' opponents. In the previous chapter Jesus showed his authority over disease, a storm and demons. Here it is tested by the question of who gives him the right to speak and act as he does. (The class on Matthew 1 sets out the debates over the author, date and sources of the Gospel.) Several stories in this chapter have parallels in Mark and Luke: the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26), the call of the tax collector and the meal (Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32), the question about fasting (Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39), and Jairus's daughter together with the woman with bleeding (Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56). Matthew's versions are much shorter. In the story of the paralytic, for example, he omits the detail of the roof. In the story of the synagogue leader he has the man say at the outset that his daughter has just died, where Mark and Luke have her dying and then report her death.

One detail concerns the tax collector. Matthew calls him Matthew, while Mark and Luke call him Levi, son of Alphaeus (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). Matthew is named among the twelve (10:3), and most scholars think Levi and Matthew were the same man with two names; a few think Matthew substituted the name of an apostle. The tradition that this man wrote the Gospel is discussed in the class on Matthew 1. The healing of the two blind men and of the mute man is found only in Matthew, and some scholars think they have parallel accounts in 12:22-24 and 20:29-34.

The setting is Capernaum, 'His own town' (9:1), and its neighbourhood. Tax collectors collected tolls and duties for Rome and for the ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas. They were widely resented, both as collaborators and for taking more than was due, and they were counted with 'sinners' who did not keep the Law. The Pharisees, a lay movement devoted to careful keeping of the Law, here appear in Matthew for the first time as opponents of Jesus' practice.

Matthew 9 mixes miracle stories with controversy stories, and the genre of each gives a different clue. The miracle stories follow the usual pattern of need, word or touch, result and reaction. The controversy stories follow a pattern too: an action of Jesus provokes a question or charge, and Jesus answers with a saying, often a proverb or a scriptural quotation, that goes to the heart of the matter. The meal with sinners, the fasting question and the healing of the paralytic are all of this type. In the controversy story, the answer of Jesus is the main point.

Two principles help.

• First, notice how Matthew frames the chapter. The tour of 9:35 repeats the summary of 4:23 almost word for word, and so closes a large section: chapters 5-7 showed the Messiah in word and chapters 8-9 the Messiah in deed, and the two summaries mark them as a unit.
• Second, read the chapter for its pattern of responses. In each scene some respond with trust and some with hostility or confusion, and the pattern leads to the mission of chapter 10.

The images in the answer on fasting are short parables. Each makes a single point: something new has come that cannot be fitted into old forms.

Verses 1–8

Jesus crosses back to 'His own town', Capernaum. Men bring a paralysed man, and Jesus, seeing 'their faith', says, 'Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.' The statement is in a passive form, 'are forgiven', a Jewish way of speaking of God's action without naming him. Some scribes say to themselves, 'This man is blaspheming!' They are right in principle: only God forgives sins (Isaiah 43:25). Jesus knows what they are thinking, which is itself a sign. He asks which is easier, to say 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'Get up and walk'. The first cannot be tested, and the second can. So he heals the man 'so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'. The man gets up and goes home. The crowds glorify God 'who had given such authority to men'. The plural 'men' may simply reflect that Jesus was a man, or may look ahead to the authority given to the disciples (16:19; 18:18).

Verses 9–13

Jesus sees 'a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth' and says, 'Follow Me.' Matthew gets up and follows, as the fishermen did in 4:18-22. At a meal in the house, many tax collectors and sinners eat with Jesus and his disciples. To share a meal in that world was to accept someone. The Pharisees ask the disciples why their teacher does this. Jesus answers with a proverb: 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.' Then he adds, 'Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' The quotation is Hosea 6:6, where the Hebrew word for mercy (chesed) means loyal love. 'Go and learn' was a way a teacher sent a student to study a text, and here it puts the Pharisees in the position of students. Jesus has come to call sinners, not the righteous.

Verses 14–17

Disciples of John ask why they and the Pharisees fast often while Jesus' disciples do not. Jesus replies with the image of a wedding: guests do not mourn while the bridegroom is with them, but 'the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast'. In the Old Testament, God is the bridegroom of Israel (Isaiah 62:5; Hosea 2:19-20). The remark about the bridegroom being taken away is the first hint in Matthew of the cross. The two small parables follow. No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth, because it will tear away. No one puts new wine in old wineskins, because the fermenting wine will burst them. The new needs a new form.

Verses 18–26

While Jesus speaks, a synagogue leader kneels and says his daughter has just died, and he asks Jesus to lay his hand on her. On the way, a woman who has had bleeding for twelve years touches the fringe of his cloak. Her condition made her ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:25-30), and she acts in secret, but Jesus turns and says, 'Take courage, daughter, your faith has healed you.' The word for 'healed' (sozo) also means 'saved'. At the leader's house Jesus sees the flute players and the noisy crowd, professional mourners, and says, 'The girl is not dead, but asleep.' They laugh. The Bible uses sleep as a picture of death (Daniel 12:2; John 11:11-14), and Jesus is not denying the death but saying that it is not final. He takes her hand, and she gets up. Touching a corpse made a person unclean, but for Jesus, life passes to the dead, and not uncleanness to him.

Verses 27–31

Two blind men follow Jesus crying, 'Have mercy on us, Son of David!' This is the first time in Matthew that someone in need addresses Jesus by this title. He asks them, 'Do you believe that I am able to do this?' They say, 'Yes, Lord.' He touches their eyes: 'According to your faith will it be done to you.' He warns them to tell no one, and they spread the news anyway.

Verses 32–34

A mute man with a demon is brought, and when the demon is cast out he speaks. The crowds say, 'Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel!' The Pharisees say, 'It is by the prince of demons that He drives out demons.' This charge will return and be answered in 12:22-37.

Verses 35–38

The summary repeats 4:23. 'He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.' The verb for compassion (splagchnizomai) refers to the deep inner organs. The image comes from Numbers 27:17, where Moses asks for a leader so the congregation will not be like sheep without a shepherd, and Ezekiel 34, where the shepherds of Israel have failed. Jesus then speaks of a harvest that is plentiful with too few workers, and he asks the disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest to send them out. In the next chapter, he does so.

The chapter first teaches that forgiveness of sins is a work of God. The Old Testament says this plainly: the LORD blots out transgressions for his own sake (Isaiah 43:25), and the psalmist praises him who forgives all iniquity (Psalm 103:3). The scribes' principle is therefore correct. What the chapter adds is that this authority is exercised on earth by the Son of Man.

The chapter teaches the priority of mercy. Hosea 6:6 does not abolish sacrifice, as the rest of the Old Testament shows, but rebukes a religion of ritual without love. The same point is made by Micah 6:6-8 and by Jesus again in 12:7. Faith is again the response Jesus commends, in the paralytic's friends, the woman and the blind men.

It also teaches that Jesus' coming marks a new time. The bridegroom is present, new wine is poured, and the old forms cannot contain it. At the same time, the bridegroom will be taken away, which anticipates the cross, and the time of fasting will return. The chapter closes with a call to mission: the harvest is the world's need and the workers are few, a theme that continues in the sending of the Twelve and in the commission at the end of the Gospel (28:19-20).

Christ is here as one who claims what belongs to God and as the fulfilment of promises. He forgives sins, which the scribes rightly say is God's alone, and he reads their unspoken thoughts. He gives a visible proof that he has the authority he claims. Daniel 7:13-14 describes one like a son of man to whom is given dominion, and Jesus applies the title to himself in this scene. The blind men call him 'Son of David', the promised royal heir, and he accepts the title and heals them, as the prophets had said the blind would see in the days of the Messiah (Isaiah 35:5). He quotes Hosea 6:6 to explain why he eats with sinners: this is how he understands his mission.

As echoes, offered more tentatively, the bridegroom image recalls God as Israel's husband in the prophets (Isaiah 62:5; Hosea 2:19-20), and Jesus applies it to himself without comment. The sheep without a shepherd recall Numbers 27:17 and Ezekiel 34, where God says that he himself will shepherd his flock, and that he will set one shepherd, David, over them (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 23). John's Gospel states what is implied here when Jesus calls himself the good shepherd (John 10:11). The final scene, in which the Lord of the harvest sends out workers, places Jesus alongside the Lord of the harvest, though

The raising of the girl anticipates his own resurrection and the resurrection promised to those in him (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).