Matthew 22

Matthew 22:2

It hath and shall be the fate of the gospel now preached to men, and first to the Jews, to meet with such reception as a king is by parable supposed to meet with, who at the marriage of his son made an entertainment. to call upon the appointed guests for whom the feast was provided, and to bring them in.

[a] marriage] That γάμος and γάμοι signify both in this place and John ii. a marriage-feast, we have before observed (see note [e] ch. ix.); that here the ἔνδυμα γάμου signifies the garment that was customary at such feasts, that is, a better sort of array than those that were used upon ordinary days, will be obvious to any man that is conversant in ancient customs; so in the wardrobes of great men, there were robes to put on for that use, mentioned by Juvenal, when he speaks of the trechedipna, that runs about to feasts or entertainments. These were vestes discubitoriae, fine and florid, such as Trimalcios in Petronius, in whom they are also called vestimenta triclinaria, and in Xiphilin, in the Life of Adrian, στολῆ δειπνίτις, the festival garment, and this, it seems, so necessary, (as repentance and reformation of life, the new garment, or array of the soul, which is here parabolically expressed by it,) that without it, even they that were invited to come, were not yet permitted to taste of the feast, or remain among the guests.

Matthew 22:5

But of the whole number of those that were invited, none came; some preferring their other affairs in the world before coming to a feast, took no great heed to the invitation, but sent back their desires to be excused, Luke xiv. 18.

Matthew 22:6

Others, most barbarously treating the servants that were sent on no other message to them but this of inviting them to a feast, killed them reproachfully which came thus to oblige them. The feast is prepared, and in it your duty is performed, but those which were the prime guests first invited to it have behaved themselves most unthankfully and unworthily, there is no reason they should

Matthew 22:16

[b] Herodians] The Herodians were not a distinct sect from the Pharisees and Sadducees (see note [a] ch. xvi.), but some of them Sadducees, as appears by comparing Matt. xvi. 16, with Mark viii. 15. They are by ba learned man said to be Grecians, which king Herod brought with him out of the desert, and which became a certain sect after that time, for which he cites Aruch; but this was by a great mistake in him of the Hebrew יונים, as if it were Ἰωνες, Grecians, when it is no more but jonim, doves, or pigeons, which Herod brought with him out of the desert, and from which sprang a certain sort of pigeons, (not sect of men) different from others. The Herodians by many of the ancients are thought to be those that (conceiving the prophecy of Jacob concerning the sceptre departing from Judah to be accomplished in Herod the Great, who was not a Jew, and yet swayed the sceptre there) believed him to be the Shiloh promised by Jacob at that time; so Epiphanius, that they were Jews, idle and hypocrites,

b Drusius in Præter.

Matthew 22:20

[c] superscription] The tribute-money or denarius, that was to be paid to Cæsar by way of tribute, had on it, saith Occo, the picture or image of Cæsar, and in it these letters written, Καίσαρ Λύγουσεν: Ἰουδαίας ἰαλωπνίας, Cæsar Augustus, such a year, after the taking of Judæa. This

c De Bell. Jud. I. i. c. 8.

Matthew 22:21

They confessed it to be the image or signature of the Roman emperor; and Christ thence concluded, that they that acknowledge Caesar’s supremacy over the Jews ought not to dispute, but pay him that tribute that is due to him as supreme, there being nothing derogatory to God in so doing. But the law of God requiring that every one should have that which belongs to him, and particularly kings their due acknowledgments and tributes, which are due to them as acts of piety are due to God. admired the prudence of his answer, and so departed without hopes of gaining any advantage against him. future estate after this life, and asked— do the part of the next of kin to his wife, and the children which he begetteth of her shall be accounted his dead brother’s children or seed.

Matthew 22:26

Until all the seven were married, and dead without children.

“This error of yours, in believing no resurrection, proceeds from your not considering the several places of scripture, nor the power of God in ordering the life to come in another manner than is used in this.

Matthew 22:30

As for your argument against it, it is soon answered, by telling you, that in that other world those that are there live not like husbands and wives, but are in that respect no otherwise than the pure, spiritual angels of God, which have no bodies about them; all such relations which are here among men are swallowed up in that other world.

Matthew 22:31

But to make it evident to you by that part of scripture which hath authority among you Sadducees, that is, by the law, by you acknowledged for the word of God, that there is another life, it is there, you know, thus written: I am—

“which being spoken after their decease, was an evidence that there is another life after this, which they that are dead to this have their parts in, or otherwise how could God be said not only to have been, but still to be their God after their death?

“on design to ensnare him in his answer, or to hear what he would say, and saying—

“with all thy will and affections and understanding, Mark xii. 32.

[d] resurrection] The argument against the living of souls now after death, and before the resurrection, which is taken by some (see Brevis Disquisitio) from this place of Matt. xxii. 31, 32, lies thus: Christ proves the resurrection of the dead, ver. 31, by this argument; God saith, he is the God of Abraham, &c. long after Abraham’s death, and God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; which proof being put into form must lie thus: “Abraham’s body shall rise,” and likewise Isaac’s and Jacob’s, “therefore the bodies of the dead shall rise;” the antecedent is proved thus, “Abraham shall live again now he is dead, therefore his body shall rise;” that antecedent thus, “God is the God of Abraham now he is dead, therefore Abraham shall live again now he is dead.” If this antecedent were denied, then the plain words of scripture were denied, and therefore the argument or consequence must be denied, or nothing; and that will thus be proved: “God is not the God of the dead who are so dead that they shall never live again; therefore it being granted that God is the God of Abraham, since the time of his death, it must follow, that though he be now dead, he shall live again.” Christ’s argument being supposed thus to proceed, might readily have been answered (by them that deny the resurrection of the body) in case the continued life or not dying of the soul were granted; for they might reply thus: “Abraham’s soul lives all this while since his death, and therefore God’s being the God of Abraham, granting him to be the God of none but the living, doth not conclude that Abraham’s body shall rise; for he who lives in soul, may be said to be living, though his body never rise.” Now because it is certain that Christ’s argument was a good argument, concluding unanswerably what he meant to prove, therefore the not dying of souls, on concession of which the refutation of Christ’s argument is or may be grounded, is not to be thought a truth. To this objection against the immortality of souls from this manner of Christ’s arguing against the Sadducees, the answer might be easy enough, by remembering the disputers, that the Sadducees, with whom Christ disputed, are not supposed to grant the immortality of the soul, any more than the rising of the body, and therefore this argument of Christ’s, though it would not hold against him that did acknowledge the immortality and continued life of the soul, without ever having the body united to it, would yet be a good argument ad homines against the Sadducees, and that were sufficient to salve the matter; or secondly, that the resurrection of the body is a necessary consequent to the life of the soul, and that the proving that the soul lives after death is therefore used by Christ as an argument sufficient to infer that the body shall certainly revive also: but this is not all: they that make use of this arguing of Christ to favour their opinion of ψυχοπαννυχία, do mistake the thing that Christ went about to prove against the Sadducees. For it being certain that the Sadducees denied all other life beyond this that here men live in the flesh, (affirming that there is no spirit, no soul of man subsisting after death, and in consequence to that, that the body after death rots, never to rise again,) it is as certain that Christ here confronted his argument (out of the law, which was the only scripture which those