Verses 1-27
Chapter 17
17:1-8 Six days
after, Jesus took Peter, and James, and John his brother, and brought
them by themselves to a high mountain, and his appearance was changed in
their presence. His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as
white as the light. And, look you, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
talking with him. Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is a fine thing for us
to be here. I will make three booths, one for you, one for Moses, and
one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, look you, a shining cloud
overshadowed them; and, look you, there came a voice out of the cloud
saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear him!"
When the disciples heard that, they fell on their faces and were
exceedingly afraid. Jesus came and touched them and said, "Rise, and do
not be afraid." They lifted up their eyes, and saw no one, except Jesus
alone.
The great moment of Caesarea Philippi was followed by the great
hour on the Mount of Transfiguration. Let us first look at the scene
where this time of glory came to Jesus and his three chosen disciples.
There is a tradition which connects the Transfiguration with Mount
Tabor, but that is unlikely. The top of Mount Tabor was an armed
fortress and a great castle; it seems almost impossible that the
Transfiguration could have happened on a mountain which was a fortress.
Much more likely the scene of the Transfiguration was Mount Hermon.
Hermon was fourteen miles from Caesarea Philippi. Hermon is 9,400 feet
high, 11,000 feet above the level of the Jordan valley, so high that it
can actually be seen from the Dead Sea, at the other end of Palestine,
more than one hundred miles away.
It cannot have been on the very summit of the mountain that this
happened. The mountain is too high for that. Canon Tristram tells how
he and his party ascended it. They were able to ride practically to the
top, and the ride took five hours. Activity is not easy on so high a
summit. Tristram says, "We spent a great part of the day on the summit,
but were before long painfully affected by the rarity of the
atmosphere."
It was somewhere on the slopes of the beautiful and stately
Mount Hermon that the Transfiguration happened. It must have happened in
the night. Luke tells us that the disciples were weighted down with
sleep (Luke 9:32).
It was the next day when Jesus and his disciples came back to the plain
to find the father of the epileptic boy waiting for them (Luke 9:37). It was some time in the sunset, or the late evening, or the night, that this amazing vision took place.
Why did Jesus go there? Why did he make this expedition to these
lonely mountain slopes? Luke gives us the clue. He tells us that Jesus
was praying (Luke 9:29).
We must put ourselves, as far as we can, in Jesus' place. By
this time he was on the way to the Cross. Of that he was quite sure;
again and again he told his disciples that it was so. At Caesarea
Philippi we have seen him facing one problem and dealing with one
question. We have seen him seeking to find out if there was anyone who
had recognized him for who and what he was. We have seen that question
triumphantly answered, for Peter had grasped the great fact that Jesus
could only be described as the Son of God. But there was an even greater
question than that which Jesus had to solve before he set out on the
last journey.
He had to make quite sure, sure beyond all doubt, that he was
doing what God wished him to do. He had to make certain that it was
indeed God's will that he should go to the Cross. Jesus went up Mount
Hermon to ask God: "Am I doing your will in setting my face to go to
Jerusalem?" Jesus went up Mount Hermon to listen for the voice of God.
He would take no step without consulting God. How then could he take the
biggest step of all without consulting him? Of everything Jesus asked
one question and only one question: "Is it God's will for me?" And that
is the question he was asking in the loneliness of the slopes of Hermon.
It is one of the supreme differences between Jesus and us, that
Jesus always asked: "What does God wish me to do." we nearly always ask:
"What do I wish to do?" We often say that the unique characteristic of
Jesus was that he was sinless. What do we mean by that? We mean
precisely this, that Jesus had no will but the will of God. The hymn of
the Christian must always be:
"Thy way, not mine, O lord,
However dark it be!
Lead me by thine own hand;
Choose out the path for me.
I dare not choose my lot,
I would not if I might:
Choose thou for me, my God,
So shall I walk aright.
Not mine, not mine the choice
In things or great or small;
Be thou my Guide, my Strength,
My Wisdom and my All."
When Jesus had a problem, he did not seek to solve it only by
the power of his own thought; he did not take it to others for human
advice; he took it to the lonely place and to God.
There on the mountain slopes two great figures appeared to Jesus--Moses and Elijah.
It is fascinating to see in how many respects the experience of
these two great servants of God matched the experience of Jesus. When
Moses came down from the mountain of Sinai, he did not know that the
skin of his face shone (Exodus 34:29).
Both Moses and Elijah had their most intimate experiences of God on a
mountain top. It was into Mount Sinai that Moses went to receive the
tables of the law (Exodus 31:18). It was on Mount Horeb that Elijah found God, not in the wind, and not in the earthquake, but in the still small voice (1 Kings 19:9-12). It is a strange thing that there was something awesome about the deaths of both Moses and Elijah. Deuteronomy 34:5-6
tells of the lonely death of Moses on Mount Nebo. It reads as if God
himself was the burier of the great leader of the people: "And he buried
him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man
knows the place of his burial to this day." As for Elijah, as the old
story has it, he took his departure from the astonished Elisha in a
chariot and horses of fire (2 Kings 2:11). The two great figures who appeared to Jesus as he was setting out for Jerusalem were men who seemed too great to die.
Further, as we have already seen, it was the consistent Jewish
belief that Elijah was to be forerunner and herald of the Messiah, and
it was also believed by at least some Jewish teachers that, when the
Messiah came, he would be accompanied by Moses.
It is easy to see how appropriate this vision of Moses and
Elijah was. But none of these reasons is the real reason why the vision
of Moses and Elijah came to Jesus.
Once again we must turn to Luke's account of the
Transfiguration. He tells us that Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus, as
the Revised Standard Version has it, "of his departure which he was to
accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31). The word which is used for departure in the Greek is very significant. It is exodos (Greek #1841), which is exactly the same as the English word exodus.
The word exodus has one special connection; it is the word which
is always used of the departure of the people of Israel out of the land
of Egypt, into the unknown way of the desert, which in the end was
going to lead them to the Promised Land. The word exodus is the word
which describes what we might well call the most adventurous journey in
human history, a journey in which a whole people in utter trust in God
went out into the unknown. That is precisely what Jesus was going to do.
In utter trust in God he was going to set out on the tremendous
adventure of that journey to Jerusalem, a journey beset with perils, a
journey involving a cross, but a journey issuing in glory.
In Jewish thought these two figures, Moses and Elijah, always
stood for certain things. Moses was the greatest of all the law-givers;
he was supremely and uniquely the man who brought God's law to men.
Elijah was the greatest of all the prophets; in him the voice of God
spoke to men with unique directness. These two men were the twin peaks
of Israel's religious history and achievement. It is as if the greatest
figures in Israel's history came to Jesus, as he was setting out on the
last and greatest adventure into the unknown, and told him to go on. In
them all history rose up and pointed Jesus on his way. In them all
history recognized Jesus as its own consummation. The greatest of the
law-givers and the greatest of the prophets recognized Jesus as the one
of whom they had dreamed, as the one whom they had foretold. Their
appearance was the signal for Jesus to go on. So, then, the greatest
human figures witnessed to Jesus that he was on the right way and bade
him go out on his adventurous exodus to Jerusalem and to Calvary.
But there was more than that; not only did the greatest
law-giver and the greatest prophet assure Jesus that he was right; the
very voice of God came telling him that he was on the right way. All the
gospel writers speak of the luminous cloud which overshadowed them.
That cloud was part of Israel's history. All through that history the
luminous cloud stood for the shechinah, which was nothing less than the
glory of Almighty God.
In Exodus we read of the pillar of cloud which was to lead the people on their way (Exodus 13:21-22).
Again in Exodus we read of the building and the completing of the
Tabernacle; and at the end of the story there come the words: "Then the
cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the
tabernacle" (Exodus 40:34). It was in the cloud that the Lord descended to give the tables of the law to Moses (Exodus 34:5).
Once again we meet this mysterious, luminous cloud at the dedication of
Solomon's Temple: "And when the priests came out of the holy place, a
cloud filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:10-11; compare 2 Chronicles 5:13-14; 2 Chronicles 7:2). All through the Old Testament there is this picture of the cloud, in which was the mysterious glory of God.
We are able to add another vivid fact to this. Travellers tell
us of a curious and characteristic phenomenon connected with Mount
Hermon. Edersheim writes: "A strange peculiarity has been noticed about
Hermon in 'the extreme rapidity of the formation of cloud upon the
summit. In a few minutes a thick cap forms over the top of the mountain,
and as quickly disperses, and entirely disappears.'" No doubt on this
occasion there came a cloud on the slopes of Hermon; and no doubt at
first the disciples thought little enough of it, for Hermon was
notorious for the clouds which came and went. But something happened; it
is not for us to guess what happened; but the cloud became luminous and
mysterious, and out of it there came the voice of the divine majesty,
setting God's seal of approval on Jesus his Son. And in that moment
Jesus' prayer was answered; he knew beyond a doubt that he was right to
go on.
The Mount of Transfiguration was for Jesus a spiritual mountain
peak. His exodus lay before him. Was he taking the right way? Was he
right to adventure out to Jerusalem and the waiting arms of the Cross?
First, there came to him the verdict of history, the greatest of the
law-givers and the greatest of the prophets, to tell him to go on. And
then, even greater still by far, there came the voice which gave him
nothing less than the approval of God. It was the experience on the
Mount of Transfiguration which enabled Jesus inflexibly to walk the way
to the Cross.
But the episode of the Transfiguration did something not only for Jesus but for the disciples also.
(i) The minds of the disciples must have been still hurt and
bewildered by the insistence of Jesus that he must go to Jerusalem to
suffer and to die. It must have looked to them as if there was nothing
but black shame ahead. But start to finish, the whole atmosphere of the
Mountain of Transfiguration is glory. Jesus' face shone like the sun,
and his garments glistened and gleamed like the light.
The Jews well knew the promise of God to the victorious righteous: "Their face shall shine as the sun" (2Esdr 7:97).
No Jew could ever have seen that luminous cloud without thinking of the
shechinah, the glory of God resting upon his people. There is one very
revealing little touch in this passage. No fewer than three times in its
eight brief verses there occurs the little interjection: "Behold! Look
you!" It is as if Matthew could not even tell the story without a catch
of the breath at the sheer staggering wonder of it.
Here surely was something which would lift up the hearts of the
disciples and enable them to see the glory through the shame; the
triumph through the humiliation; the crown beyond the Cross. It is
obvious that even yet they did not understand; but it must surely have
given them some little glimmering that the Cross was not all
humiliation, that somehow it was tinged with glory, that somehow glory
was the very atmosphere of the exodus to Jerusalem and to death.
(ii) Further, Peter must have learned two lessons that night.
When Peter woke to what was going on, his first reaction was to build
three tabernacles, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. He
was always the man for action; always the man who must be doing
something. But there is a time for stillness; there is a time for
contemplation, for wonder, for adoration, for awed reverence in the
presence of the supreme glory. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalms 46:10).
It may be that sometimes we are too busy trying to do something when we
would be better to be silent, to be listening, to be wondering, to be
adoring in the presence of God. Before a man can fight and adventure
upon his feet, he must wonder and pray upon his knees.
(iii) But there is a converse of that. It is quite clear that
Peter wished to wait upon the mountain slopes. He wished that great
moment to be prolonged. He did not want to go down to the everyday and
common things again but to remain for ever in the sheen of glory.
That is a feeling which everyone must know. There are moments of
intimacy, of serenity, of peace, of nearness to God, which everyone has
known and wished to prolong. As A. H. McNeile has it: "The Mountain of
Transfiguration is always more enjoyable than the daily ministry or the
way of the Cross."
But the Mountain of Transfiguration is given to us only to
provide strength for the daily ministry and to enable us to walk the way
of the Cross. Susanna Wesley had a prayer: "Help me, Lord, to remember
that religion is not to be confined to the church or closet, nor
exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in thy
presence." The moment of glory does not exist for its own sake; it
exists to clothe the common things with a radiance they never had
before.
17:9-13,22,23
As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus gave them strict
injunctions: "Tell no man about the vision until the Son of Man has been
raised from the dead." The disciples asked him, "Why then do the
Scribes say that Elijah must first come?" He answered, "It is true that
they say that Elijah is to come and will restore all things; but I tell
you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but
they did to him what they wished. So also the Son of Man is to suffer at
their hands." Then the disciples understood that he spoke to them about
John the Baptizer.
When they were
gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be
delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and on the
third day he will be raised." And they were exceedingly distressed.
Here again is an injunction to secrecy, and it was much needed.
The great danger was that men should proclaim Jesus as Messiah without
knowing who and what the Messiah was. Their whole conception both of the
forerunner and of the Messiah had to be radically and fundamentally
changed.
It was going to take a tong time for the idea of a conquering
Messiah to be unlearned; it was so ingrained into the Jewish mind that
it was difficult--almost impossible--to alter it. Matthew 17:9-13
are a very difficult passage. Behind them there is this idea. The Jews
were agreed that, before the Messiah came, Elijah would return to be his
herald and his forerunner. "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes." So writes Malachi,
and then he goes on: "And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their
children, and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and
smite the land with a curse" (Malachi 4:5-6).
Bit by bit this idea of the coming of Elijah gathered detail, until the
Jews came to believe that not only would Elijah come, but he would
restore all things before the Messiah came, that he would, we might put
it, make the world fit for the Messiah to enter into. The idea was that
Elijah would be a great and terrible reformer, who would walk throughout
the world destroying all evil and setting things to rights. The result
was that both the forerunner and the Messiah were thought of in terms of
power.
Jesus corrects this. "The Scribes," he said, "say that Elijah
will come like a blast of cleansing and avenging fire. He has come; but
his way was the way of suffering and of sacrifice, as must also be the
way of the Son of Man." Jesus has laid it down that the way of God's
service is never the way which blasts men out of existence, but always
the way which woos them with sacrificial love.
That is what the disciples had to learn; and that is why they
had to be silent until they had learned. If they had gone out preaching a
conquering Messiah there could have been nothing but tragedy. It has
been computed that in the century previous to the Crucifixion no fewer
than 200,000 Jews lost their lives in futile rebellions. Before men
could preach Christ, they must know who and what Christ was; and until
Jesus had taught his followers the necessity of the Cross, they had to
be silent and to learn. It is not our ideas, it is Christ's message,
that we must bring to men; and no man can teach others until Jesus
Christ has taught him.
17:14-20 When
they came to the crowd, a man came to him and fell at his feet and said,
"Sir, have pity on my son, for he is an epileptic, and he suffers
severely; for often he falls into the fire, and often into the water;
and I brought him to your disciples, and they were not able to cure
him." Jesus answered, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long
shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me!"
And Jesus spoke sternly to him, and the demon came out of him, and the
boy was cured from that hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus in
private and said, "Why were we not able to cast out the demon?" Jesus
said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith. This is the
truth I tell you--if you have your faith as a grain of mustard seed, you
will say to this mountain, 'Be removed from here,' and it will remove.
So nothing will be impossible to you."
No sooner had Jesus come down from the heavenly glory than he
was confronted with an earthly problem and a practical demand. A man had
brought his epileptic boy to the disciples in the absence of Jesus.
Matthew describes the boy by the verb seleniazesthai (Greek #4583),
which literally means to be moonstruck. As was inevitable in that age,
the father attributed the boy's condition to the malign influence of
evil spirits. So serious was his condition that he was a danger to
himself and to everyone else. We can almost hear the sigh of relief as
Jesus appeared, and at once he took a grip of a situation which had got
completely out of hand. With one strong, stem word he bade the demon be
gone and the boy was cured. This story is full of significant things.
(i) We cannot but be moved by the faith of the boy's father.
Even though the disciples had been given power to cast out devils (Matthew 10:1),
here was a case in which they had signally and publicly faded. And yet
in spite of the failure of the disciples, the father never doubted the
power of Jesus. It is as if he said: "Only let me get at Jesus himself,
and my problems will be solved and my need will be met."
There is something very poignant about that; and there is
something which is very universal and very modern. There are many who
feel that the Church, the professed disciples of Jesus in their own day
and generation, has failed and is powerless to deal with the ills of the
human situation; and yet at the back of their minds there is the
feeling: "If we could only get beyond his human followers, if we could
only get behind the facade of ecclesiasticism and the failure of the
Church, if we could only get at Jesus himself, we would receive the
things we need." It is at once our condemnation and our challenge that,
even yet, though men have lost their faith in the Church, they have
never lost a wistful faith in Jesus Christ.
(ii) We see here the constant demands made upon Jesus. Straight
from the glory of the mountain top, he was met by human suffering.
Straight from hearing the voice of God, he came to hear--the clamant
demand of human need. The most Christ-like person in the world is the
man who never finds his fellow-man a nuisance. It is easy to feel
Christian in the moment of prayer and meditation; it is easy to feel
close to God when the world is shut out. But that is not religion--that
is escapism. Real religion is to rise from our knees before God to meet
men and the problems of the human situation. Real religion is to draw
strength from God in order to give it to others. Real religion involves
both meeting God in the secret place and men in the market place. Real
religion means taking our own needs to God, not that we may have peace
and quiet and undisturbed comfort, but that we may be enabled
graciously, effectively and powerfully to meet the needs of others. The
wings of the dove are not for the Christian who would follow his Master
in going about doing good.
(iii) We see here the grief of Jesus. It is not that Jesus says
that he wants to be quit of his disciples. It is that he says, "How long
must I be with you before you will understand?" There is nothing more
Christlike than patience. When we are like to lose our patience at the
follies and the foolishness of men, let us call to mind God's infinite
patience with the wanderings and the disloyalties and the unteachability
of our own souls.
(iv) We see here the central need of faith, without which
nothing can happen. When Jesus spoke about removing mountains he was
using a phrase which the Jews knew well. A great teacher, who could
really expound and interpret scripture and who could explain and resolve
difficulties, was regularly known as an uprooter, or even a pulverizer,
of mountains. To tear up, to uproot, to pulverize mountains were all
regular phrases for removing difficulties. Jesus never meant this to be
taken physically and literally. After all, the ordinary man seldom finds
any necessity to remove a physical mountain. What he meant was: "If you
have faith enough, all difficulties can be solved, and even the hardest
task can be accomplished." Faith in God is the instrument which enables
men to remove the hills of difficulty which block their path.
17:24-27 When
they came to Capernaum, those who received the half-shekel Temple tax
came to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the tax?" Peter said,
"He does pay it." When he had gone into the house, before he could
speak, Jesus said to him, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do
earthly kings take tax and tribute? From their sons or from strangers?"
When he said, "From strangers," Jesus said to him, "So then the sons are
free. But, so as not to set a stumbling-block in anyone's way, go to
the sea, and cast a hook into it, and take the first fish which comes
up; and when you have opened its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take it
and give it to them for me and for you."
The Temple at Jerusalem was a costly place to run. There were
the daily morning and evening sacrifices which each involved the
offering of a year-old lamb. Along with the lamb were offered wine and
flour and oil. The incense which was burned every day had to be bought
and prepared. The costly hangings and the robes of the priests
constantly wore out; and the robe of the High Priest was itself worth a
king's ransom. All this required money.
So, on the basis of Exodus 30:13,
it was laid down that every male Jew over twenty years of age must pay
an annual Temple tax of one half-shekel. In the days of Nehemiah, when
the people were poor, it was one-third of a shekel. One half-shekel was
equal to two Greek drachmae (Greek #1406); and the tax was commonly called the didrachm (Greek #1323),
as it is called in this passage. The value of the tax was about 8
pence; and that sum must be evaluated in the light of the fact that a
working man's wage in Palestine in the time of Jesus was only 3 1/2
pence. The tax was in fact the equivalent of two days' pay. It brought
into the Temple treasury no less than about 76,000 British pounds a
year. Theoretically the tax was obligatory and the Temple authorities
had power to distrain upon a man's goods, if he failed to pay.
The method of collection was carefully organized. On the first
of the month Adar, which is March of our year, announcement was made in
all the towns and villages of Palestine that the time to pay the tax had
come. On the fifteenth of the month, booths were set up in each town
and village, and at the booths the tax was paid. If the tax was not paid
by the twenty-fifth of Adar, it could only be paid direct to the Temple
in Jerusalem.
In this passage we see Jesus paying this Temple tax. The tax
authorities came to Peter and asked him if his Master paid his taxes.
There is little doubt that the question was asked with malicious intent
and that the hope was that Jesus would refuse to pay; for, if he
refused, the orthodox would have a ground of accusation against him.
Peter's immediate answer was that Jesus did pay. Then he went and told
Jesus of the situation, and Jesus used a kind of parable in Matthew 17:25-26.
The picture drawn has two possibilities but in either case the meaning is the same.
(i) In the ancient world conquering and colonizing nations had
little or no idea of governing for the benefit of subject peoples.
Rather, they considered that the subject peoples existed to make things
easier for them. The result was that a king's own nation never paid
tribute, if there were any nations subject to it. It was the subject
nations who bore the burden and who paid the tax. So Jesus may be
saying, "God is the King of Israel; but we are the true Israel, for we
are the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven; outsiders may have to pay;
but we are free."
(ii) The picture is more likely a much simpler one than that. If
any king imposed taxes on a nation, he certainly did not impose them on
his own family. It was indeed for the support of his own household that
the taxes were imposed. The tax in question was for the Temple, which
was the house of God. Jesus was the Son of God. Did he not say when his
parents sought him in Jerusalem: "Did you not know that I must be in my
Father's house?" (Luke 2:49). How could the Son be under obligation to pay the tax which was for his own Father's house?
None the less Jesus said that they must pay, not because of the
compulsion of the law, but because of a higher duty. He said they must
pay "lest we should offend them." The New Testament always uses the verb
to offend (skandalizein, Greek #4624) and the noun offence (skandalon, Greek #4625)
in a special way. The verb never means to insult or to annoy or to
injure the pride of. It always means to put a stumbling-block in
someone's way, to cause someone to trip up and to fall. Therefore Jesus
is saying: "We must pay so as not to set a bad example to others. We
must not only do our duty, we must go beyond duty, in order that we may
show others what they ought to do." Jesus would allow himself nothing
which might make someone else think less of the ordinary obligation of
life. In life there may sometimes be exemptions we could claim; there
may be things we could quite safely allow ourselves to do. But we must
claim nothing and allow ourselves nothing which might possibly be a bad
example to someone else.
We may well ask why is it that this story was ever transmitted
at all? For reasons of space the gospel writers had to select their
material. Why select this story? Matthew's gospel was written between
A.D. 80 and 90. Now just a little before that time Jews and Jewish
Christians had been faced with a very real and a very disturbing
problem. We saw that every male Jew over twenty had to pay the Temple
tax; but the Temple was totally destroyed in A.D. 70, never to be
rebuilt. After the destruction of the Temple, Vespasian, the Roman
emperor, enacted that the half-shekel Temple tax should now be paid to
the treasury of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome.
Here indeed was a problem. Many of the Jews and of the Jewish
Christians were violently inclined to rebel against this enactment. Any
such widespread rebellion would have had disastrous consequences, for it
would have been utterly crushed at once, and would have gained the Jews
and the Christians the reputation of being bad and disloyal and
disaffected citizens.
This story was put into the gospels to tell the Christians,
especially the Jewish Christians, that, however unpleasant they might
be, the duties of a citizen must be shouldered. It tells us that
Christianity and good citizenship go hand in hand. The Christian who
exempts himself from the duties of good citizenship is not only failing
in citizenship, he is also failing in Christianity.
Now we come to the story itself If we take it with a bald and crude
literalism, it means that Jesus told Peter to go and catch a fish, and
that he would find a stater in the fish's mouth which would be
sufficient to pay the tax for both of them. It is not irrelevant to note
that the gospel never tells us that Peter did so. The story ends with
Jesus' saying.
Before we begin to examine the story we must remember that all
oriental people love to say a thing in the most dramatic and vivid way
possible; and that they love to say a thing with the flash of a smile.
This miracle is difficult on three grounds.
(i) God does not send a miracle to enable us to do what we can
quite well do for ourselves. That would be to harm us and not to help
us. However poor the disciples were, they did not need a miracle to
enable them to earn two half-shekels. It was not beyond human power to
earn such a sum.
(ii) This miracle transgresses the great decision of Jesus that
he would never use his miraculous power for his own ends. He could have
turned stones into bread to satisfy his own hunger--but he refused. He
could have used his power to enhance his own prestige as a
wonder-worker--but he refused. In the wilderness Jesus decided once and
for all that he would not and could not selfishly use his power. If this
story is taken with a crude literalism, it does show Jesus using his
divine power to satisfy his own personal needs--and that is what Jesus
would never do.
(iii) If this miracle is taken literally, there is a sense in
which it is even immoral. Life would become chaotic if a man could pay
his debts by finding coins in fishes' mouths. Life was never meant to be
arranged in such a way that men could meet their obligations in such a
lazy and effortless way. "The gods," said one of the great Greeks, "have
ordained that sweat should be the price of all things." That is just as
true for the Christian thinker as it was for the Greek.
If all this is so, what are we to say? Are we to say that this
is a mere legendary story, mere imaginative fiction, with no truth
behind it at all? Far from it. Beyond a doubt something happened.
Let us remember again the Jewish love of dramatic vividness.
Undoubtedly what happened was this. Jesus said to Peter: "Yes, Peter.
You're right. We, too, must pay our just and lawful debts. Well, you
know how to do it. Back you go to the fishing for a day. You'll get
plenty of money in the fishes' mouths to pay our dues! A day at the
fishing will soon produce all we need."
Jesus was saying, "Back to your job, Peter; that's the way to
pay your debts." So the typist will find a new coat in the keys of her
typewriter. The motor mechanic will find food for himself and his wife
and family in the cylinder of the motor car. The teacher will find money
to pay his way in the blackboard and the chalk. The clerk will find
enough to support himself and his dear ones in the ledger and in the
account sheets.
When Jesus said this, he said it with that swift smile of his
and with his gift for dramatic language. He was not telling Peter
literally to get coins in fishes' mouths. He was telling him that in his
day's work he would get what he needed to pay his way.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)