Encyclopedia entry · the book of Matthew
Matthew is the New Testament's opening book and the most thoroughly Jewish of the four Gospels. Written by a former tax collector whom Jesus called from his booth in Capernaum, it is built to convince a Hebrew reader that Jesus is the long-promised Messiah of Israel — the son of David, the son of Abraham, the new Moses giving a new law from a new mountain. The book opens with a genealogy and closes with the Great Commission.
Matthew arranges Jesus' teaching into five great sermons — a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses. The Sermon on the Mount (5–7), the missionary discourse (10), the kingdom parables (13), the church discourse (18), and the Olivet discourse (24–25). Between each sermon, narrative. Each sermon ends with the same formula: And when Jesus had finished these sayings.
Movements
4 arcs through the bookMovement 01
1–4
chapters
Birth and Beginnings
Matthew opens with a genealogy — fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile, fourteen from the exile to Christ. Then the nativity told from Joseph's angle, the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and Jesus' baptism by John in the Jordan. The first four chapters establish the question Matthew will spend the next twenty-four answering: Is this the one?
Movement 02
5–7
chapters
The Sermon on the Mount
Matthew's first great teaching block runs three chapters without a break. Jesus opens on a hillside in Galilee with the eight Beatitudes — re-pricing the human condition — and unspools the longest connected discourse in the Gospels. The Lord's Prayer is here. You are the salt of the earth. Do not store up treasures on earth. Seek first the kingdom of God. Build your house on the rock. The crowds, Matthew notes, were astonished — for he taught them as one who had authority.
Movement 03
8–20
chapters
Kingdom Ministry
The bulk of Matthew is the kingdom in motion. Jesus heals a leper, a centurion's servant, a paralytic, two demoniacs; he calls Matthew himself from a tax booth; he sends out the twelve with kingdom authority. The parables in chapter thirteen — the sower, the mustard seed, the wheat and tares, the pearl of great price — describe the kingdom as something both small-and-spreading and final-and-judging. Halfway through, Peter confesses Jesus as Christ at Caesarea Philippi, and the road bends toward Jerusalem.
Key passages
Movement 04
21–28
chapters
Passion and Commission
Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, clears the temple, debates the Pharisees, and on the Mount of Olives gives his final sermon about the end of the age. The Last Supper. Gethsemane. Trial, beating, cross. Matthew's resurrection narrative is brief; the empty tomb leads quickly to a final scene on a mountain in Galilee, where the risen Christ commissions the disciples: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them ... and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
Key passages
