Between the temple and the altar - Between the temple, properly so called, and the altar of burnt-offering in the court of the priests. See the plan of the temple. Matthew Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes—The I here is emphatic: "I am sending," that is, "am about to send.
What precisely is meant by "the wisdom of God" here, is somewhat difficult to determine. To us it appears to be simply an announcement of a purpose of the Divine Wisdom, in the high style of ancient prophecy, to send a last set of messengers whom the people would reject, and rejecting, would fill up the cup of their iniquity. But, whereas in Luke it is "I, the Wisdom of God, will send them," in Matthew it is "I, Jesus, am sending them"; language only befitting the one sender of all the prophets, the Lord God of Israel now in the flesh.
They are evidently evangelical messengers, but called by the familiar Jewish names of "prophets, wise men, and scribes," whose counterparts were the inspired and gifted servants of the Lord Jesus; for in Luke Lu it is "prophets and apostles. And as Zacharias' last words were, "The Lord require it," so they are here warned that of that generation it should be required.
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible That upon you may come all the righteous blood, This epithet of "righteous" seems to be what was commonly given him by the Jews: hence, with a peculiar emphasis, he is called, , "Abel the righteous" t ; as he is also said to be , "the head of them that killed" u ; he being the first man that was slain; for which reason he is mentioned here by Christ; and also, because his blood cried for vengeance, and still continued to do, upon all such persons that should commit the like crime.
It is an observation frequently made by the Jews, on those words in Genesis "the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me", that "it is not said in the Hebrew text, the blood of thy brother, but the bloods of thy brother; his blood, and the blood of his seed w ; and that from hence may be learned, that the blood of his children, and of his children's children, and of all his offspring, to the end of all generations, that should proceed from him, all stood and cried before the Lord x.
The Jerusalem Targum paraphrases the words in this remarkable manner, "the price of the bloods of "the multitude of the righteous", that shall spring from Abel thy brother.
Learned men are very much divided about this person, who he was. Others have thought that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, is meant, who is supposed to be murdered by the Jews very lately; and it being a recent action, is mentioned by our Lord: the reason of it is a tradition, which several ancient writers z speak of, and is pretended to be this; that there was a place, in the temple appropriated to virgins, and that Mary, the mother of our Lord, after his birth, came and took her place here, as a virgin, when the Jews, knowing her to have a child, objected to it; but Zechariah, who was acquainted with the mystery of the incarnation, ordered her to keep her place, upon which the Jews slew him upon the spot: but this tradition is not to be depended on; nor does it appear that there ever was any such particular place in the temple assigned to virgins; nor that the father of this Zacharias was Barachias; or that the son was slain by the Jews, and in this place.
Others have been of opinion, that Zechariah the prophet is designed; and indeed, he is said to be the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, Zechariah and the Jewish Targumist speaks of a Zechariah, the son of Iddo, as slain by the Jews in the temple.
His words are these a , "as ye slew Zechariah, the son of Iddo, the high priest, and faithful prophet, in the house of the sanctuary of the Lord, on the day of atonement; because he reproved you, that ye might not do that evil which is before the Lord.
And him the Jews make to be the same with Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, in Isaiah and read Berechiah b : but the Targumist seems to confound Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, with him; for the prophet Zechariah was not an high priest, Joshua was high priest in his time; nor does it appear from any writings, that he was killed by the Jews; nor is it probable that they would be guilty of such a crime, just upon their return from captivity; and besides, he could not be slain in such a place, because the temple, and altar, were not yet built: it remains, that it must be Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, who was slain in the court of the house of the Lord, 2 Chronicles who, as Abel was the first, he is the last of the righteous men whose death is related in the Scriptures, and for whose blood vengeance was required, as for Abel's.
He was slain in the court of the house of the Lord; and so the Ethiopic version here renders it, in the midst of the holy house. It is often said by the Jewish writer c , that "R. Joden sometimes it is R.
Jonathan asked R. Acha, whether they slew Zechariah, in the court of the Israelites, or in the court of the women? And elsewhere they say d , that they "slew a priest and a prophet in the sanctuary; this is Zechariah the son of Jehoiada. Now it should be observed, that the temple, or sanctuary, is sometimes put for the whole sacred building, with all its courts and appurtenances; and sometimes, as in this text, for that part of it that was covered, between which, and the altar of burnt offerings, in the court of the priests, which must he here meant, and not the altar of incense, in the most holy place, was a space of twenty two cubits e , frequently called, in Jewish writings, the space between the porch and the altar; that is, the porch which led into the temple, and the brazen altar in the court of the priests, which was open to the air, and is the very spot here intended.
Now this was a very sacred place, and is mentioned as an aggravation of the sin of the Jews, that they should enter where none but priests might; nor these neither that had any defect in them; and defile it also by shedding innocent blood, "The court of the Israelites is holier than the court of the women; because those that wanted atonement might not enter there; and a defiled person that entered there, was obliged to be cut off: the court of the priests was holier than that, because the Israelites might not enter there, but in the time of their necessities, for laying on of hands for atonement, for killing and waving: the place between the porch and the altar was holier than that; for such that had any blemishes, or were bareheaded, or had their garments rent, might not enter f.
Hence they say g , that "the Israelites committed seven transgressions on that day: they slew a priest, and a prophet, and a judge; and they shed innocent blood, and they blasphemed God, and defiled the court, and it was a sabbath day, and the day of atonement. The scribes and Pharisees are regarded as the representatives of the people, and for whom, as their leaders, they are held responsible. Delitzsch, Psych , p. A vivid picture, in which we seem to see the blood still actually flowing.
Since, according to the arrangement of the books in the Hebrew Canon, Genesis stood at the beginning and 2 Chronicles at the end, and since the series here indicated opens with the case of Abel Genesis ; Hebrews , so this 2 Chronicles is regarded as the last instance of the murder of a prophet, although, chronologically, that of Urijah Jeremiah belongs to a more recent date.
The Rabbinical writers likewise point to the murder of this Zacharias as one of a peculiarly deplorable nature; see Targum Lamentations ; Lightfoot on our passage. If this latter is the Zacharias referred to in the text, then, inasmuch as the assumption that his father had two names scholion in Matthaei, Chrysostom, Luther, Beza, Grotius, Elsner, Kanne, bibl. Holtzmann, p. This tradition was followed by Matthew; but in the Gospel of the Hebrews the wrong name was carefully avoided, and the correct one, viz.
Jehoiada, inserted instead Hilgenfeld, N. According to others, the person referred to is that Zacharias who was murdered at the commencement of the Jewish war, and whose death is thus recorded by Joseph. It is the opinion of Hug that Jesus, as speaking prophetically, made use of the future tense, but that Matthew substituted a past tense instead, because when this Gospel was written the murder had already been committed after the conquest of Gamala.
Keim likewise finds in this a hint as to the date of the composition of Matthew. But apart from the fact that the names Barachias and Baruch are not one and the same, and that the reading in the passage just quoted from Josephus is doubtful Var. Finally, we may mention, only for the sake of recording them, the ancient opinions in Chrysostom and Theophylact that the Zacharias referred to in our passage was either the minor prophet of that name, or the father of the Baptist see Protevang.
Expositor's Greek Testament Matthew God sent messengers that they might be killed, and that Israel by killing them might deserve to suffer in the final generation wrath to the uttermost. Vide on Matthew Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges The words, however, do not occur in Luke , and are possibly interpolated.
Zechariah the prophet was a son of Barachias: but of his death no record is preserved. Another explanation has been offered. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Sign In or Create an Account. Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation.
Volume os-XIII. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Select Format Select format. But Mr. Now his rejection of them takes away his title to the use of them for this purpose. At any rate, he will not have this history to be the one referred to, so that he has no right to infer inexactitude from it.
However, as men have doubted who it was, he will have the New Testament wrong somehow. And he chooses the most improbable, nay, I think I shall show, impossible supposition, for such only it is, to prove that Matthew, if Matthew it be, has made an undeniable mistake.
Josephus has mentioned a Zacharias, son of Baruchus, killed in the temple, and it is to be he; at least Mr. On what ground, we are left to divine. In the first place, Baruch and Berachiah are not the same name. Both are used; and neither in Hebrew nor in the Septuagint are they confounded. In the next place, the Lord addresses the Jews as guilty already, referring to their previous acts, and saying, "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers, that this blood may come upon you.
They would commit similar ones willfully and complete the dreadful series, so that the time of vengeance should arrive, and all the accumulated guilt of past ages, as to which God had exercised forbearance if peradventure they would repent , would bring its accumulated consequences on their head. But this supposes that the Lord refers to the past acts committed by this people, but not by this generation, and to acts of which their consciences were fully aware.
If it be said, But the question is, Did the Lord say it? If it were He, of course then all objection would be set aside, for it would be a prophecy if He referred to the son of Baruchus; while Matthew saying so leaves the argument just as strong, for it arises from the internal force of the words, which he could not have put into the Lord's mouth. Their meaning, be they whose they may, cannot apply to Baruchus.
Moreover, Baruchus was no prophet; nor, for aught we know, a righteous man. Josephus says he was very rich, and a hater of evil men. But Luke, in the parallel passage, makes the Lord speak only of prophets.
Further, Zacharias, the son of Baruchus, was killed by the zealots just before the temple was besieged. Now, according to all historical evidence, Matthew was written before that-many think, long before it. The siege of Jerusalem, at which time Zacharias the son of Baruchus was killed, took place in the year Some think Matthew wrote his gospel in the year 41, a date borrowed from Eusebius, that is thirty years before the siege of Jerusalem, and the death of the son of Baruchus; and the common account given in the immediately succeeding period, the first centuries, was, that he left it for the use of the Hebrews, when he went forth to preach the gospel elsewhere.
Others, founding themselves on a passage in Irenaeus, think he wrote it so late as 61 or 62, and even as That is, if historical evidence be of any weight at all, the latest period at which Matthew can be supposed to have written his gospel, was six years before the death of the son of Baruchus; so that if he put it in, he was inspired, which after all is absurd, for he could not by inspiration attribute to Christ what He did not say.
To pretend that Matthew is not the real author is to deny all historical evidence whatever. Further, we have Matthew quoted in the Epistle of Barnabas, and quoted as scripture. The author of this latter book, it is not material to my purpose to know. Its early date cannot, I believe, be questioned. Clement of Rome, the companion of apostles, quotes Matthew about the same period. His words may be taken as Luke's, as the passage is nearly the same in both evangelists. Thus we have additional proof of the extreme improbability I may, indeed, say impossibility , historically speaking, of Matthew's Gospel referring to the son of Baruchus, or of its having been written afterward; for it is quoted as scripture within a year or two of his death.
The consideration of the testimony of St. Luke confirms this more than improbability. If Matthew refers to the son of Baruchus, so of course must Luke. It is the same person who is alluded to, as no one, I suppose, doubts. Now Luke, in the Acts, refers to his gospel as a previous treatise which he had written: but in the Acts he closes with St. Paul's imprisonment in Rome; that is to say, the year
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