translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: MAT

label: NET study note

text: Touched. This touch would have rendered Jesus ceremonially unclean ( Lev 14:46 ; also Mishnah, m. Nega’im 3.1; 11.1; 12.1; 13.6-12).


text: The command for silence was probably meant to last only until the cleansing took place with the priests and sought to prevent Jesus’ healings from becoming the central focus of the people’s reaction to him. See also 9:30, 12:16, 16:20, and 17:9 for other cases where Jesus asks for silence concerning him and his ministry.


text: On the phrase bring the offering that Moses commanded see Lev 14:1-32 .


text: Capernaum was a town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, 680 ft (204 m) below sea level. It was a major trade and economic center in the North Galilean region. map For location see Map1-D2 ; Map2-C3 ; Map3-B2 .


text: A centurion was a noncommissioned officer in the Roman army or one of the auxiliary territorial armies, commanding a centuria of (nominally) 100 men. The responsibilities of centurions were broadly similar to modern junior officers, but there was a wide gap in social status between them and officers, and relatively few were promoted beyond the rank of senior centurion. The Roman troops stationed in Judea were auxiliaries, who would normally be rewarded with Roman citizenship after 25 years of service. Some of the centurions may have served originally in the Roman legions (regular army) and thus gained their citizenship at enlistment. Others may have inherited it, like the apostle Paul did.


text: While in Matthew’s account the centurion came to him asking for help , Luke’s account ( 7:1-10 ) mentions that the centurion sent some Jewish elders as emissaries on his behalf.


text: I say to this one ‘Go’ and he goes. The illustrations highlight the view of authority the soldier sees in the word of one who has authority. Since the centurion was a commander of a hundred soldiers, he understood what it was both to command others and to be obeyed.


text: Weeping and gnashing of teeth is a figure for remorse and trauma, which occurs here because of exclusion from God’s promise.


text: Note how the author distinguishes healing from exorcism here, implying that the two are not identical.


text: A quotation from Isa 53:4 .


text: The statement I will follow you wherever you go is an offer to follow Jesus as a disciple, no matter what the cost.


text: Jesus’ reply is simply this: Does the man understand the rejection he will be facing? Jesus has no home in the world ( the Son of Man has no place to lay his head ).


text: There are several options for the meaning of Jesus’ reply Leave the dead to bury their own dead : (1) Recent research suggests that burial customs in the vicinity of Jerusalem from about 20 b.c. to a.d. 70 involved a reinterment of the bones a year after the initial burial, once the flesh had rotted away. At that point the son would have placed his father’s bones in a special box known as an ossuary to be set into the wall of the tomb. Thus Jesus could well be rebuking the man for wanting to wait around for as much as a year before making a commitment to follow him. In 1st century Jewish culture, to have followed Jesus rather than burying one’s father would have seriously dishonored one’s father (cf. Tobit 4:3-4). (2) The remark is an idiom (possibly a proverbial saying) that means, “The matter in question is not the real issue,” in which case Jesus was making a wordplay on the wording of the man’s (literal) request (see L&N 33.137). (3) This remark could be a figurative reference to various kinds of people, meaning, “Let the spiritually dead bury the dead.” (4) It could also be literal and designed to shock the hearer by the surprise of the contrast. Whichever option is preferred, it is clear that the most important priority is to follow Jesus.


text: A boat that held all the disciples would be of significant size.


text: Who has authority over the seas and winds is discussed in the OT: Ps 104:3; 135:7; 107:23-30 . When Jesus rebuked the winds and the sea he was making a statement about who he was.


text: Jesus’ authority over creation raised a question for the disciples about his identity ( What sort of person is this? ). This verse shows that the disciples followed Jesus even though they did not know all about him yet.


text: sa mae) have “Gerasenes,” which is the reading followed in Luke 8:26 . The difference between Matthew and Luke may be due to uses of variant regional terms. The region of the Gadarenes would be in Gentile territory on the southeastern side of the Sea of Galilee across from Galilee. Luke 8:26 and Mark 5:1 record this miracle as occurring “in the region of the Gerasenes.” “Irrespective of how one settles this issue, for the [second and] Third Evangelist the chief concern is that Jesus has crossed over into Gentile territory, ‘opposite Galilee’” (J. B. Green, Luke [NICNT], 337). The region of Gadara extended to the Sea of Galilee and included the town of Sennabris on the southern shore – the town that the herdsmen most likely entered after the drowning of the pigs.


text: There was an appointed time in which demons would face their judgment, and they seem to have viewed Jesus’ arrival on the scene as an illegitimate change in God’s plan regarding the time when their sentence would be executed.