Parables, Exodus and Chastisement
The parables of the mustard seed and leaven are followed by St Matthew's reference to the fulfilment of prophecy—which contains a terrifying warning to the people God had chosen in the Old Testament.
Following the parables of the Mustard Seed and of the Leaven, St Matthew writes:
‘All these things Jesus spake to the multitudes in parables, and without parables He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.’ (Matthew 13.35)
This is an allusion to Psalm 77, one of the so-called ‘Psalms of Asaph’:
‘Attend, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables: I will utter propositions from the beginning.’ (Psalm 77. 1-2)
What is the significance of this reference?
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
Why St Matthew refers these parables to the Old Testament
How this reference is to God’s dealings with his people
How this psalm shows that preaching of parables was a warning of the chastisement of Galilee and of Israel itself.
Questions to consider:
Why do you think the Church sings this parable for this part of the liturgical year?
Why are all the readings from these surrounding Sundays drawn from the same part of Christ’s public life?
Why do the final Sundays converge around the parables, and these parables in particular?
Share your thoughts below.
This is a commentary on the second part of the Gospel read on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. Here are the first and second parts:
Commentaries on further parts will follow.
The Parables of Asaph
From
The Training of the Apostles Vol. III
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1884, Ch. XIV, pp 222-230
St. Matt. xiii. 35
Story of the Gospels, § 60
Sung at the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany and in one of the “spare” Sundays at the end of Pentecostide
Quotation by St. Matthew
This parable of the Leaven seems to have been the last which our Lord, on this occasion, delivered to the people. St. Matthew, whose Gospel, as has already been said, is the fullest of all in relating this kind of teaching, adds, at this point, a statement about our Lord’s method, which he, the Evangelist, as is so usual with him, illustrates from the Old Testament.
‘All these things Jesus spake to the multitudes in parables, and without parables He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.’
Thus St. Matthew finds, in the adoption of this form of teaching by our Lord in His dealings with the multitude, another trait of that resemblance to the picture of the promised Messias which had been drawn by the prophets of the Old Testament. He sees here also a fulfilment of prophecy.
It is therefore interesting to examine the particular passage to which he refers, for the purpose of comparing the anticipation with the fulfilment.
The Psalms of Asaph
At first sight the fulfilment adduced by the Evangelist seems to rest mainly on the use of the word parable in the passage which he quotes. The passage is not from the prophetical books in the strictest sense, but from the Psalms, so many of which are full of predictions concerning our Lord.
The words do not occur, however, in any of the Psalms which are commonly considered as prophetic. They occur at the opening of the long and very beautiful Psalm of Asaph, the seventy-seventh in the whole collection. This psalm forms part of the series of what are called the Asaphic psalms, which make up the greater part of the third book into which the whole collection is divided.
They may not all be the production of Asaph himself, who was a contemporary of David, for he left a school or choir behind him, and the spirit of the psalms which he himself wrote may have been taken up by members of this choir at later periods of the history, when events occurred of import similar to that of those events which he commemorated.
Characteristics
The distinguishing character of these psalms of Asaph is that they dwell on the Providence of God over His people, whether in chastisement or in protection. They are not personal psalms, like so many of those of David.
The earliest of these psalms, in the order in which we now possess them, is that which is the forty-ninth in the Vulgate. It is a psalm describing the judgments of God in general, though probably not without reference to the circumstances of the day in which it was written. This is in the second book of psalms.
The third book opens with a mournful psalm, the seventy-second of our collection, in which the author describes himself as sorely tempted against faith in Providence, on account of the prosperity of the wicked. It may perhaps have been written by Asaph during and after the short-lived triumph of Absalom.
The next in the series describes the destruction of the Temple by the Chaldeans, and must therefore have been simply prophetic, if it was written by Asaph himself, but not so if it is the composition of a later author.
Then follows a short psalm of triumph for the overthrow of the proud enemies of God, and this may have been occasioned by the famous overthrow of the Assyrians in the time of Ezechias. This seems certainly to be the subject of the next in order, the seventy-fifth of the Vulgate.
The next of these psalms is directly historical, the writer finding comfort, under the afflictions of the people in his own days, by the record of the great doings of God for them in the deliverance from the Egyptians.
‘Thy way is in the sea and thy paths in many waters, and thy footsteps shall not be known. Thou hast conducted Thy people like sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.’
Psalm 77
Thus we are led on to the great psalm from which St. Matthew quotes the words on which we are engaged, which carries on the history to its second great point, the elevation of David and of the tribe of Judah in his person.
Thus the psalm embraces the whole second period of the history of the people as a nation, the period of the predominance of the tribe of Ephraim, when the Tabernacle was at Silo, the predominance which was afterwards to some extent restored by the revolt of the ten tribes under Jeroboam from the house of David.
But there is a special strain of reproach in this psalm, which recounts not only the manner in which God had had mercy on His people time after time, but also how He had been again and again rewarded by their apostasy or rebellion.
This strain may have been in the mind of the Evangelist when he spoke of the chastisement of the people of Galilee, by the comparative withdrawal of the full light of the Gospel teaching, at the point of time when the parabolic form of teaching was exclusively followed by our Lord in His addresses to them.
Chastisement of the chosen people—The Exodus
With this thought in our minds, we shall find it very interesting to follow the various ‘movements,’ so to speak, of which the psalm, like some wonderful piece of sacred music, is made up.
The purport of the whole psalm, as has been said, is to reproach the people with their continual ingratitude to the favours of God, and to show also how God has, over and over again, borne with them with exceeding patience, and overcome, so to say, their evil by His own ineffable and inexhaustible mercy.
The psalm begins by declaring how God had decreed that His dealings with His people should be remembered and handed on from generation to generation, ‘that they may put their hope in God and may not forget the works of God, and may seek His commandments.
That they may not become like their fathers, a perverse and exasperating generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God. They kept not the covenant of God, and in His Law they would not walk, and they forgot His benefits, and His wonders that He had shown them.’
Chastisement in the desert
Asaph then relates the marvels of their deliverance from Egypt, the Exodus, their guidance by God in the desert, the water given them out of the rock, and the rest. Then again comes in the refrain,
‘They added yet more sin against Him, they provoked the Most High to wrath in the place without waters.’
He speaks of their murmuring against God for their want of food. God was angry with them, but still He provided for them.
‘He had commanded the clouds from above, and had opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them the bread of heaven. Man eat the bread of angels, He sent them provisions in abundance.’
He mentions also the quails which were sent for their food, and their subsequent rebellion.
‘As yet the meat was in their mouths, and the wrath of God came upon them. In all these things they sinned still, and believed not for His wondrous works, and their days were consumed in vanity, and their years in haste.’
But their chastisements brought them to repentance.
‘When He slew them, then they sought Him, and they returned, and came to Him early in the morning, and they remembered that God was their helper, and the Most High God their Redeemer.’
But still it was a hollow, or at least not a lasting repentance.
‘They loved Him with their mouths, and with their tongues they lied unto Him, but their heart was not right with Him, nor were they counted faithful in His covenant.’
In the Holy Land
Nevertheless, Asaph continues, God was again merciful.
‘He is merciful, and will forgive their sins, and will not destroy them… He remembered that they are flesh, a wind that goeth and returneth not. How often did they provoke Him in the desert, and move Him to wrath in the place without water?’
Then the Psalmist goes back again to the wonders of the deliverance from Egypt, and of the chastisements of God on the enemies of His people. He goes on to the mercies shown in their introduction into the promised land.
‘He brought them into the mountain of His sanctuary, the mountain which His right hand had purchased. And He cast out the Gentiles before them, and by lot divided to them their land by a line of distribution, and He made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tabernacles.’
But still they behaved with Him as before.
‘Yet they tempted and provoked the Most High God, and they kept not His testimonies…’
The long series of their infidelities, up to the time of their enslavement to the Philistines, from which they were delivered by Samuel, Saul, and David, is passed over in a few mournful verses.
‘He put away the tabernacle of Silo, the tabernacle where He dwelt among men, and He delivered their Strength into captivity, and their beauty into the hands of the enemy…’
But after this there was again a return of His mercy.
‘The Lord was awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that hath been surfeited with wine.’
The psalm ends with recording the choice now made by God of Juda instead of Ephraim, Jerusalem instead of Silo, ‘the tabernacle of Joseph,’ and of David instead of Saul.
St. Matthew and the Old Testament
Thus we find that the passage quoted by St. Matthew as containing a prophecy of the adoption of the parabolic method by our Lord in His teaching, refers us to the whole subject of the dealings of God with His people, and more especially to that part of those dealings which consisted in His chastisement of them for their perversity, and the continual returns of His mercy.
It is enough, perhaps, for the explanation of St. Matthew’s use of the words which he quotes, that they speak of parables and deep sayings, things ‘hidden from the foundation of the world.’ For St. Matthew is so keen in his perception of the anticipations of the New Testament which are to be found in the Old, that the mere words of Asaph in the psalm before us would be enough to arrest his attention.
Still, it is not straining the meaning of Scripture too far to see in the words of the Evangelist something deeper than this. It is the method of St. Matthew, as we have seen more than once, to point to whole contexts of Scripture by the citation of a few words from those contexts.
If we ask ourselves what are the parables which Asaph pours forth in the great psalm of which we are speaking, we can find no better answer than this—that they are contained in the dealings of God with His people, which have a significance beyond that of simple historical narrative, inasmuch as they are in themselves the representations and exemplifications of great principles which regulate the whole course of His action towards those whom He chooses to favour.
He was acting on these principles in the very matter before us, of the withdrawing from the people of the full light of our Lord’s teaching, and the parables now delivered were in themselves the exposition of many of these principles.
St. Paul’s interpretation of the Scripture history
We have the authority of St. Paul for this interpretation of the Scripture history, and St. Paul may be taken as representing the best school of prophetical interpretation among the doctors of Jerusalem in the time of our Lord.
St. Paul uses the history of the chosen people, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, in this way, for the purpose of warning the new Christians against provoking God as the Israelites of old had provoked Him.
‘I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all in Moses were baptized in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, and they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.’
Here is a spiritual interpretation of those marvels of which so much is said in the beautiful Psalm of Asaph. The Apostle continues, ‘But with the most of them God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the desert.’ This is the other strain, so to speak, of the same Psalm.
‘Now these things were done in a figure of us, that we should not covet evil things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them… neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in a figure, and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come.’1
There is considerable correspondence between the actual events selected by Asaph and those selected by St. Paul. But the most important point is the principle of interpretation adopted by the Apostle, which is like that which he uses in his Epistle to the Galatians in the famous comparison of Sara and Agar to the two covenants.2
But if we may suppose that the Psalmist meant to point to this representative and typical character of the events on which he was to dwell, by the words which he uses at the opening of his poem—for a most beautiful poem it is—we are able to see in St. Matthew’s application of his words, a fresh and a deeper meaning.
Application by St. Matthew
The great subject of the psalm, as has been said, is the manner in which God deals with His people, correcting them, chastising them, and then again forgiving them and defending them. The psalm ends with the introduction of David, to whom the guidance of the people is committed.
‘He chose His servant David, and took him from the flocks of sheep. He brought him from following the ewes great with young, to feed Jacob His servant, and Israel His inheritance. And he fed them in the innocence of his heart, and conducted them by the skilfulness of his hands.’
David, especially in his kingly character, and, it may be added, especially in the character of a good shepherd of the people of God, is a type of our Lord and of those who represent Him, in successive generations, as the pastors of the universal Church. This would be enough to attract the attentive devotion of a mind like St. Matthew’s.
But it may be said without straining, that the subject-matter of this series of parables, taken as a whole, is much the same as that which, if we follow the line of interpretation suggested by St. Paul, is suggested by the series of historical events in the Psalm of Asaph. The only difference between the two is the difference naturally caused by the different spirit of the two covenants.
The scattering broadcast the seed of the Word, the patience with which so many failures are tolerated, caused by the perverseness of those to whom the Word is addressed, the permission of evil even in the kingdom of the Church, the chastisements which in the New Covenant are so constantly deferred till the end of the world instead of being at once inflicted, the marvellous constancy of God in bringing about His work as instanced in the two last parables, represent to us what we may call an Evangelical version of those very rules of conduct on the part of God which are instanced, in a more severe exemplification, in the narrative of Asaph.
The chastisement which is inflicted on the people of Galilee is not anything that can be compared in external severity to the miseries which were allowed to fall on the Israelites of old, and yet, in truth, it is something more terrible, because it is a spiritual chastisement. It is the captivity of sin and darkness, the withdrawal of light, the handing them over to enemies more savage and relentless than Egyptians or Philistines.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Training of the Apostles Vol. III
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Cor. x. i-ii
Gal. iv.