Matthew 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus finishes teaching his twelve disciples and goes out to teach and preach. John the Baptist, in prison, sends his disciples to ask whether Jesus is the one who was coming; Jesus points to what he is doing and then tells the crowds who John is. He rebukes the towns that saw most of his miracles and did not change their ways, prays to the Father about what has been hidden and revealed, and invites those who are worn out to come to him for rest.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Jesus finished commanding his twelve disciples.
   • When he had finished, he departed from there.
   • He went to teach and to preach in their cities.
2. 11:2
   • John heard in the prison about the works of Christ.
   • John sent to Jesus by means of his disciples.
   • The King James says John sent two of his disciples.
3. 11:3
   • The message asked Jesus whether he is the one who is coming.
   • The message asked whether they should look for another.
4. 11:4
   • Jesus answered them.
   • Jesus told them to go and report to John what they hear and see.
5. 11:5
   • The blind receive sight.
   • The lame walk.
   • Lepers are cleansed.
   • The deaf hear.
   • The dead are raised.
   • The poor have the good news preached to them.
6. 11:6
   • Whoever is not caused to stumble because of Jesus is blessed.
7. 11:7
   • As John's disciples were departing, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.
   • Jesus asked what they went out into the wilderness to see.
   • Jesus asked whether they went out to see a reed shaken by the wind.
8. 11:8
   • Jesus asked what they went out to see.
   • Jesus asked whether they went out to see a man dressed in soft clothing.
   • Those who wear soft clothing are in the houses of kings.
9. 11:9
   • Jesus asked what they went out to see.
   • Jesus asked whether they went out to see a prophet.
   • Jesus said yes.
   • Jesus said John is more than a prophet.
10. 11:10
    • John is the one about whom it is written.
    • The writing says God sends his messenger before your face.
    • The writing says that messenger will prepare your way before you.
11. 11:11
    • Jesus said truly to them.
    • Among those born of women no one greater than John the Baptist has arisen.
    • The one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.
12. 11:12
    • From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence or forcefully advances.
    • Violent people seize it.
13. 11:13
    • All the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
14. 11:14
    • If they are willing to receive it, John is Elijah who was to come.
15. 11:15
    • The one who has ears should hear.
    • The King James says the one who has ears to hear should hear.
16. 11:16
    • Jesus asked what he shall compare this generation to.
    • This generation is like children sitting in the marketplaces.
    • The children call out to the others.
17. 11:17
    • The children say they played the flute and the others did not dance.
    • The children say they sang a dirge and the others did not mourn.
    • The King James says they mourned unto you and ye have not lamented.
18. 11:18
    • John came neither eating nor drinking.
    • People say John has a demon.
19. 11:19
    • The Son of Man came eating and drinking.
    • People say he is a gluttonous man and a drunkard.
    • People say he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
    • Wisdom is justified by her works.
    • The King James says wisdom is justified of her children.
20. 11:20
    • Jesus then began to reproach the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done.
    • He reproached them because they did not repent.
21. 11:21
    • Jesus pronounced woe on Chorazin.
    • Jesus pronounced woe on Bethsaida.
    • If the mighty works done in them had been done in Tyre and Sidon, those cities would have repented long ago.
    • Those cities would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
22. 11:22
    • Jesus said it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for Chorazin and Bethsaida.
23. 11:23
    • Jesus asked Capernaum whether it will be lifted up to heaven.
    • The King James says Capernaum is exalted to heaven.
    • Capernaum will be brought down to Hades.
    • If the mighty works done in Capernaum had been done in Sodom, Sodom would have remained until this day.
24. 11:24
    • Jesus said it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for Capernaum.
25. 11:25
    • At that time Jesus responded and spoke.
    • Jesus praised the Father.
    • Jesus called the Father Lord of heaven and earth.
    • The Father hid these things from the wise and understanding.
    • The Father revealed these things to little children.
26. 11:26
    • Jesus affirmed this to the Father.
    • This was well-pleasing in the Father's sight.
27. 11:27
    • All things have been delivered to Jesus by his Father.
    • No one knows the Son except the Father.
    • No one knows the Father except the Son.
    • The Father is known by anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28. 11:28
    • Jesus called all who labor and are burdened to come to him.
    • Jesus said he will give them rest.
29. 11:29
    • Jesus told them to take his yoke upon them.
    • Jesus told them to learn from him.
    • Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart.
    • They will find rest for their souls.
30. 11:30
    • Jesus' yoke is easy.
    • Jesus' burden is light.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

Disciples were students who followed a teacher everywhere. They learned by copying the way he lived, not just by listening. Jesus had twelve close ones.

11:2

"Christ" is a title, not a second name: the Greek word christos means "anointed one," the same thing the Hebrew word behind "Messiah" means. So the question John sends in the next verse is about whether Jesus is the figure people were waiting for. John was being held by Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, whose marriage John had publicly condemned.

11:3

"He that should come," literally "the coming one," was a recognized way of referring to the expected deliverer without naming him outright.

11:4

"Shew" is simply the old spelling of "show."

11:5

The biblical term the King James renders "lepers" covered a range of persistent skin conditions, not only the disease doctors now call leprosy. A person with one counted as ritually unclean and had to live apart from everyone else, which is why the word for a cure is "cleansed" rather than "healed": the person was restored to ordinary life in the community, not just to health. The whole list of signs is worded in the language of the prophet Isaiah, so the messengers would hear it as a claim and not only as a report.

11:6

In 1611 "offended" meant tripped up or made to stumble; the Greek word is the root of our word "scandal." It has nothing to do with being insulted or annoyed.

11:7

The "wilderness" is not forest but dry, thinly settled open country with few people in it, the kind of place John preached in. Reeds grew thick along the nearby Jordan River, and a reed bending with every passing breeze was a stock image for a man with no firmness of his own.

11:8

"Raiment" simply means clothing. Fine soft fabric was expensive and marked a man of the royal court, which is the point of the remark: the ruler holding John in prison lived in exactly such a palace.

11:9

A prophet was someone who spoke God's messages to the people. Prophets often warned crowds and even kings, so the job could be dangerous.

11:10

The quoted words come from the prophet Malachi, with an echo of a line in Exodus. A "messenger" here is a herald sent on ahead of a traveling king to announce him and get the road into passable condition, which is what "prepare thy way" pictures.

11:11

Matthew writes "kingdom of heaven" where the other Gospels usually write "kingdom of God"; "heaven" was a respectful substitute for the divine name among Jewish writers. The phrase means God's rule or reign taking effect, more an event than a location. "Verily" translates the Hebrew word amen, used here to open a statement rather than close a prayer.

11:12

This is one of the hardest sentences in the Gospels, and the difficulty is in the Greek itself. The verb can be read as passive, "the kingdom is being attacked," or as middle, "the kingdom has been forcing its way forward." The people in the second half can be hostile men seizing it by force or eager people laying hold of it. Both readings were current in the ancient world. Note also that "suffereth violence" in 1611 means undergoes violence, not tolerates it.

11:13

"The prophets and the law" names the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures by its two main divisions.

11:14

"Elias" is just the Greek spelling of the name Elijah. The book of Malachi closes with a promise that Elijah would be sent before the great day of the LORD, and many people expected that literally.

11:15

A proverbial call for close attention, roughly "if you can take this in, take it in." It marks the saying just made as one that needs working out.

11:16

The marketplace was the open square at the center of a town, the place where business, gossip and public life all happened, and where children played while adults worked.

11:17

Both halves describe children imitating the two great public occasions of village life. Weddings were led by pipers; funerals were loud and public, with hired mourners wailing, beating their breasts and singing set dirges, and everyone present was expected to join in.

11:18

"Neither eating nor drinking" means John stayed away from ordinary shared meals and from wine, living on desert food; it does not mean he never ate. The King James "devil" here renders a word meaning a demon or unclean spirit. Saying a person had one was a common way of dismissing strange behavior as madness.

11:19

"Son of man" is the phrase Jesus regularly uses of himself. In everyday Aramaic it could mean simply "a human being," or serve as an indirect way of saying "I," and it is also the title of the figure who receives everlasting rule in the book of Daniel. The ambiguity is in the original. "Winebibber" means drunkard. "Publicans" were tax and toll collectors, local men who bought from Rome the right to collect, and they were despised both as collaborators with an occupying power and as men who overcharged. In "wisdom is justified of her children," "justified" carries its old sense of proved right or vindicated; some early manuscripts read "her works" or "her deeds" in place of "her children," which is why modern translations differ at the end of this verse.

11:20

"Upbraid" means to reproach or rebuke sharply. "Mighty works" are deeds of power, what we would call miracles. To "repent" is to change your mind and turn around, a reversal of direction rather than a feeling of regret.

11:21

Chorazin and Bethsaida were small towns within a few miles of Capernaum at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. Tyre and Sidon were wealthy Phoenician port cities up the coast, foreign and not Jewish, and earlier prophets had denounced them by name, so they served as a byword for outsiders under judgment. Sackcloth was coarse dark cloth woven from goat hair and worn next to the skin; scattering ashes on the head or sitting in them went with it. Together these were the recognized public signs of grief or of repentance, meant to be seen.

11:22

"More tolerable" means more bearable. The "day of judgment" is the expected day when God settles accounts with everyone.

11:23

The image of being lifted to heaven and then thrown down echoes Isaiah's taunt over the king of Babylon. The King James "hell" here translates "Hades," the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, not the place of punishment that the same translation also calls hell elsewhere; the picture is of being brought as low as anything can be brought. Capernaum was the lakeside town Jesus used as his base. Sodom was the city destroyed by fire in the book of Genesis, ever after a byword for wickedness and sudden ruin.

11:25

"Answered and said" is a Hebrew and Aramaic way of opening speech; nobody has asked a question. "I thank thee" translates a verb closer to "I acknowledge you openly" or "I praise you." "Prudent" in 1611 meant shrewd, clever, expensively educated, and "babes" means infants or small children, standing here for people with no such training.

11:26

"For so it seemed good in thy sight" is a set idiom meaning "this was what pleased you" or "such was your choice." It is not a comment on how things merely appeared.

11:27

"Delivered unto me" means handed over or entrusted, the way full authority is handed to a deputy. "Know" here is not knowing facts about someone but knowing the person, as one family member knows another.

11:28

"Labour" here means working to the point of exhaustion, and "heavy laden" pictures a porter or a pack animal loaded past what it can comfortably carry.

11:29

A yoke is the shaped wooden beam laid across the necks of a pair of oxen so they pull together under one driver. Jewish teachers used it as a standing image for what a body of teaching asks of a student, speaking of taking on "the yoke of the law" or "the yoke of the kingdom," so inviting someone to take your yoke was inviting them to become your pupil. "Meek and lowly in heart" means gentle and low in one's own estimation, not weak or timid.

11:30

The Greek word behind "easy" means kindly, serviceable, or well fitting, the way a yoke shaped to the particular animal wearing it does not rub or chafe. It does not mean requiring little effort.