Matthew 16: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Pharisees and Sadducees ask Jesus for a sign from the sky, and he refuses them any sign except the sign of Jonah. He warns his disciples about the teaching of these groups, and near Caesarea Philippi he asks who people say he is; Peter answers that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus then tells the disciples for the first time that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and be raised on the third day, and he rebukes Peter for objecting. He tells them what following him will cost, and says some standing there will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

Claim by Claim

1. 16:1
   • The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus.
   • They asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
   • They asked this to test him.
2. 16:2
   • Jesus answered them.
   • He said that when evening comes they say the weather will be fair.
   • He said they say this because the sky is red.
3. 16:3
   • Jesus said that in the morning they say it will be stormy weather today.
   • He said they say this because the sky is red and gloomy.
   • Jesus called them hypocrites.
   • He said they know how to discern the appearance of the sky.
   • He asked whether they cannot discern the signs of the times.
4. 16:4
   • Jesus said a wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign.
   • He said no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
   • He called Jonah a prophet.
   • Jesus left them.
   • Jesus went away.
5. 16:5
   • The disciples came to the other side.
   • They had forgotten to take bread.
6. 16:6
   • Jesus told them to watch out.
   • Jesus told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
7. 16:7
   • The disciples reasoned among themselves.
   • They said it was because they had taken no bread.
8. 16:8
   • Jesus knew what they were reasoning.
   • Jesus called them men of little faith.
   • Jesus asked why they were reasoning among themselves about having no bread.
9. 16:9
   • Jesus asked whether they still did not understand.
   • Jesus asked whether they did not remember the five loaves for the five thousand.
   • Jesus asked how many baskets they took up.
10. 16:10
    • Jesus asked whether they remembered the seven loaves for the four thousand.
    • Jesus asked how many baskets they took up.
11. 16:11
    • Jesus asked how it is that they do not understand that he was not speaking to them about bread.
    • Jesus told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
12. 16:12
    • Then the disciples understood.
    • They understood that he had not told them to beware of the leaven of bread.
    • They understood that he meant the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
13. 16:13
    • Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi.
    • Jesus asked his disciples who men say that the Son of man is.
    • In the King James, Jesus identifies himself as the Son of man in the question.
14. 16:14
    • The disciples said some say he is John the Baptist.
    • They said others say Elijah.
    • They said others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
15. 16:15
    • Jesus asked them who they say that he is.
16. 16:16
    • Simon Peter answered.
    • Peter said Jesus is the Christ.
    • Peter said Jesus is the Son of the living God.
    • Peter called God living.
17. 16:17
    • Jesus answered Peter.
    • Jesus said Peter is blessed.
    • Jesus called him Simon son of Jonah.
    • Jesus said flesh and blood did not reveal this to him.
    • Jesus said his Father in heaven revealed it to him.
18. 16:18
    • Jesus said to Peter that he is Peter.
    • Jesus said that on this rock he will build his church.
    • Jesus said the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
19. 16:19
    • Jesus said he will give Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
    • Jesus said whatever Peter binds on earth will be bound in heaven.
    • Jesus said whatever Peter looses on earth will be loosed in heaven.
20. 16:20
    • Then Jesus charged his disciples.
    • He charged them to tell no one that he was the Christ.
    • In the King James he is called Jesus the Christ.
21. 16:21
    • From that time Jesus began to show his disciples what must happen.
    • He showed that he must go to Jerusalem.
    • He showed that he must suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes.
    • He showed that he must be killed.
    • He showed that he must be raised on the third day.
22. 16:22
    • Peter took Jesus aside.
    • Peter began to rebuke him.
    • Peter said, God be merciful to you, Lord.
    • Peter said this shall never happen to Jesus.
23. 16:23
    • Jesus turned.
    • Jesus said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan.
    • Jesus said Peter is a stumbling block to him.
    • Jesus said Peter does not have in mind the things of God.
    • Jesus said Peter has in mind the things of men.
24. 16:24
    • Then Jesus said to his disciples that if anyone wants to come after him, he must deny himself.
    • He said such a person must take up his cross.
    • He said such a person must follow him.
25. 16:25
    • Jesus said whoever wants to save his life will lose it.
    • Jesus said whoever loses his life for Jesus' sake will find it.
26. 16:26
    • Jesus asked what a man is profited if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul.
    • Jesus asked what a man will give in exchange for his soul.
27. 16:27
    • Jesus said the Son of man is going to come in the glory of his Father.
    • Jesus said he will come with his angels.
    • Jesus said he will then repay each person according to his deeds.
28. 16:28
    • Jesus said truly to them that some standing there will not taste death until they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Words Worth Explaining

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

16:1

The Pharisees and the Sadducees were rival groups, and their teaming up here is itself unusual. The Pharisees were a lay movement devoted to precise keeping of the law of Moses together with the oral traditions built up around it; they were popular and influential in local synagogues. The Sadducees were drawn largely from wealthy priestly families connected with the Temple in Jerusalem; they accepted only the written law and rejected much of what the Pharisees taught, including the resurrection of the dead. A "sign from heaven" is not a sign seen in the sky so much as one produced by God himself: "heaven" was a common respectful way of saying God without using the name.

16:3

"Lowring" (also spelled lowering) is an old English word for a sky that is dark, heavy and threatening, the look of weather about to turn. The word behind "hypocrites" was the ordinary Greek word for an actor on a stage, someone speaking lines that are not his own; the picture is of playing a part rather than of secret wickedness in general.

16:4

Calling a generation "adulterous" draws on the older prophets, who described the bond between God and Israel as a marriage, so that turning to other gods counted as unfaithfulness by a spouse. "Jonas" is the King James spelling of Jonah, taken from the Greek form of the Hebrew name; the book of Jonah tells of a prophet who spent three days inside a great fish and was then brought out alive, and who preached to the city of Nineveh.

16:5

The "other side" is the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, a freshwater lake about thirteen miles long that the disciples crossed regularly by boat.

16:6

Leaven is yeast, but in this world it was not a packet bought at a store. A cook kept back a lump of already fermented dough from the last batch and worked it into the new one, so a small hidden piece changed the whole mass. That is why leaven works as a figure of speech for an influence that spreads quietly and cannot be picked back out.

16:9

This refers back to two events the disciples had already seen, the feeding of five thousand people from five loaves (Matthew 14) and the feeding of four thousand from seven loaves (Matthew 15). In both, far more broken pieces were collected afterward than there had been food to begin with.

16:10

The Greek uses a different word for "baskets" here from the one in the previous verse. The first is a smaller hand basket a traveler might carry; this one is a large hamper, big enough for a man to fit inside. The disciples would have caught the distinction between the two occasions where English readers see only one word.

16:13

"Coasts" in 1611 English meant borders or the surrounding district, with no connection to the sea. Caesarea Philippi lay far to the north, at the foot of Mount Hermon near one of the sources of the Jordan; it had been rebuilt by Herod Philip, who named it for the Roman emperor and added his own name to distinguish it from the coastal Caesarea. It was a place of pagan shrines and largely non-Jewish population, well outside Galilee. "Son of man" is an expression Jesus regularly uses of himself; in Hebrew and Aramaic it can mean simply a human being, but it also recalls the figure in Daniel 7 who is given lasting authority, and the phrase carries both senses at once.

16:14

"Elias" and "Jeremias" are the King James spellings, taken from Greek, of Elijah and Jeremiah. Elijah had been carried off without dying and the prophet Malachi said he would return before the great day of the Lord, so people watched for him. John the Baptist had been executed by Herod only shortly before this (Matthew 14), which is why saying Jesus was John meant saying John had come back.

16:16

"Christ" is not a name but a title. It translates the Hebrew word Messiah, meaning "anointed one," someone marked out for an office by having oil poured over him, as kings and priests were. The expression "the living God" was a standing phrase contrasting the God of Israel with carved images, which cannot act.

16:17

"Barjona" is Aramaic, bar meaning "son of": Simon son of Jonah. "Flesh and blood" was a common Jewish expression for a human being considered in his ordinary, mortal capacity, so the sentence means that no person told him this.

16:18

There is a play on words here that English cannot quite carry. The Greek name Petros and the word petra, "rock," are the same word in two forms; in Aramaic, which Jesus was probably speaking, the name and the word would have been identical, Kepha. The word rendered "church" is ekklesia, which meant an assembly of people called together, and in the Greek Old Testament it is used for the congregation of Israel; it never means a building. "Hell" here translates Hades, the underworld where all the dead were held, not a place of punishment for the wicked in particular. A city's gates were where its strength was concentrated and where its rulers sat, so "the gates of Hades" is a way of speaking of the power of death itself.

16:19

Keys stand for the authority of a household steward, who alone decided who and what came in; Isaiah 22:22 uses the same image of an official given the key of the house of David. "Bind" and "loose" were ordinary terms among Jewish teachers for declaring a thing forbidden or permitted, and also for excluding someone from the community or receiving him back.

16:20

Most people expected the Christ to be a fighting king who would drive the Romans out of the country. Saying the title out loud in public would have started the wrong kind of excitement.

16:21

The elders, chief priests and scribes were the three groups that made up the Sanhedrin, the ruling council in Jerusalem. Elders were heads of leading families; chief priests were senior Temple officials, including former high priests; scribes were the professional experts in the law, which is why the rendering calls them teachers of the law. "The third day" is counted the way these writers count, including both the day something starts and the day it ends, so Friday to Sunday is three days.

16:22

"Be it far from thee" translates an idiom that is literally something like "God be merciful to you," used as a strong protest: may God spare you that, it must not happen.

16:23

"Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning adversary or opponent, one who stands in the way. "Offence" in 1611 did not mean hurt feelings; it translates skandalon, the trigger of a trap or a stone left in a path, something that trips a person up. "Savourest" has nothing to do with taste; it means to have one's mind set on something, to think along certain lines.

16:24

A man condemned to crucifixion was made to carry the crossbeam of his own cross to the place of execution, walking through the streets in front of onlookers. For the first hearers the phrase was not a figure for putting up with hardships; it named a specific, public, humiliating walk toward death.

16:25

The word translated "life" here is the same Greek word translated "soul" in the next verse, psyche. It means a person's life, the self that lives, and the two verses are one continuous argument using one word throughout.

16:26

"What is a man profited" means "what does a person really gain." A person's "soul" here means his own true self, his life.

16:27

"Reward" in 1611 English meant to pay back what is owed, whether the payment is welcome or not; the Greek word is likewise a term of settling accounts.

16:28

"Verily" renders amen, a Hebrew word of affirmation. Used at the start of a sentence like this it is unusual, marking what follows as solemn and certain. "Taste of death" is a standing Jewish expression for dying, the way we might say to meet one's end.