Matthew 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Matthew 8 follows the Sermon on the Mount with a series of healings: a man with leprosy, a Roman officer's paralyzed servant, Peter's mother-in-law, and many others brought at evening. Between them, Jesus answers a scribe who offers to follow him and a disciple who asks to bury his father first about the cost of going with him, calms a storm on the sea, and drives demons out of two men into a herd of pigs. Matthew ties the healings to a line from the prophet Isaiah, and ends with the townspeople asking Jesus to leave their region.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • Jesus came down from the mountain.
   • Great multitudes followed him.
2. 8:2
   • A leper came to Jesus.
   • The leper worshipped him.
   • The leper called him Lord.
   • The leper said that if Jesus was willing, Jesus was able to make him clean.
3. 8:3
   • Jesus stretched out his hand.
   • Jesus touched the leper.
   • Jesus said, I am willing.
   • Jesus said, Be clean.
   • Immediately the man's leprosy was cleansed.
4. 8:4
   • Jesus told him to see that he told no one.
   • Jesus told him to go and show himself to the priest.
   • Jesus told him to offer the gift that Moses commanded.
   • Jesus said the offering was for a testimony to them.
5. 8:5
   • Jesus entered Capernaum.
   • A centurion came to him.
   • The centurion pleaded with him.
6. 8:6
   • The centurion called him Lord.
   • The centurion said his servant lay at home paralyzed.
   • The centurion said his servant was grievously tormented.
7. 8:7
   • Jesus said he would come and heal the servant.
8. 8:8
   • The centurion answered.
   • The centurion called him Lord.
   • The centurion said he was not worthy for Jesus to come under his roof.
   • The centurion asked Jesus only to speak the word.
   • The centurion said that then his servant would be healed.
9. 8:9
   • The centurion said he was a man under authority.
   • The centurion said he had soldiers under him.
   • The centurion said he tells one to go and he goes.
   • The centurion said he tells another to come and he comes.
   • The centurion said he tells his slave to do this and he does it.
10. 8:10
    • Jesus heard this.
    • Jesus marvelled.
    • Jesus spoke to those who followed.
    • Jesus said, Truly I say to you.
    • Jesus said he had not found so great faith in Israel.
11. 8:11
    • Jesus said many would come from the east and the west.
    • Jesus said they would recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
    • Jesus said this would be in the kingdom of heaven.
12. 8:12
    • Jesus said the sons of the kingdom would be cast out into the outer darkness.
    • Jesus said there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth there.
13. 8:13
    • Jesus said to the centurion, Go.
    • Jesus said, As you have believed, so let it be done for you.
    • The servant was healed in that hour.
14. 8:14
    • Jesus came into Peter's house.
    • Jesus saw Peter's mother-in-law lying down.
    • She was sick with a fever.
15. 8:15
    • Jesus touched her hand.
    • The fever left her.
    • She got up.
    • She served him.
16. 8:16
    • Evening came.
    • They brought many demon-possessed people to Jesus.
    • Jesus cast out the spirits with a word.
    • Jesus healed all who were sick.
17. 8:17
    • This happened so that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled.
    • Isaiah said, He himself took our infirmities.
    • Isaiah said, He bore our diseases.
18. 8:18
    • Jesus saw a crowd around him.
    • Jesus gave the order to depart to the other side.
19. 8:19
    • A scribe came to him.
    • The scribe called him Teacher.
    • The scribe said he would follow Jesus wherever he went.
20. 8:20
    • Jesus said foxes have holes.
    • Jesus said the birds of the air have nests.
    • Jesus said the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
21. 8:21
    • Another of his disciples spoke to him.
    • The disciple called him Lord.
    • The disciple asked permission first to go and bury his father.
22. 8:22
    • Jesus told him, Follow me.
    • Jesus told him to let the dead bury their own dead.
23. 8:23
    • Jesus got into the boat.
    • His disciples followed him.
24. 8:24
    • A great tempest arose on the sea.
    • The boat was being covered by the waves.
    • Jesus was asleep.
25. 8:25
    • His disciples came to him.
    • They woke him.
    • They called him Lord.
    • They asked him to save them.
    • They said they were perishing.
26. 8:26
    • Jesus asked them why they were afraid.
    • Jesus called them of little faith.
    • Jesus got up.
    • Jesus rebuked the winds and the sea.
    • There was a great calm.
27. 8:27
    • The men marvelled.
    • They asked what kind of man this is.
    • They said that even the winds and the sea obey him.
28. 8:28
    • Jesus came to the other side.
    • He came into the country of the Gergesenes, which the Greek text here calls the country of the Gadarenes.
    • Two demon-possessed men met him.
    • They were coming out of the tombs.
    • They were exceedingly fierce.
    • No one was able to pass by that way.
29. 8:29
    • They cried out.
    • They asked what they had to do with him.
    • They called him Son of God.
    • They addressed him as Jesus.
    • They asked whether he had come there to torment them before the time.
30. 8:30
    • A herd of many swine was feeding.
    • The herd was a good way off from them.
31. 8:31
    • The demons pleaded with him.
    • The demons said that if he cast them out, he should send them into the herd of swine.
32. 8:32
    • Jesus said to them, Go.
    • The demons came out.
    • The demons went into the swine.
    • The whole herd rushed down the steep place into the sea.
    • The swine died in the waters.
33. 8:33
    • Those keeping the swine fled.
    • They went away into the city.
    • They reported everything.
    • They reported what had happened to the demon-possessed men.
34. 8:34
    • The whole city came out to meet Jesus.
    • They saw him.
    • They begged him to depart from their borders.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

"The mountain" points back to the hillside where Jesus has just finished the long block of teaching in chapters 5 to 7. Matthew now moves from what Jesus said to what he did.

8:2

"Leper" in the Bible covers a range of skin conditions, not only the disease now called leprosy (Hansen's disease). Under the law of Moses a person with such a condition was ritually unclean, had to live apart from the community and call out a warning to anyone approaching, so the man's request to be made "clean" is about both the disease and the exclusion that came with it.

8:3

Touching a person with such a skin disease made the toucher ritually unclean under the law, so the detail that Jesus reached out and touched him would have struck the first hearers as deliberate and startling.

8:4

Leviticus 13 and 14 put the priest in charge of certifying that a skin disease had cleared, and required offerings (birds, lambs, flour and oil) before the person could rejoin normal life. There was no other way back into the community, and the certificate was the "proof" or testimony Jesus mentions.

8:5

Capernaum was a fishing town on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee and served as Jesus' base in this region. A centurion was a Roman officer in command of roughly eighty to a hundred men, the backbone of the army's command structure; he would have been a Gentile, not a Jew.

8:6

The King James "sick of the palsy" means paralyzed; "palsy" is an old form of the word "paralysis." The Greek word for "servant" here can also mean "boy" or "son," so it is not certain whether the officer is speaking of a slave in his household or of his own child.

8:8

A Jew who entered a Gentile's house was reckoned to have become ritually unclean. The officer, saying he is not worthy to have Jesus come under his roof, may be acknowledging that custom as well as speaking of his own standing.

8:10

"Verily I say unto you" translates a phrase that begins with the Hebrew word amen, normally said at the end of someone else's prayer to agree with it. Putting it at the front of one's own statement was unusual and worked as a strong guarantee: "this is certain."

8:11

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the three founding ancestors of Israel. To "sit down" with them is a picture of reclining on couches at a banquet, the ordinary posture for a formal meal, so the image is of sharing a feast with them.

8:12

"The children of the kingdom" uses a Hebrew turn of phrase in which "sons of" something means those who belong to it or are marked by it; here, those who would be assumed to have a place in the kingdom by birth. "Gnashing of teeth" means grinding the teeth together, a gesture of rage or of anguish.

8:14

The phrase tells you in passing that Peter was married. A fever in a world with no medicine to bring it down was genuinely dangerous, not a minor complaint.

8:15

The King James "ministered unto them" does not mean anything religious here. The word means waiting on people at table, that is, she got up and served the meal.

8:16

The King James uses "devils" where the Greek has a plural word for lesser spirits, demons, which is a different word from the one used for the devil himself. The later verses of this chapter use the same term.

8:17

"Esaias" is the Greek spelling of Isaiah. The quotation is from Isaiah 53:4.

8:18

"The other side" means the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, a freshwater lake about thirteen miles long. The eastern side was largely Gentile territory, which matters for what happens in verse 28.

8:19

A scribe was a trained expert in the law of Moses, a copyist and teacher of the scriptures rather than merely a clerk. The King James "Master" here means teacher, not owner.

8:20

"Son of man" is a Hebrew and Aramaic idiom that plainly means "a human being," so the sentence can read simply as "a man has nowhere to lay his head." It is also the title of a figure in Daniel 7:13 who is given lasting authority, and Jesus uses it of himself throughout this Gospel; the phrase carries both senses and the Gospel does not pin it down.

8:21

The King James "suffer me" means "allow me." Burying a parent was among the most binding of family duties, taking priority over most other obligations. The request is ambiguous in the Greek: the father may be lying dead already, or the man may be asking to stay home until his father dies at some future point, perhaps years away.

8:22

The saying works by using "dead" in two senses in one sentence, the way English can say "let the past bury the past". The first "dead" is not literal, and the shock of the line is deliberate.

8:23

The King James "ship" means a boat; the vessels on this lake were wooden fishing boats around twenty-five feet long, worked by a handful of men.

8:24

The Sea of Galilee sits in a deep basin about seven hundred feet below sea level, ringed by hills, and cold air funneling down the slopes can raise violent squalls with little warning.

8:25

"We perish" means we are dying, right now. These are professional fishermen who have worked this lake all their lives, which is why their panic tells you how bad the storm was.

8:26

The Greek word behind "rebuked" is the same one used elsewhere in this Gospel for silencing a demon; it is the language of issuing a sharp command to something, not of scolding.

8:28

Ancient copies of Matthew disagree about this place name, reading Gergesenes, Gadarenes or Gerasenes, all referring to the Gentile territory on the eastern shore. Tombs there were caves cut into rock hillsides, dry and roomy enough to shelter in, and contact with the dead made a person ritually unclean, so the men were doubly cut off from ordinary life.

8:29

"What have we to do with thee" translates a set Hebrew phrase, literally "what to us and to you," used to push someone away: it means roughly "what business do you have with us, leave us alone." "Before the time" refers to an appointed or fixed moment, not simply an early arrival.

8:30

Pigs were unclean animals under the law of Moses and Jews did not keep them, so a herd of this size is a marker that the district was Gentile country.

8:34

The King James "coasts" has nothing to do with a shoreline. In 1611 the word meant borders or the territory inside them, so the request is that Jesus leave their district.