. . . birds came along and devoured it . . . it withered away . . . it yielded no grain . . .”
-Mark 4:4, 6, 7.

Parables are usually connected to a scripture text or several of them. They often explain something puzzling about God and his relation to his people, or something unstated or mysterious in a text.

Yeshua understood a startling truth found in Isaiah 6, one that naturally leads any thoughtful reader to ask questions. Modern readers of the Sower parable (Mk 4; Mt 13; Lk 8) tend not to realize that the parable is commenting on a text. The text is Isaiah 6. It is not a randomly chosen or obscure passage. It is the chapter in which Isaiah saw God’s Throne above with his kingly robes coming down and filling the Temple (Isa 6:1). It is the “holy, holy, holy” passage with the Seraphim (the burning ones). It is the commission of the prophet Isaiah.

Yeshua, prophet and Messiah, has a mission which can be compared to Isaiah’s. Yet the puzzling thing about Isaiah’s commission is that he was sent to tell the people about God’s desire for them in that moment in history and yet his words would paradoxically cause greater judgment. God said to Isaiah:

Go, say to that people: ‘Hear, indeed, but do not understand; see, indeed, but do not grasp.’ Dull that people’s mind, stop its ears, and seal its eyes — lest, seeing with its eyes and hearing with its ears, it also grasp with its mind, and repent and save itself.
-Isaiah 6:9-10, JPS.

These words are so surprising, so ironic, many readers need to give them multiple readings to understand what they are saying.

Isaiah was a kingdom prophet. Yeshua was a kingdom prophet. The kingdom is God’s rule over his people and all the cosmos. Isn’t telling people about the kingdom good news? On the contrary, in many cases it is bad news. The simple in understanding think that true instruction will be easily recognized and that great promises will be believed and acted upon.

The easiest criticism of Yeshua is that his message was so little heeded. If he was Messiah, or even a true prophet, why didn’t he bring about the renewal of Israel? Why wasn’t the earth redeemed? Why didn’t the world to come start in his day? Where is the messianic redemption with all the promises of every person under their vine and fig tree?

Parables, according to the early rabbis in the land of Israel, were especially founded in Israel as a way of teaching by Solomon (see Song of Songs Rabbah, first chapter). They interpreted Mishlei (Proverbs) and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) as illustrations of Torah truths. They saw Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs/Solomon) as figures of God’s dealings with Israel at the Exodus and Sinai. The figure or simile or parable (mashal) explains something about a scripture text.

The Sower parable is about good news that is bad news. It explains first and foremost how a true prophet (Isaiah, Yeshua) can speak what is good and yet he will not be heard. It explains how a generation can be so close to devastation (Isaiah’s in the Assyrian and Babylonian crises and Yeshua’s in the coming war with Rome) even though the kingdom is proclaimed. It explains how disciple circles can form and preserve the teaching for the future.

Isaiah’s words did not prevent Israel and Judah from collapsing, nor did Yeshua’s. But Isaiah’s words and Yeshua’s words did lead to the formation of disciple circles. They were passed down generation to generation.

The Sower parable is rich. To begin to understand it, realize it is a commentary on Isaiah 6. Realize first that it is about our human tendency not to receive the message. It is not our responsibility to bring the messianic era. The king will bring the kingdom. But he who has ears to hear will understand why it is delayed. We bear fruit while we wait.

If you would like to follow this series, here is Part 1.

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables.
-Mark 4:11

“Kingdom” is not “afterlife” exactly and it is not “people of Israel” or “people of the Church.” The modern reader tends to inject meanings into Yeshua’s words that are not there. Looking in the words of Messiah for a message on how to qualify for a good afterlife, it is natural for many to see in the word “kingdom” a code word for “going to heaven.” This is a problem compounded by the fact that Matthew, the best-known gospel for many Bible readers, uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven” instead of “kingdom of God.” But, as many will rightly point out, “heaven” here stands for “God.” It is a euphemism, like saying “in the eyes of heaven.”

Another temptation is to see “kingdom” as either “the nation of people known as Israel” or “the visible institution of the church.” Christian pastors sometimes ask people to “work for the kingdom” with the understanding that “church is the kingdom.” In Judaism, “kingship of God” is a more common notion than “kingdom.” This is because Judaism, like Yeshua, is immersed in the Hebrew Bible.

What does Messiah mean when he says “to you” (the inner circle, those who come to me after my teaching and ask questions) is given the “secret of the kingdom” but to everyone else (outsiders who sit on the hills and listen from afar, hoping to catch a glimpse of a miracle) there are only “parables”?

Does he mean that the parables are not about the kingdom? Is the idea that the parables are teasers, mere hints, but that somewhere else we should look for Messiah’s real teaching? If so, where do we find this teaching?

No, it is not that there are two sets of teaching exactly, although the inner circle does get more explanation and teaching than the hill-sitters get. But rather, it is the whole package. Those who become part of Messiah’s disciple circle (not just the Twelve, but at least one hundred and twenty by the time of Acts 1) receive the secret. And the secret is not just one thing. It is many things.

Those who were in Messiah’s disciple circle, the ones who were fortunate enough to be there in Galilee and Judea so long ago, saw the actions of Messiah, got private explanations, and went through the experience of disappointment, terror, disbelief, startling realization, overwhelming joy, and sense of empowerment through the trial, death, burial, resurrection, commission, and ascension of Yeshua. The secret was being in the disciple circle. It was asking questions. It was watching Messiah do messianic things. It was seeing the kingdom in action. It was living through the greatest misunderstanding about kingdom (that death and suffering lead to the reign of God).

It is possible to be in Messiah’s disciple circle now. The requirement is a willingness to consider his words and actions. The requirement is to do this with others. The requirement is to believe.

In this series, I will explore a little at a time the details of Messiah’s parables and what they mean about the kingdom, future and present. What is the kingdom exactly? What does a first century Jewish teacher mean when he says “kingdom of God”? How do we apply this?

Yeshua Affirming Messianic Identity

• Luke 19:40 The Stones Would Cry Out
• Matthew 21:16 Mouths of Babies
• Matthew 16:17 Flesh and Blood Has Not Revealed This
• Mark 14:62 I Am and You Will See the Son of Man

Yeshua Affirming Exalted Status
These claims go beyond the role of teacher or prophet.

• Matthew 11:27 All Things Have Been Handed over to Me by My Father
• Matthew 12:6 One Greater Than the Temple
• Luke 22:30 Eat and Drink at My Table in My Kingdom
• Mark 2:10 Son of Man has Authority on Earth to Forgive Sins
• Mark 8:38 Son of Man Comes in Glory of His Father
• Mark 10:40 To Sit at My Right or Left Is Not Mine to Give
• Luke 4:18 He Has Sent Me to Proclaim Release
• Luke 7:22 Tell John What You Have Seen
• Mark 10:45 To Give His Life as a Ransom
• Matthew 28:18 All Authority Has Been Given to Me

Yeshua as Prophet

• Mark 6:4 No Prophet Without Honor
• Mark 8:28 Some Say Prophet
• Luke 7:16 A Great Prophet Has Arisen
• Luke 7:39 If This Man Were a Prophet
• Mark 13:2 [Foretells Temple Destruction]

The following information is derived from a paper by Eric Ottenheijm of the University of Utrecht presented at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature in the Matthew section.

In Matthew 5:1, Yeshua went up on “the mountain.” No one knows which mountain, although there is a lovely hill which is the traditional spot. More important than a physical location, though, is understanding the allusion of “the mountain.” There are a number of mountains of great significance in the Hebrew Bible. The echoes of Exodus and Isaiah in particular add depth and meaning to the Sermon on the Mount.

For a long time, it has been recognized that Yeshua’s ascending the mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount has echoes of Moses ascending Sinai to receive and then deliver the Torah. There is a long tradition of viewing the Beatitudes, for example, as a sort of new Ten Commandments.

Dale Allison, in The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, gives a few reinforcements to the Sinai imagery: (1) “went up the mountain” in the LXX (Greek or Septuagint version of the Bible) is used 18 times of Moses, (2) Yeshua sat on the mountain and Moses “dwelt” or “sat” forty days according to Deuteronomy 9:9, (3) other Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra 14 uses the “sat” motif to make a character echo Moses, and (4) Matthew 8:1 continues to echo language about Moses.

Eric Ottenheijm shows, however, that more than Moses is going in in the mount of the Sermon.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” says Isaiah in 52:7.

“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” is Isaiah’s word in 40:9.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted,” Isaiah says in 61:1.

The mountain of Isaiah is the mountain of good news. The one whose feet are on it delivers good news to the poor. “Blessed are the poor,” says Yeshua in the Sermon.

Ottenheijm points out a few things about Isaiah and Matthew:
(1) Matthew quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than any other book.
(2) Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (the larger section surrounding 5:1) begins and ends with Isaiah references (see below).
(3) Matthew is not the only Jewish literature combining Isaiah 52:7 with 40:9 and 61:1 (see below).

Is this a denial of the Moses/Sinai theme in Matthew? Not at all. Ottenheijm says that first, Isaiah took the mountain theme from the story of Israel and gave it a new twist and then Matthew took up Isaiah’s mountain theme, which already had Moses overtones, and gave it still a new twist:

Moses/Sinai/Torah –> messenger/mountain/good news in Isaiah –> Yeshua brings good news on the mountain.

In the time of Yeshua and Matthew, people read the Torah looking for connection to God and an end to the exile. They also read Isaiah this way, finding Isaiah to be a sort of messianic handbook of the last days. It is not hard to imagine those who first heard Matthew’s version of the Sermon read aloud connecting Yeshua with the messenger of good news in Isaiah. God sends his Torah and his good news from “the mountain.”

APPENDIX A: Isaiah in Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (derived from Ottenheijm’s paper):

Matt 4:12-17 Galilee of the gentiles, Isaiah 8:23 – 9:1.

Matt 4:23 Good news, allusion to Isaiah 52:7 and 40:9.

Matt 5:1 Yeshua ascends the mountain and sits down.

Matt 5:3-5 First two Beatitudes compare to Isaiah 61:1-3.

Matt 5:11 Echoes Isaiah 51:7.

APPENDIX B: Early Jewish Texts Combining Isaiah 52:7; 61:1-3; and 40:9 (abridged from Ottenheijm):

–11 QMelchizedek.

–Psalms of Solomon 11.

–Tanhuma Toledot 14 combines the idea of Messiah and Isaiah 52:7.

The main point of McKnight’s book is that the word “gospel” to the apostles meant the story of Yeshua giving meaning to life and eternity. Gospel was not simply a message of personal salvation. Personal salvation is one of the things that happens when people listen to the gospel.

In this podcast I’m simply exploring one aspect of McKnight’s four-part outline of what the gospel is. He says it is:
(1) The Story of Israel
(2) The Story of Jesus
(3) The Plan of Salvation
(4) The Method of Persuasion

In considering the first part of McKnight’s outline, the gospel as the story of Israel, I am turning to Luke’s infancy narrative. Luke, whose gospel bears clear signs of relationship to Paul, presents Yeshua’s birth, the community into which he was born, and his early childhood as a culmination of the hopes of faithful Israelites.

In particular, I want to look at Mary’s Psalm in Luke 1:46-55. It has traditionally been called the Magnificat, from the Latin translation of the Bible. I will read Mary’s Psalm in the newly released Delitzsch Hebrew English version (DHE), where its relationship to the language of the Psalms and prophets is clarified by Delitzsch’s careful retranslation of the Greek text of Luke into Hebrew.

The overall concept of Mary’s Psalm is that of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, who spoke a psalm on the birth of her son. Hannah’s Psalm and Mary’s Psalm have the following ideas in common, though Luke does not exactly quote from 1 Samuel 2:

• Rejoice in God’s salvation.
• The strong are humbled.
• The lowly are raised up and empowered.
• Rich and poor are reversed.

One example of Delitzsch’s work to conform the New Testament language at times to the style of the Hebrew Bible is seen in Luke 1:47. Compare the ESV (English Standard Version) with the DHE:

“My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47, ESV).

“My spirit rejoices in the God of my salvation” (Luke 1:47, DHE).

Why the difference? Luke has used a phrase in his Greek gospel which will speak to his Greco-Roman audience. Roman emperors are hailed as saviors. The early believers used language regularly to refer to Yeshua as Lord and Savior, as opposed to the common idea of Caesar as Lord and Savior.

But Luke’s phrase is a departure from the idiom of the Hebrew Bible. While the noun Savior is used of God, the phrase “God my Savior” does not exist. Rather, we find six times in the Hebrew Bible the phrase “God of my salvation.” Delitzsch has taken Luke’s Greco-Roman shaped expression and cast it back into the customary language of the Bible.

The prophet Micah, for example, looks at the deplorable condition of his generation in Judah. He sees that the people are far from God and selfishness and cruelty reigns in the land. He knows his nation will be judged by God for the evil in his time. “Don’t rejoice over me,” he says, “when I fall . . . I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.” And in this era of wickedness in Judah, Micah says, “I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation.”

So Mary in her psalm recognizes that the community of the faithful in Judea is small. People like her cousin Elisheva (Elizabeth) and Zechariah and Simeon and Anna, the godly characters depicted in Luke chapters 1 and 2, are the remnant of righteous Israel in an unrighteous time. Judgment is coming for Judah and by the time Luke writes his gospel, Jerusalem has already been laid waste.

But while Romans look to Caesar as Savior and while the clueless in Israel think the Savior has not come, Mary sees in the birth of her son the great act of the God of my salvation.

In verse 54, Mary calls Israel the Servant. Delitzsch’s translation opts to go strongly with the idea of Servant, whereas the Greek could also possibly be read as “child.” In the Servant songs of Isaiah, the Servant is first and foremost Israel. Yet as Israel is a blind and unfaithful servant of God, it becomes clear in Isaiah that the remnant of faithful in Israel are the ones who will fulfill that role. Mary and the community of righteous Israelites in Luke chapters 1 and 2 are that remnant. But ultimately Isaiah narrows it down even more to one Israelite who is the Servant, an Israelite who will suffer for the transgressions of his people.

And Luke’s audience knows well that Yeshua is ultimately the Servant.

More than that, he is the Servant whose coming was promised to the fathers. Mary recognizes in verses 54-55 that her child has arrived due to God remembering his compassions on Israel. Though there is much wickedness and though the people are not right, God has shown compassion and brought the Promised One.

It is because prior to everything God made an unbreakable promise to Abraham. The birth of Yeshua in Judea is the culmination of an age-old story. These events are not new. They are from days of old. A humble woman of Israel has become the mother of the Messiah, the bearer of the promise made to Abraham.

Luke’s gospel is written primarily to gentiles. Why, then, did he bother to give all this Jewish background and understanding? Didn’t Luke realize gentiles don’t need the story of Israel? Of course Luke did not realize something so false.

The gospel, as Scot McKnight says, is the story of Israel. It goes back even before that, before the promise to Abraham. It goes back to Adam. What has been lost will be recovered. The Abrahamic promise, with which Mary completes her psalm, is God’s promise to bring back what was lost in Adam’s day, and even more, to exceed the blessing of Eden.

The meaning of Yeshua cannot be separated from Israel’s story. Far from being irrelevant, people today need to read the larger story, to see Jesus as God’s compassion on Israel after many generations, the fulfiller of the promise to the fathers.

Luke understands that Israel’s role in all this is not finished. He more than hints in Mary’s Psalm that Yeshua’s identity as the Promised One of Israel is God’s compassion on Israel, meaning good news for Jewish people. It would have been easy for Luke to omit this in the gentile churches of his time. He did not omit it.

The apostolic understanding of Jesus and the gospel is not replacement. It is not a new religion. It is the expansion of the faith of Abraham, the story of Israel expanding in Yeshua, the Seed of Abraham. And in God’s compassions, no one is left behind. The nations should not boast nor should Israel. God is the salvation of Jew and gentile in one Savior for a consummation that we have yet to see but in which we greatly hope.

A few centuries before Yeshua, some unknown circles of apocalyptic scribes wrote some texts that are now known as part of 1 Enoch (which is really five books written at different times). The early part of 1 Enoch is the Book of the Watchers. Who are the watchers? The answer is found in Daniel 4:10 (4:13 in Christian Bibles; see also 4:14, 20 (4:17, 23)) :

In the vision of my mind in bed, I looked and saw a holy Watcher coming down from heaven.

Watchers are angelic beings who watch the earth, doing God’s bidding. In 1 Enoch 6-10 an elaborate story is told, drawing heavily on Genesis 6:1-4, the account of the “sons of God” who took “daughters of men” as wives. These Watchers saw the beauty of human women and two hundred of them took human wives. They taught their wives sorcery and the children born to them were giants and Nephilim. Eventually God dispatched powerful angelic beings to imprison some of the Watchers.

This interpretation of Genesis 6, and the notion of unclean spirits in Jewish thought, seems to have been common. The New Testament writers speak of the story of the Watchers in 1 Enoch with acceptance:

And the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day.
-Jude 6

. . . in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison.
-1 Peter 3:19

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment . . .
-2 Peter 3:4

Unclean spirits are fallen angels, perhaps not the ones who married human women, but others who similarly existed in rebellion against heaven. In Mark 1:23, a demonic spirit is called “unclean.” We are more used to thinking of spirits as evil than unclean, which is a technical category from Leviticus and Numbers. Of all the causes of impurity in the Torah, what association with uncleanness would fall on demonic spirits? Almost certainly they were associated with death, which rendered unclean (Numbers 19).

In Yeshua in Context, chapter 4, I relate a story from Josephus in which Solomon (allegedly) discovered roots and herbs which could draw demons out through a person’s nose. A few stray tales of exorcism in the time of Yeshua involve performers with an audience doing what looks like a “magic show.” Similarly, in the apocryphal book of Tobit, demons are expelled by a sort of magical incantation involving burning fish parts.

There is no precedent for what Yeshua did: expelling demons by verbal command. No biblical figure before Yeshua did this. No demon spoke in the manner of the demons in the gospels. The clash between Son of God and fallen “sons of God” in the gospels is unique.

The theology behind the gospels and their view of demons is that of a hidden conspiracy of evil. Much of the evil that is in the world has been helped along through the influence of these fallen angels or demons. Just enough is said in the Bible about the Serpent in the Garden, about false deities and lying spirits, to make the idea credible.

New Testament writers agree. As John says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). And as Paul said, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

And Yeshua said, “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course” (Luke 13:32). The resurrection, the defeat of death, is the ultimate victory over unclean spirits and all they represent. Satan is fallen. God’s kingdom is overtaking.

Kingdom at Hand?
What did Yeshua mean about the kingdom of God being at hand (soon to appear) in Mark 1:15? He followed this proclamation up by calling disciples, defeating evil spirits, and making people well. In the world to come there will be no evil, people will be well, and all will be as a family in union with each other and God. Yeshua was bringing future realities into the present. Note that many of Yeshua’s kingdom parables (Sower, Mustard Seed) represent present realities and not just future.

Sinners and Mustard Plants
Yeshua came to call sinners (Mark 2:17). The parable of the Mustard Seed is more about the plant than the seed (Mark 4:30-32). The mustard weeds are a gardener’s nightmare. They grow up all over and become nesting places for birds. One reading is that the birds that nest are undesirables, like sinners and gentiles. So the present kingdom grows up unstoppably and attracts those who might not seem like kingdom people.

Binding the Strongman
Yeshua announced his intention to enter the house of evil and plunder its goods, by first binding the strongman (Satan, see Mark 3:27). Some might read the “plunder his goods” in purely conversionary terms (converting lost people and saving them from Satan’s control), but everything in the gospels suggests Yeshua freed people from evil in more holistic ways (wellness, provision, and redemption).

Beatitudes
As I discuss in chapter 10 of Yeshua in Context, the Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12; Luke 6:20-23) have both a present and future aspect. For example, Matthew 5:2 has a future part (“theirs is the kingdom of heaven”) and a present (“blessed are the poor in spirit”). It is more than implied that disciples hearing Yeshua’s sermon will bless the poor in spirit, comfort mourners, fill the hungry, and so on. Yeshua is calling us to live now in light of what will come in God’s kingdom.

As You Measure, Alms, Do Not Worry
It is the Father’s pleasure to give us the kingdom, says Yeshua (Luke 12:32). So we do not need the treasures of this world. But instead we should sell things and give alms (12:33). This principle is stated without balance, causing many to disregard it completely. It is not an absolute principle. Possessing things is clearly not wrong (a case I can easily demonstrate if challenged). But the balance of owning versus sharing is way off in the lives of nearly all people who have the opportunity to own many things. Treasure in heaven (not in the sky or in the future, but treasure in the heavenly court–as in reward from the one who sits on the heavenly throne) is stored up for the righteous. And Messiah tells us: “Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38). So we are not to worry about our life, our food, our clothing (Luke 12:22). The Father knows we need these things. And Matthew records it this way, “When you give alms…” (6:2).

When You Fed These
There are sheep and there are goats, the blessed and the judged. Those blessed fed the least and in so doing fed Yeshua. Those judged, as Keith Green says in his famous song on the Sheep and Goats, were too busy running religious organizations to help (not that I am innocent of this myself). See Matthew 25:31-46.

The Temple State
Yeshua’s protest against the Temple (Mark 11:15-19) was about commerce in the holy precincts, about the violation of the sacred by carrying things through God’s courts, about hypocrisy in the leadership, and a protest against a Temple state that demanded obedience from the masses but which did not obey in turn. Had the Temple state followed Torah as it demanded of the people, the tithes would have been redistributed and the people blessed with abundance. See “Yeshua and the Mishnah on Carrying in the Temple” and “Yeshua and Idolatrous Coins.” Mark 11 contrasts the Yeshua-community with its faith and prayer with the Temple state (see below, “The Disciple Communities as Alternative”).

The Disciple Communities as Insiders
To you (plural, disciples) has been given the secret of the kingdom of God (Mark 4:11). To those outside, all looks like a riddle. But they will know you are my disciples by your love (John 13:35).

The Disciple Communities as Alternative
These are my mother and brothers, said Yeshua (Mark 4:34), those who do the will of God (4:35). The powers of death (some say “gates of hell”) will not be able to stand before this community (Matt 16:18). In Mark 11, Yeshua curses a fig tree right before he protests the Temple state. Afterward, he uses the fig tree as a lesson. His disciple movement will be about prayer that moves mountains and forgiving one another as their Father in heaven forgives their sins. What the Temple state cannot accomplish (bringing the world to come through righteousness), Yeshua’s disciples community will do. For more on this, see “Discipleship and the Fig Tree.”

In Matthew 5:1, Yeshua went up on “the mountain.” No one knows which mountain, although there is a lovely hill which is the traditional spot. More important than a physical location, though, is understanding the allusion of “the mountain.” There are a number of mountains of great significance in the Hebrew Bible. The echoes of Exodus and Isaiah in particular add depth and meaning to the Sermon on the Mount.

For a long time, it has been recognized that Yeshua’s ascending the mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount has echoes of Moses ascending Sinai to receive and then deliver the Torah. There is a long tradition of viewing the Beatitudes, for example, as a sort of new Ten Commandments.

Dale Allison, in The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, gives a few reinforcements to the Sinai imagery: (1) “went up the mountain” in the LXX (Greek or Septuagint version of the Bible) is used 18 times of Moses, (2) Yeshua sat on the mountain and Moses “dwelt” or “sat” forty days according to Deuteronomy 9:9, (3) other Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra 14 uses the “sat” motif to make a character echo Moses, and (4) Matthew 8:1 continues to echo language about Moses.

Eric Ottenheijm shows, however, that more than Moses is going in in the mount of the Sermon.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” says Isaiah in 52:7.

“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” is Isaiah’s word in 40:9.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted,” Isaiah says in 61:1.

The mountain of Isaiah is the mountain of good news. The one whose feet are on it delivers good news to the poor. “Blessed are the poor,” says Yeshua in the Sermon.

Ottenheijm points out a few things about Isaiah and Matthew:
(1) Matthew quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than any other book.
(2) Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (the larger section surrounding 5:1) begins and ends with Isaiah references (see below).
(3) Matthew is not the only Jewish literature combining Isaiah 52:7 with 40:9 and 61:1 (see below).

Is this a denial of the Moses/Sinai theme in Matthew? Not at all. Ottenheijm says that first, Isaiah took the mountain theme from the story of Israel and gave it a new twist and then Matthew took up Isaiah’s mountain theme, which already had Moses overtones, and gave it still a new twist:

Moses/Sinai/Torah –> messenger/mountain/good news in Isaiah –> Yeshua brings good news on the mountain.

In the time of Yeshua and Matthew, people read the Torah looking for connection to God and an end to the exile. They also read Isaiah this way, finding Isaiah to be a sort of messianic handbook of the last days. It is not hard to imagine those who first heard Matthew’s version of the Sermon read aloud connecting Yeshua with the messenger of good news in Isaiah. God sends his Torah and his good news from “the mountain.”

APPENDIX A: Isaiah in Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (derived from Ottenheijm’s paper):

Matt 4:12-17 Galilee of the gentiles, Isaiah 8:23 – 9:1.

Matt 4:23 Good news, allusion to Isaiah 52:7 and 40:9.

Matt 5:1 Yeshua ascends the mountain and sits down.

Matt 5:3-5 First two Beatitudes compare to Isaiah 61:1-3.

Matt 5:11 Echoes Isaiah 51:7.

APPENDIX B: Early Jewish Texts Combining Isaiah 52:7; 61:1-3; and 40:9 (abridged from Ottenheijm):

–11 QMelchizedek.

–Psalms of Solomon 11.

–Tanhuma Toledot 14 combines the idea of Messiah and Isaiah 52:7.

The more Torah the more life . . . he who has acquired for himself the words of Torah has acquired for himself life in the World to Come.
–Pirkei Avot 2:7.

As water is life to the world, so is Torah life to the world. As water descends from heaven, so Torah descends from heaven . . . As water cleanses man from defilement, so the Torah purifies the unclean (morally).
–Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2.

There are a number of ways in which Judaism has developed the practice of Torah, the study of Torah, the mysticism of Torah in ways that fill the role Yeshua could and would play. Deeds of Torah become the basis of purification from sin in some sources. Study and practice of Torah gives life in the World to Come. In the Torah service liturgy, we read that God has implanted eternal life within the Jewish people, so that Torah becomes the divine-life within Israel.

There was a need in the developing theology and practice of Judaism to fill categories of redemption and ascending to the levels of divine knowledge and life in the World to Come. The New Testament and Christianity had Jesus and Judaism filled many of these categories with Torah.

When we, in Messianic Judaism, speak of Yeshua as Torah, we mean to say that God truly did send his Word-Wisdom-Knowledge-Revelation into the world. This certainly did happen in the form of Torah, prophecy, wisdom, and all of scripture. But the highest revelation of all is Yeshua, who emanates from God and is One with God. As Hebrews puts it:

After God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the prophets, in these last days he has spoken to us in a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he created the world. The Son is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word…
–Hebrews 1:1-3.

O the gladness of the poor in ruach, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Yeshua makes desirable what is commonly regarded as unpleasant or pathetic. Our emotions are stirred by such talk. The imaginations and hopes of peasants sitting on the Galilean grass were stirred. It is something greatly to be desired, a reversal so needed by those of us who deeply feel our poverty of spirit.

What makes these Beatitudes pleasantly sweet is a combination of our trust in the one who speaks them and the attractiveness of their message. There is nothing in all Jewish literature after the Bible to compare with them.

The king, if we believe that about Yeshua, offers his kingdom to the unlikely. It is not because we are poor in spirit that the time of God’s rule on earth is extended to us. Rather, we can know our destiny is gladness and draw on that blissfulness now because the kingdom is ours.

In other words, poverty of spirit is not a condition of the kingdom, though some have read it that way. Rather, poverty of spirit is a condition in which many of us find ourselves without any say in the matter, just as mourning happens to us rather than being a virtue we cultivate.

The Beatitudes are further attractive to us because they are not spoken by just another religious teacher. Yeshua had two things that proved his words worthy of devoting one’s life. He lived what he professed and he gave evidence of having authority to back up his assurances. He comforted mourners and lifted up unimportant people. He showed that the kingdom of heaven can be partially here amongst those who will bring its qualities into life now. His kingdom aims were not simply to draw a following of desperate poor with a false assurance of future hope. Rather, he taught the movement that followed him how to become communities of healing while waiting for the full arrival of God’s reign.

And who could deliver such a counter-intuitive message with authority like Yeshua? He spoke of granting the right for his disciples to sit at his table in his kingdom (Luke 22:29-30) and demonstrated in life, death, and resurrection that he can keep his word.

Yeshua indicated that in some ways the kingdom of God arrived with him and in others that there would be a delay. Luke 10:9 is one of the “now” aspects of the kingdom of God in the “now and not yet” duality. How does Luke 10:9 inform us of one of the senses in which the kingdom had already reached Yeshua’s generation? What does it tell us about the kingdom in our day and in the future?

The story in Luke 10 is about Yeshua sending out seventy to proclaim and heal and exorcise demons. Luke Johnson comments, “The preaching of the kingdom of God is signaled by the power to heal.” In other words, an aspect of the kingdom of God was with Yeshua wherever he went (healing and liberating the possessed). And Yeshua sent that same kingdom power with the seventy.

The kingdom of God (God’s rule on earth) partially exists now, but will be fully realized in the future when human kingdoms are gone and God’s rule is unopposed. Many times “kingdom of God” simply stands for “the age to come.” And in the age to come, sickness and disability and demonic possession will all be done away with.

It was in the healing work of Yeshua and his followers that the kingdom reached his generation. The beatitudes clue us in to other aspects of the kingdom which can be brought into the here and now: comfort, peace, righteousness, lifting up the poor in spirit, etc.

Whether we can, in our modern context, go out with the same power as the seventy or not (some think we can, others do not), we can cause the kingdom to reach our generation much as they did, by bringing aspects of the age to come into the present wherever we are.

The word gospel has a long history of use in the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. It is interesting to see how Mark uses the word in the first verse of his narrative: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ [Messiah Yeshua].”

What is this the beginning of? It is the beginning of an account, Mark’s account, telling the story and message of Yeshua from beginning to end. The life of Yeshua is the gospel, in Mark’s usage.

It’s an interesting corrective to so many who have understood the word gospel in different terms, as a message of benefits for Jesus’ followers. Gospel has become a word used in religious circles for a sort of sales pitch to persuade people to believe. But the common sales pitch is usually put in simple terms of a bargain with God: believe and get heaven as a reward. This is such a poor gospel compared to Mark’s.

Luke places this summary at a crucial point in the story. A report about Yeshua is spreading throughout Galilee. The word for “news” here is not the same word often found in the gospels and other parts of the Bible from which we get our word “gospel.” But the idea is the same. How does the idea of “news about him” fit into the larger picture of Luke’s portrait of Yeshua?

The idea is that people who have been waiting for a sign from God, a people expectant and frenzied with hope, hear a report about a wonder-worker and teacher. Could this, at long last, be the stirring of God’s power beginning to bring about the promises?

At this point, the people do not know enough to appreciate the full “good news.” The gospel is not yet revealed. But this early report is a hint. The career of John was a hint before this. God is on the move.

But readers of Luke know more than the audience described in Luke 4. The news about Yeshua is more than just a hoped-for sign that something might be happening. The news about Yeshua is the gospel. To a world hungry for redemption, the One has come. And the “news about Yeshua” will blossom in a full-blown “good news” message that will change the world.