And his fame went out into the whole [of] Syria, and they brought to him all that were ill, suffering under various diseases and pains, and those possessed by demons, and lunatics, and paralytics; and he healed them.
Коментар до цього вірша
Matthew 4:24 — "And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them."
The place of this verse in Matthew's narrative
J. N. Darby draws attention to how compactly the Spirit of God summarizes the Lord's whole ministry at this point, marking the transition from the temptation in the wilderness to the proclamation of the kingdom:
J. N. Darby"Two things are then brought forward in the Gospel narrative. First, the power which accompanies the proclamation of the kingdom. In two or three verses, without other detail, this fact is announced. The proclamation of the kingdom is attended with acts of power that excite the attention of the whole country, the whole extent of the ancient territory of Israel. Jesus appears before them invested with this power."
He goes on, in a footnote to this very passage, to press the point that Matthew is not writing ordinary chronology:
"It is striking that the whole ministry of the Lord is recounted in one verse (23). All the subsequent statements are facts, having a special moral import, showing what was passing amongst the people in grace onward to His rejection, not a proper consecutive history. It stamps the character of Matthew very clearly."
For Darby the key thing is that "the strong man was bound, so that Jesus could spoil his goods, and proclaim the kingdom with proofs of that power which were able to establish it." The Lord has just met Satan and conquered Him in the wilderness; now He goes forth binding and casting out, making good in experience what had been accomplished in principle.
Matthew's method — a summary, not a calendar
William Kelly (Lectures Introductory to the Gospel of Matthew) reads verses 23–25 in exactly the same way, and underlines that these verses are a deliberate compression of what in fact occupied a long span of time:
William Kelly"At the end of the chapter is a general summary of the Messiah's ministry, and of its effects, given in these words: 'And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and He healed them…' This I read, in order to show that it is the purpose of the Spirit, in this part of our gospel, to gather a quantity of facts together under one head, entirely regardless of the question of time. It is evident, that what is here described in a few verses must have demanded a considerable space for its accomplishment. The Holy Ghost gives it all to us as a connected whole."
Kelly's point is that the Evangelist is not giving us a diary entry for one busy afternoon. He is painting a single, unbroken panel of the Messiah's Galilean ministry, so that we may see it whole before the Sermon on the Mount opens the kingdom's character.
The bridge to the Sermon on the Mount
Alfred McBroom (Notes on Matthew) fastens on precisely this hinge between the Person of Christ in chapters 1–4 and the teaching of chapters 5–7:
Alfred McBroom"The greatness of the Person of the Lord as He is presented in Matt. 1-4 prepares us for the teaching of Matt. 5-7. Matt. 4:23-25 shows the immediate connection of the Sermon on the Mount with what went before. His fame had gone throughout all Syria and the whole country had been stirred, and as the King He took occasion to unfold to His subjects in the hearing of the people the word of God for the moment."
So the crowds gathered by verse 24 are not a literary backdrop — they are the very audience into whose hearing the King will proclaim the principles of His kingdom on the mountain.
The casting out of demons as a kingdom sign
The mention of "those which were possessed with devils" is picked up in the Bible Treasury (1874), which reads these demonic deliverances as the distinctive credential of the anointed King:
"When the power of Jesus in casting out the evil spirits is brought into notice, it is in connection with the kingdom and Himself as the anointed One (Matt. 4:24, Matt. 8:11, 16, 34, Matt. 10:7-8, Matt. 11:22, 28; Acts 10:38), with power to do so with a word, while the Jewish system was quite unable to deliver its children from the terrible affliction."
Samuel Ridout points to the same verse as one of the clearest New Testament witnesses to real, personal, spirit-beings — not mere superstition, not disease by another name:
Samuel Ridout"'The devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain' (Matt. 4:8); 'Angels came and ministered unto Him' (Matt. 4:11); 'Those possessed with demons' (Matt. 4:24)… These and many other scriptures speak of spirit-creatures."
Synthesis
Matthew 4:24 is the Evangelist's deliberately sweeping close to his opening panel. In a single breath the Spirit of God tells us that the King has entered the land, that the strong man has been bound in the wilderness, and that all the distress of fallen humanity — disease, torment, demonic bondage, lunacy, paralysis — yields at His word. The three features the commentators draw out fit together as one picture. The fame reaching into Syria shows how far the light now blazing in Galilee of the Gentiles was spreading. The catalogue of sufferings shows that no form of Satan's oppression was beyond Him. And the healing of them all is the credential of the King whose kingdom is about to be unfolded in the Sermon on the Mount — power first, then principles, so that when He sits down on the mountain and opens His mouth, His hearers know who it is that speaks.