Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
Whose Son Is the Christ?
Matthew 22:41-46
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, · WEB
He asks the last question of the day, out of a psalm — and after it nobody asks him anything.
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question Matthew 22:41.
The questioning has run one way all day. Now it turns, and the question he asks is the one the book has been asking since chapter one.
"What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "Of David" Matthew 22:42. The answer is right and universally agreed; the promise of a throne to David's descendant runs through the prophets 2 Samuel 7:12–13 Isaiah 11:1, and this Gospel opened by tracing exactly that line.
"How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'?" Matthew 22:43–44 Psalms 110:1.
The exchange is in the earlier account Mark 12:28–44. The difficulty is real and it is a matter of ordinary social order rather than of grammar. In that world a father did not address his descendant as lord; honor ran upward through the generations, and a man's son was his son. David, writing about the coming king, calls him my Lord — and seats him at God's right hand until his enemies are put underfoot.
"If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" Matthew 22:45. The question is left unanswered, and the silence is deliberate. Every element of the answer has already been given in this book — a genealogy that runs to David and a birth that does not run from Joseph, a son of David and a child called God with us Matthew 1:23 — and the pieces are laid out for anyone willing to put them together. This is the same restraint used with the parables: the material is complete, the conclusion is not drawn for them.
No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward Matthew 22:46.
The day of questions ends here. Three parties have tried and failed, and the silence that follows is the last thing recorded before he turns to the crowd and begins the seven woes.
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