Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
His Fame Went Out Into All Syria
Matthew 4:23-25
23 Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. · WEB
A three-verse summary that sets up the two chapters on either side of it — teaching, preaching, healing, and crowds from five directions.
Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people Matthew 4:23.
The summary is Matthew's own construction, and its three verbs are the plan of the next eight chapters: teaching, which the Sermon on the Mount supplies; preaching the kingdom, which the sermon defines; and healing, which chapters eight and nine supply in ten consecutive accounts. The same sentence appears again almost word for word at the far end of that block Matthew 9:35, closing the frame around it.
They brought to him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics; and he healed them Matthew 4:24.
The catalogue is a list of the conditions that put a person outside ordinary life in that world, and the verb at the end covers all of them without distinction. Nothing here is selected for its symbolic value; the Gospel simply reports that everyone brought was healed.
Great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan followed him Matthew 4:25.
The five regions are worth reading on a map. The Decapolis and the territory beyond the Jordan were largely Gentile; Jerusalem and Judea are the religious center; Galilee is the mixed north. The crowd that gathers to hear the Sermon on the Mount in the next verse is drawn from the whole land and past its edges — which is the audience this Gospel keeps insisting the kingdom is announced to.
settled What this mark means