Biblion Bible Commentary
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Nowhere to Lay His Head
Matthew 8:18-22
18 Now when Jesus saw great multitudes around him, he gave the order to depart to the other side. · WEB
Two volunteers stopped at the door — one told what following costs, the other told what it costs now.
A scribe came and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go" Matthew 8:19.
The offer is enthusiastic, unconditional and unprompted, and it comes from a scribe — a trained professional in the law, exactly the class this Gospel usually shows in opposition. The reply neither accepts nor refuses. It supplies information.
"The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" Matthew 8:20.
What the man is told is the material condition of the life he has just volunteered for: less settled than a scavenging animal's. A scribe had a position, a home and a standing; this is a warning that the wherever you go he offered so easily includes nowhere in particular.
The title is used here for the first time in this Gospel, and it is the one Jesus uses of himself throughout. It comes from Daniel's night vision, where one like a son of man is brought to the Ancient of Days and given dominion over all peoples Daniel 7:13–14 — so a phrase that sounds like modest self-description carries the highest claim in the book, and it is deployed in a sentence about homelessness.
"Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father" Matthew 8:21.
The second man is already a disciple, and his request is not a delay tactic — burying a parent was a sacred duty, taking precedence over almost everything in Jewish practice. Whether his father had died that day or the request means waiting until the obligation eventually falls due, the answer is the same and it is the hardest sentence in the chapter.
"Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead" Matthew 8:22.
The saying works by using the word twice over — let those who are dead in the sense that matters attend to those who are dead in the ordinary sense. It is not a repeal of the commandment to honor father and mother, which this Gospel defends fiercely against people using religion to dodge it Matthew 15:4–6. It is a statement of what the call outranks when the two genuinely collide, and the pair of encounters together make the point of the section: one man offers too readily and is told the cost, the other is ready and asks for a delay, and both are shown that following is not something fitted around a life.
held with reason What this mark means