Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
The Harvest Is Plentiful
Matthew 9:35-38
35 Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. · WEB
The summary that closes the block of miracles, a word for what he felt looking at crowds, and a prayer he tells them to pray.
Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people Matthew 9:35.
The sentence repeats an earlier one almost exactly Matthew 4:23, and the repetition is structural. The two summaries bracket everything between them: the sermon supplied the teaching, chapters eight and nine supplied the healing, and the frame is now closed. The next chapter sends others out to do the same three things.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them because they were harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd Matthew 9:36.
The verb rendered moved with compassion is a physical word — it names the inward turn a person feels in the gut — and this Gospel reserves it for him. It is what he feels before feeding a crowd Matthew 14:14 and before healing the blind at Jericho Matthew 20:34.
What produces it is not their sin but their condition. Harassed and scattered describes sheep that have been worried by predators and have no one gathering them, and the phrase without a shepherd is a standing indictment in the Old Testament of the leaders who were supposed to be doing it Numbers 27:17 Ezekiel 34:5. Israel had teachers in abundance; the crowds in front of him were, in the only sense that mattered, untended.
"The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few" Matthew 9:37.
The image changes from sheep to a field, and with it the urgency: a harvest has a season, and a crop left standing is lost. The shortage named is not of interest among the people but of workers.
"Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest" Matthew 9:38.
The instruction is to pray, and the harvest is called his twice over — it is not the disciples' project and the workers are not theirs to recruit. What follows immediately is the answer arriving through the people who were told to ask: the next verse names the Twelve and sends them out. Praying for laborers is how a person volunteers.
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