Mat 4:23-25 | JFB | STEP | 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues-- These were houses of local worship. It cannot be proved that they existed before the Babylonish captivity; but as they began to be erected soon after it, probably the idea was suggested by the religious inconveniences to which the captives had been subjected. In our Lord's time, the rule was to have one wherever ten learned men or professed students of the law resided; and they extended to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and most places of the dispersion. The larger towns had several, and in Jerusalem the number approached five hundred. In point of officers and mode of worship, the Christian congregations are modelled after the synagogue. and preaching the gospel of the kingdom-- proclaiming the glad tidings of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness-- every disease. and all manner of disease among the people-- every complaint. The word means any incipient malady causing "softness."

‏ Matthew 4:23-25

23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues--These were houses of local worship. It cannot be proved that they existed before the Babylonish captivity; but as they began to be erected soon after it, probably the idea was suggested by the religious inconveniences to which the captives had been subjected. In our Lord's time, the rule was to have one wherever ten learned men or professed students of the law resided; and they extended to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and most places of the dispersion. The larger towns had several, and in Jerusalem the number approached five hundred. In point of officers and mode of worship, the Christian congregations are modelled after the synagogue.

and preaching the gospel of the kingdom--proclaiming the glad tidings of the kingdom,

and healing all manner of sickness--every disease.

and all manner of disease among the people--every complaint. The word means any incipient malady causing "softness."

24. And his fame went throughout all Syria--reaching first to the part of it adjacent to Galilee, called Syro-Phoenicia (Mr 7:26), and thence extending far and wide.

and they brought unto him all sick people--all that were ailing or unwell. Those

that were taken--for this is a distinct class, not an explanation of the "unwell" class, as our translators understood it.

with divers diseases and torments--that is, acute disorders.

and those which were possessed with devils--that were demonized or possessed with demons.

and those which were lunatic--moon-struck.

and those that had the palsy--paralytics, a word not naturalized when our version was made.

and he healed them--These healings were at once His credentials and illustrations of "the glad tidings" which He proclaimed. After reading this account of our Lord's first preaching tour, can we wonder at what follows?

25. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis--a region lying to the east of the Jordan, so called as containing ten cities, founded and chiefly inhabited by Greek settlers.

and from Jerusalem, and from beyond Jordan--meaning from Perea. Thus not only was all Palestine upheaved, but all the adjacent regions. But the more immediate object for which this is here mentioned is, to give the reader some idea both of the vast concourse and of the varied complexion of eager attendants upon the great Preacher, to whom the astonishing discourse of the next three chapters was addressed. On the importance which our Lord Himself attached to this first preaching circuit, and the preparation which He made for it, see on Mr 1:35-39. CHAPTERS 5-8

Sermon on the Mount.

That this is the same Discourse as that in Lu 6:17-49--only reported more fully by Matthew, and less fully, as well as with considerable variation, by Luke--is the opinion of many very able critics (of the Greek commentators; of Calvin, Grotius, Maldonatus--Who stands almost alone among Romish commentators; and of most moderns, as Tholuck, Meyer, De Wette, Tischendorf, Stier, Wieseler, Robinson). The prevailing opinion of these critics is that Luke's is the original form of the discourse, to which Matthew has added a number of sayings, uttered on other occasions, in order to give at one view the great outlines of our Lord's ethical teaching. But that they are two distinct discourses--the one delivered about the close of His first missionary tour, and the other after a second such tour and the solemn choice of the Twelve--is the judgment of others who have given much attention to such matters (of most Romish commentators, including Erasmus; and among the moderns, of Lange, Greswell, Birks, Webster and Wilkinson. The question is left undecided by Alford). Augustine's opinion--that they were both delivered on one occasion, Matthew's on the mountain, and to the disciples; Luke's in the plain, and to the promiscuous multitude--is so clumsy and artificial as hardly to deserve notice. To us the weight of argument appears to lie with those who think them two separate discourses. It seems hard to conceive that Matthew should have put this discourse before his own calling, if it was not uttered till long after, and was spoken in his own hearing as one of the newly chosen Twelve. Add to this, that Matthew introduces his discourse amidst very definite markings of time, which fix it to our Lord's first preaching tour; while that of Luke, which is expressly said to have been delivered immediately after the choice of the Twelve, could not have been spoken till long after the time noted by Matthew. It is hard, too, to see how either discourse can well be regarded as the expansion or contraction of the other. And as it is beyond dispute that our Lord repeated some of His weightier sayings in different forms, and with varied applications, it ought not to surprise us that, after the lapse of perhaps a year--when, having spent a whole night on the hill in prayer to God, and set the Twelve apart, He found Himself surrounded by crowds of people, few of whom probably had heard the Sermon on the Mount, and fewer still remembered much of it--He should go over its principal points again, with just as much sameness as to show their enduring gravity, but at the same time with that difference which shows His exhaustless fertility as the great Prophet of the Church.