Matthew — Introduction — The MisterLibrarian Bible Project

Κατὰ Μαθθαῖον (Kata Maththaion) — 'According to Matthew' — the traditional title; the book itself names no author. The ascription to Matthew the tax-collector (also called Levi) is early and external, first recorded by Papias around AD 130.

The Gospel the early church placed FIRST — the bridge from the Old Testament to the New, written to show a Jewish readership that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the son of David and son of Abraham, in whom the whole story of Israel comes to its point. Built around five great blocks of Jesus' teaching (the Sermon on the Mount the first of them), and framed, beginning to end, by one promise: 'God with us.'

Chapters

16 of 28 chapters translated · 57.1%

Gold chapters are published — click one to read it. The rest are still ahead.

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Chapter by chapter

Matthew 1The New Testament opens on a genealogy — 'the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham' — the word that opens the Bible (Genesis) chosen to open the Gospel. Forty-two generations in three panels of fourteen, from Abraham to David, David to the exile, the exile to the Christ — and ⚠ four women break into the list of fathers, three of them Gentile and every one touched by scandal: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and 'the wife of Uriah'. The count is a designed thing (fourteen is the number of DAVID's name in Hebrew), not a registry: it drops three kings, runs the royal line through the cursed Jechoniah, and breaks its 'fathered… fathered' drumbeat at the last link, where Jesus is not fathered by Joseph but 'BORN of' Mary. ⚠ Then the birth itself: Mary found with child 'of the Holy Spirit'; Joseph, a righteous man, resolving to divorce her quietly until an angel stops him in a dream; the name JESUS unfolded as 'YHWH saves' ('he will save his people from their sins'); and Isaiah's virgin-sign landed as EMMANUEL, 'God with us' — the name that brackets the whole Gospel, which will close on 'I am with you always'.Matthew 2The nativity's dark half. Magi from the east — astrologer-priests of Persia, not kings, and Matthew never counts them — arrive in Jerusalem asking for a king who was BORN one, which is the one thing Herod, voted his title by the Roman Senate, was not; and the city that should have rejoiced is 'shaken' along with him. ⚠ The chief priests answer correctly out of Micah and then nobody walks the six miles to look, while the men with a star and no Scripture cross half the east and fall down in a HOUSE (there is no stable here and no shepherds — those are Luke's, and the two accounts never overlap). Then the chapter turns: Herod's 'secretly' is the same word as Joseph's 'quietly' one chapter earlier, and the time he ascertains 'exactly' becomes the width of the killing. ⚠ Four dreams, four withdrawals, and four quotations — Bethlehem, Egypt, Ramah, Nazareth — three of them famously difficult: 'out of Egypt I called my son' is a verse about ISRAEL, the angel's 'those who were seeking the child's life are dead' is Moses' own marching orders quoted without a footnote, and 'he shall be called a Nazarene' is a prophecy that exists in no book. Rachel, buried at Bethlehem, weeps over its children and will not be comforted — the same two words Jacob used at the pit.Matthew 3The wilderness and the water — the next two steps of the exodus pattern chapter 2 set going. A man in camel's hair and a leather belt appears in the Judean desert with one sentence, 'Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near' — which is, word for word, the sentence Jesus himself begins with at 4:17. ⚠ The costume is a quotation: 2 Kings 1:8 dresses Elijah in exactly those clothes, and Malachi had promised Elijah before the day of the Lord. The Isaiah verse John is identified with carries the most famous punctuation argument in the Bible — the Hebrew's parallel puts the wilderness with the ROAD ('in the wilderness prepare the way'), the Greek puts it with the VOICE — and Matthew quietly reads 'his paths' where Isaiah and the Greek both read 'our God'. ⚠ Then the Pharisees and Sadducees arrive together, which almost never happens, and are called a brood of vipers and told that God can raise children for Abraham out of the stones at their feet — a pun that works only in Hebrew (banim / avanim). And at the close, the difficulty every reader feels, which only Matthew records: John tries to stop him. 'I have need to be baptized by YOU, and you come to me?' Jesus' first recorded words in this Gospel are the answer — 'allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness' — and then a voice out of the heavens says a sentence assembled from three Scriptures at once: the royal son of Psalm 2, the beloved (only) son of Genesis 22, and the servant of Isaiah 42, whose very next line is 'I have put my spirit upon him.'Matthew 4The wilderness again — but forty days of it, and Matthew alone writes 'forty days AND FORTY NIGHTS', which is Moses' phrase on the mountain, where 'bread he did not eat'. Three temptations, each answered out of DEUTERONOMY, the book of the wilderness generation; and the tempter opens on the last thing God said, 'IF you are the Son of God'. ⚠ He also quotes Scripture — and drops a clause. Psalm 91 promises the angels will guard you 'in all your ways'; the devil goes straight from the first line to the third and leaves those four words out, which are precisely the ones that would have answered him. ⚠ Then the word this library has tracked since the magi: the devil asks to be BOWED TO (proskyneō — the magi's verb, and Herod's lie), and Jesus answers with the one verse in the Law that names its object. Afterwards, a fourth 'withdrawal' — the nativity's verb — takes him north to Capernaum, and Isaiah's 'Galilee of the NATIONS' is quoted over a mixed borderland (Hebrew 8:23–9:1, where the people are WALKING in darkness and Matthew has them SITTING). The ministry then opens with the Baptist's own sentence, word for word, immediately after the Baptist is arrested for saying it — and four fishermen leave two boats, the Greek quietly distinguishing the hand-net of the poorer pair from the family firm with a hull, a father, and hired men.Matthew 5The Sermon on the Mount opens in red letters — eight Happy-sayings, salt and light, not one iota, and six rounds of 'You have heard… but I say': anger, lust, oaths, the other cheek, love for enemies.Matthew 6The Sermon's middle chapter — alms, prayer, and fasting in secret; the Lord's Prayer and its famous missing doxology; treasure, the undivided eye, Mammon — and the birds and the lilies.Matthew 7The Sermon's finale — the splinter and the beam, ask-seek-knock, the Golden Rule signed, the narrow gate, wolves and fruit, 'I never knew you' — and the house on the rock.Matthew 8He comes DOWN from the mountain of the Sermon, and the healing half of the summary at 4:23 begins — chapters 5-7 were the teaching, chapters 8-9 are this. A leper bows (proskyneō, the magi's verb, a fourth time) and doubts not the power but the WILL: 'if you are willing' — 'I am willing'; and then Jesus TOUCHES him, which under the Law transmits uncleanness to the toucher, and Matthew reports none travelling that way. ⚠ Then a Roman officer uses the Baptist's exact words, 'I am not worthy' (3:11, of the sandals; here, of his own roof), and argues from a chain of command rather than from merit — the one inference Jesus is said to marvel at — which draws the hardest sentence yet: many will recline with the patriarchs from east and west, and 'the sons of the kingdom' be put outside. ⚠ Peter has a mother-in-law, which means Peter has a wife; and Isaiah 53:4 is quoted over an evening of house calls, following the HEBREW ('our diseases… our pains') where the Greek Old Testament turns the first noun into 'sins'. The first 'Son of Man' in the Gospel belongs to a man with nowhere to sleep. ⚠ Matthew calls the storm an EARTHQUAKE (seismos — Mark and Luke both say 'squall'), the same word he uses at the crucifixion and the empty tomb; Jesus REBUKES the sea with the verb used on demons, and nobody in the boat concludes anything — they ask. And where Mark has one demoniac, Matthew has TWO; the chapter that opened with crowds following ends with a whole town asking him to leave.Matthew 9The healing half keeps going — a paralytic forgiven before he is healed ('which is easier to say?'), a tax collector named Matthew called from his own booth and dinner with 'sinners', the bridegroom question and new wine in old skins, a ruler's daughter and a woman healed by a touch of the fringe, two blind men crying 'Son of David', a mute man freed and the first charge that the power comes from the ruler of demons — and at the end, word for word, the summary sentence of 4:23 returns to close the frame around the Sermon and the healings, ending on a prayer answered by name next chapter: 'the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.'Matthew 10The Mission Discourse — the Twelve named (six pairs, a Zealot and a tax collector among them, Judas placed last with the one clause no one else gets) and sent out with authority but no money, no bag, no staff: 'freely you received, freely give.' Sheep among wolves, floggings and kings, families turned into enemies (quoting Micah almost word for word), the first mention of the cross anywhere in this Gospel — before Jesus has said one word about his own — and 'whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.' Ends on the smallest reward named: a cup of cold water, not lost.Matthew 11John, now imprisoned, sends to ask the question his own ministry never quite let him ask aloud: 'Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?' Jesus answers out of Isaiah's own vocabulary, then turns to the crowds — not a reed, not soft clothing, but a prophet and more than a prophet — quotes a second messenger-prophecy over him, and calls him Elijah, 'if you are willing to receive it.' ⚠ One of the New Testament's most argued single verses sits at the center: 'the kingdom of the heavens suffers violence' — readings given, none forced. Children refusing to dance to either tune in the marketplace; a real textual crux over whether wisdom is vindicated by her deeds or her children; woes on Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum measured against Tyre, Sidon and Sodom, with a king of Babylon's own boast turned on a fishing town; a prayer that hides these things from the wise and reveals them to infants; and the Gospel's gentlest words, unparalleled anywhere else — 'Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden' — closing on a yoke that is kind.Matthew 12Grain plucked on the sabbath answered with Hosea 6:6 a second time, exactly as promised — and 'something greater than the temple is here.' A withered hand healed, and for the first time the Pharisees' word is 'destroy,' not merely 'accuse.' Isaiah's Servant Song quoted at length — the longest Old Testament citation in this Gospel — a servant who 'will not quarrel nor cry out.' ⚠ The Beelzeboul charge, planted at 9:34 and named at 10:25, finally gets its full scene: a divided kingdom cannot stand, and 'the kingdom of God has come upon you.' ⚠ The blasphemy of the Spirit — the one sin not forgiven, 'in this age or the age to come' — given with readings, not a verdict. John's own 'brood of vipers' comes back on Jesus' lips against the same opponents; a tree known by its fruit; every idle word weighed. The sign of Jonah demanded and given — three days and three nights, and Nineveh and the queen of the south rising to condemn 'this generation.' And it closes on a redefinition of family itself: 'whoever does the will of my Father… is my brother and sister and mother.'Matthew 13The Parables discourse — seven of them in one sitting, opening with the Sower and its four soils, and a hard answer to 'why parables?': Isaiah's ancient hardening prophecy, quoted with its command softened to a description, presented with readings rather than a verdict. ⚠ The Weeds sown among the wheat by an enemy at night — darnel, a poison look-alike no one can safely pull early — left to grow until a harvest with its own reapers. The Mustard Seed's imperial tree-imagery borrowed for the smallest possible seed; the Leaven hidden in 'three measures' of flour, the identical rare word already met at Sarah's tent (Genesis 18:6). A fulfillment formula that names no prophet, quoting a psalm of Asaph against a minority reading that supplies 'Isaiah.' The Weeds explained — sons of the kingdom, sons of the evil one, a field that is the whole world — then Hidden Treasure and the Pearl, one found by accident and one by a lifetime's search, both ending the same way. The Net, and a scribe 'trained for the kingdom' who may well be Matthew's own self-portrait. And it closes at Nazareth, rejected in his own hometown, where — a promise from last chapter paid in full — his brothers are finally named: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.Matthew 14A birthday banquet turns into an execution — Herod's rash oath, a daughter coached by her mother, and John the Baptist's head on a platter, in a flashback Matthew steps back to tell before catching up to 'now.' ⚠ Grief drives Jesus into his seventh withdrawal in this Gospel, and instead of solitude he finds a crowd he has compassion on — five loaves and two fish, a blessing, and twelve baskets left over from five thousand fed, the vocabulary itself (a small Jewish hand-basket, not the larger one a Gentile crowd will get next chapter) quietly marking who is being fed. Then a boat fighting the wind till the fourth watch of the night, Jesus walking on the sea, and the disciples' cry of 'a ghost!' answered with 'Take heart, it is I' — the same courage-word already given a paralyzed man and a bleeding woman, now spoken by the one doing something the Old Testament reserves for God alone. ⚠ Peter asks to come, gets one word back — 'Come' — and is out of the boat before he starts to sink: 'Lord, save me,' the same verb as Jesus' own name, and 'you of little faith, why did you doubt?', a rebuke that pairs with a verb so rare it sounds only one more time in the whole New Testament. No storm-rebuke this time, only presence — and a bow in the boat finally paired, after six earlier bows across this Gospel, with the words it was always waiting for: 'truly you are the Son of God.' It closes on a whole region reaching for the fringe of his garment.Matthew 15A hard question about hand-washing turns into a lesson on what actually defiles — quoting Isaiah’s “this people honors me with their lips” and naming the Pharisees “blind guides of the blind.” ⚠ Then a Canaanite woman crosses into the one Gentile territory the Gospels record Jesus personally entering, and out-argues him: “even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” — the Gospel’s own superlative, “great is your faith,” given to the outsider it has gone furthest to mark as one. A crowd by the sea glorifies “the God of Israel”; then bread and fish multiplied a second time for four thousand more, seven baskets left over this time, not twelve — the vocabulary itself still tracking who is being fed.Matthew 16The Pharisees and Sadducees ask together for a sign, as promised three chapters ago, and are refused with the same answer already given once. ⚠ Then Jesus asks who people say he is, and Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — met with a wordplay on Peter’s own name, a promise to build “my congregation” (not, this translation insists, “my church”), and keys to bind and loose on earth. Then, in the same breath, the first plain prediction of the cross — and Peter, praised one moment, rebuked as “Satan” the next for trying to talk Jesus out of it. It closes on the cost of following at all: deny yourself, take up your cross, and a promise that some standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

About the book

Where it sits

The FIRST book of the New Testament in every canonical list — its position a judgement about its bridging role, not its date. One of the four canonical Gospels, and one of the three SYNOPTICS (with Mark and Luke), which share so much material they can be set in parallel columns and 'seen together'.

Genre

A GOSPEL — the theological narrative form Mark had recently pioneered, here expanded with large collections of teaching. Matthew is the most STRUCTURED of the four: a genealogy and infancy narrative, then the ministry organised around five discourses (each closed by 'when Jesus had finished these words'), then the passion and resurrection. It reads like a teaching manual for the church, catechetical and orderly, and became the most-used Gospel in the early centuries.

Author

By strong and early tradition, MATTHEW (Levi), the tax-collector whom Jesus called from his booth (9:9; Mark 2:14 names the same man Levi) — one of the Twelve. ⚠ The majority of critical scholars doubt direct apostolic authorship: the Gospel appears to draw on Mark (an odd dependence for an eyewitness on a non-eyewitness), its Greek is polished rather than translated, and Papias's remark that Matthew 'compiled the sayings in the Hebrew dialect' does not obviously describe this Greek book. The main options: the apostle Matthew, or a later Jewish-Christian author (or school) drawing on apostolic tradition, writing in Matthew's name or under his authority. The library reports the case and casts no vote.

Date written

Most place it c. AD 80–90 — after Mark (which it seems to use) and apparently after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, which some read as reflected in 22:7 ('he burned their city'). A minority, holding to apostolic authorship and an early Mark, argue for the 60s. The date follows the questions of authorship and sources.

Place

Uncertain; ANTIOCH in Syria is the most common guess — a large, mixed Jewish-and-Gentile church, the first place believers were called 'Christians' (Acts 11:26), and the earliest to quote this Gospel (Ignatius of Antioch, c. AD 110). Other proposals include Palestine and Phoenicia.

Audience

A JEWISH-CHRISTIAN community, at a moment of painful separation from the synagogue. The Gospel assumes readers who know the Scriptures and Jewish custom (it rarely stops to explain them, where Mark does), argues constantly from prophecy ('that it might be fulfilled'), and is sharply engaged with the Pharisees — the rival teachers of a Judaism reorganising itself after the Temple's fall. Yet it ends by sending the message to 'all nations': a book rooted in Israel and opening outward.

How it's laid out

1:1–2:23The genealogy and infancy — the son of David and Abraham, the virgin birth, the magi, the flight to Egypt, 'God with us'.

3:1–7:29The kingdom announced — John, the baptism, the temptation, and the SERMON ON THE MOUNT (the first discourse).

8:1–10:42Authority and mission — nine miracles, the call of the Twelve, and the missionary discourse (the second).

11:1–13:58Growing opposition — questions and conflict, and the parables of the kingdom (the third discourse).

14:1–18:35The church forming — Peter's confession, the Transfiguration, and the discourse on community and forgiveness (the fourth).

19:1–25:46Toward Jerusalem — the entry, controversies in the Temple, the woes on the Pharisees, and the discourse on the end (the fifth).

26:1–28:20The passion and resurrection — the last supper, Gethsemane, the cross, the empty tomb, and the Great Commission: 'I am with you always.'

What it's about

FULFILMENT — Matthew's signature: some dozen times 'this took place to fulfil what was spoken', reading Jesus' life as the deliberate completion of Israel's Scriptures, from the virgin of Isaiah 7 to 'out of Egypt I called my son'.
JESUS as the NEW MOSES and son of David — a child threatened by a king and called out of Egypt, giving the law from a mountain, arranging his teaching in five books as the Torah has five; and the royal Messiah, 'son of David', the title that runs the length of the Gospel.
The KINGDOM OF HEAVEN — Matthew's reverent phrase for the kingdom of God, the announced reign that the Sermon describes, the parables illustrate, and the church is to embody until the King returns.
The CHURCH (ekklēsia) — Matthew is the only Gospel to use the word (16:18; 18:17), and the one most concerned with the community's life: discipline, forgiveness, leadership, and the presence of Christ 'where two or three are gathered'.
RIGHTEOUSNESS exceeding the Pharisees' — a deeper obedience of the heart, not less law but more ('unless your righteousness exceeds…', 5:20), set against a religion of display; the sharpest conflict in the Gospels with the Pharisees runs here.
GOD WITH US — the frame of the whole book: it opens on 'Emmanuel, God with us' (1:23), promises 'where two or three are gathered, there am I' (18:20), and closes on 'I am with you always, to the end of the age' (28:20).

Key words & people

Words this book turns on — each links to its dictionary entry:

genesisEmmanouēlIēsousChristosmetoikesiaparthenos

People & places — each links to the encyclopedia:

Jesus Joseph the husband of Mary Mary the mother of Jesus David Abram / Abraham

The source text

Translated from the Greek of the SBL GREEK NEW TESTAMENT (SBLGNT), edited by Michael W. Holmes. Matthew's Greek is clean and orderly, more polished than Mark's, and deeply shaped by the Greek Old Testament, which it quotes constantly (usually in the Septuagint form, as with parthenos at 1:23). ⚠ Chapter 1 carries two textual points worth naming: the genealogy's 'Asaph' and 'Amos' (1:7-8, 10), where the earliest manuscripts read the psalmist's and prophet's names rather than the kings 'Asa' and 'Amon', printed here as the critical text has them; and the ending of 1:25, where a large part of the tradition expands 'a son' to 'her firstborn son' (borrowed from Luke 2:7). The seven-version shelf under every chapter compares the NIV, KJV, Douay-Rheims, The Living Bible, the 1599 Geneva, ASV, and NWT.

Looking forward

Matthew's Christ is the MESSIAH of Israel and the son of David, whose royal line the Gospel's first page is built to establish — and, from that same page, more than a king: 'Emmanuel, God with us'. He is the new Moses who gives the law from a mountain, the fulfilment toward whom the whole Old Testament leans, the teacher whose authority astonishes ('not as their scribes'), and the risen Lord to whom 'all authority in heaven and on earth' is given. ⚠ And he is present: the Gospel that opens on 'God with us' and closes on 'I am with you always' frames everything between as the abiding presence of God in Jesus — the claim the name Emmanuel makes, carried from the first chapter to the last verse.

Where the debates are

AUTHORSHIP and DATE, which stand together — the apostle Matthew, or a later Jewish-Christian author or school in his name and after his tradition; and with them the SYNOPTIC PROBLEM, the question of how Matthew, Mark and Luke are literarily related (the majority view has Matthew using Mark and a sayings-source, 'Q'). The relationship of the two INFANCY narratives, Matthew's and Luke's, which are independent and hard to harmonise in detail. And the Gospel's sharp language toward 'the Pharisees' and 'the Jews' (chapter 23; 27:25), whose history of misuse the library names plainly while setting the words in their first-century intra-Jewish setting. The library reports the positions and casts no vote.

📖 Matthew