A NATION, a people — and in the plural, in Jewish Greek, THE NATIONS: everybody who is not Israel, the Gentiles. The Greek Old Testament uses it for Hebrew goyim, and English 'ethnic' descends from it. ⚠ The word is the hinge of the sharpest unresolved tension in Matthew. At 10:5-6 the Twelve are sent out under a hard restriction stated twice — go nowhere among the ethnē, only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel — and at 15:24 he says the same of himself. The book then closes with mathēteusate PANTA TA ETHNĒ, make disciples of ALL the nations (28:19). Same word, opposite instruction, eighteen chapters apart, and Matthew offers no reconciliation. The library reports both and observes that this Gospel is willing to end on a reversal it never explains. → first discussed at Matt 10:5