CRITICAL NOTES
Matthew 22:1. Answered.—What? Obviously the unspoken murderous hate, restrained by fear, which had been raised in the rulers’ minds and flashed in their eyes, and moved in their gestures (Maclaren). The use of this word would rather suggest the idea that some conversation not reported had intervened (Gibson).
Matthew 22:3. Sent forth his servants.—It is still customary in the East, not only to give an invitation some time beforehand, but to send round servants at the proper time to inform the invited guests that all things are ready (Kitto). Cf. Esther 6:14.
Matthew 22:4. Dinner.—The introductory meal which opened the series of wedding feasts; an early meal toward mid-day, not the same as the δεῖπνον “supper” (Lange). Fatlings.—All the animals smaller than the oxen, that had been specially fed for the occasion (Morison).
Matthew 22:5. His farm.—His own farm (R.V.). It was his own concerns, and not the gratification or honour of his sovereign, in which he was interested (Morison). Egoism (“suitas”), says Bengel.
Matthew 22:7. Burned up their city.—As the Saviour’s mind was running on the thing signified, He parabolically supposes that the originally invited guests were the inhabitants of a certain city. He was thinking of Jerusalem, and parabolically predicted its destruction by the hands of the Romans (Morison).
Matthew 22:9. The highways.—The partings of the highways (R.V.). Strictly, into the places where different roads branch off. The “servants” are the earliest Christian missionaries, who went in their journeys to such meeting-places of the nations as Rome, Antioch, and Corinth (Carr).
Matthew 22:12. Friend.—See note on Matthew 20:13.
Matthew 22:13. Outer darkness.—See note on Matthew 8:12.
Matthew 22:14. For many are called, etc.—See Matthew 20:16. The “calling” answers, both verbally and in substance, to the “bidding” or invitation of the parable. The “chosen” are those who both accept the invitation and comply with its condition; those who, in the one parable, work in the vineyard, and in the other, array themselves with the wedding garment of holiness. The “choice,” as far as the parable is concerned, appears as dependent upon the answer given to the calling (Plumptre).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Matthew 22:1-14
The calling of the Gentiles.—In this passage the same persons are addressed by the same Speaker in much the same way as before. Jesus “again” “answers” (Matthew 22:1) the murderous thoughts of those who were before Him (Matthew 21:46) by speaking to them in “parables”—in two (1–10, 11–14) at the least. In these He both takes up and follows up what He had previously said in three principal ways; showing us a picture:
1. Of a singularly rebellious people.
2. Of a singularly mixed assembly.
3. Of an absolutely indispensable requirement.
I. A singularly rebellious people.—This rebelliousness is exhibited, first, by the treatment, given by the people described, to the first message of their king. This message is one of special bounty and grace. The king is purposing to give a great banquet in celebration of the marriage of his son. He sends out his servants to proclaim this abroad, and invite his people to come. The interpretation put on a previous parable (Matthew 21:45) teaches us to understand this of the giving of the law to Israel, and of the purport of that law as a means of preparing men for the then coming grace of the gospel (Galatians 3:24, and references). In other words it was a preliminary “invitation” to Christ. How that invitation was received is told us here in very few words in the end of Matthew 22:3; and is related at length in the long story of the murmurings of the wilderness, and of the consequent almost withdrawal, more than once, of the favour of God (Psalms 95:8-11, and references); and is shown to us, yet further, in the sad retrospect of Romans 10:21. Up to the coming of Christ, indeed, this was the true attitude of Israel as a nation. They refused the preliminary message of God. The same attitude was shown still more in regard to the second message He sent. After a time—“again”—He sent forth “other servants” to Israel—other servants with a new message to tell, viz., not only as before to proclaim His purpose of giving a banquet, but to say, rather, that now the banquet was spread (Matthew 22:4). This seems to refer to such passages as Matthew 4:17; Acts 3:22-26; Hebrews 7:19, etc. Also, the even worse reception given by them to this message, as shown partly by their giving preference to almost anything else (Matthew 22:5), and partly by their putting to death the persons who brought it (Matthew 22:6), seems to refer us for fulfilment to such passages as John 18:40; Acts 22:22; Acts 23:21, etc. While, finally, the awful result of this rejection and persecution of Christ and His Apostles, as described in Matthew 22:7, seems to refer to that destruction of the “city” of Jerusalem and that utter “casting away” of Israel both as a nation and church which afterwards came to pass. Israel, in short, is thus shown to be “rebellious” till its “casting away.”
II. A singularly mixed assembly.—Something of this had been shown previously in that application of another parable which is given us in Matthew 21:41-43. But several important additional particulars are vouchsafed in this place. We are not only told, e.g. that there shall be a fresh “nation” or gathering, in place of the old nation or congregation; but we are told, also, why it was that those first-invited guests had been rejected, viz., because they had shown themselves not “worthy” (Matthew 22:8) of the invitation received. See Acts 13:46. We are also shown whither the servants are bid to go to seek for fresh guests, viz., to the “highways” (Matthew 22:9-10), or, in other words, to wherever men are most to be found (cf. Matthew 28:19-20). Further, we are shown of what sorts the guests so collected will naturally turn out to be (Matthew 22:10), viz., of those who were reckoned as “evil” (see Acts 10:14; Acts 10:28) as well as of those who were regarded as “good.” Lastly, we are shown yet both how numerous and how suitable would be the persons thus collected together. The “wedding” would be “furnished with guests.” There would be enough—enough of the proper sort—for the purpose in view! There would be a collection of guests representative (finally) of all parts of the world; a nation made up of all nations, partly in place of and partly in addition to the nation invited before (Galatians 3:28; Galatians 4:26; Romans 11:11; Romans 11:5). No more mingled no greater gathering could very well be (cf. Revelation 7:9).
III. An indispensable requirement.—The mention of this grows immediately out of that spoken of last. In so “mixed” an assembly would every man present be of the right sort? Would there be none there to bring discredit on him who had invited them there? This is the point which the king is next described as looking into himself. “He came in to see the guests” (Matthew 22:11). What is represented by this? We take it as representing the way in which He “whose eyes are as a flame of fire” is described in Revelation 2:3 as examining the “churches” and those who compose them; and as showing us, therefore, that if there is no manner of scrutiny about men (Matthew 22:9-10) before they are invited to partake of the fulness of the gospel, there is very much indeed, and that from the highest quarter, when they have professed to accept it. And we see in that mentioned next, therefore, the chief point on which this examination will turn. A wedding guest, in the nature of things, should be clad in wedding apparel. Especially is this the case where such apparel has been previously offered him (as is assumed by all here) by his host. This is that, therefore, for which above all that host will inquire, “How earnest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment?” This is that, also, for the absence of which no excuse can be offered on the one hand (end of Matthew 22:12), and no punishment, on the other, be considered too harsh (Matthew 22:13). “Take him away” from this light to where there is nothing but darkness! From this feast to where is nothing but sorrow! In such a condition, also—“bound hand and foot”—that he can never come back!
In regard to the warning to which this series of verses thus brings us at last, we may note, in conclusion:—
1. Its precise practical meaning.—The “wedding garment” is that, which, whatever its exact condition and texture (of which nothing is said), serves to distinguish those who are “wedding guests” from those who are not. It seems to represent, therefore, that “newness of life” (or true desire for it) which serves at least to distinguish the true guests of the kingdom as well from others as from themselves in the past. For a professed disciple not to “put on” this (Colossians 3:10; Colossians 3:12, etc.) is indeed to trifle with God!
2. Its abounding mercy.—Mercy in requiring from us this “newness of life.” We cannot have anything better (Romans 6:21-22). Mercy in offering it to us. We cannot otherwise have it at all.
3. Its deep solemnity.—Such is the profound deceitfulness as well of sin, as of the great deceiver, and of our own hearts, that there is nothing in which we are more likely to be deceived, or to fancy ourselves “chosen” where we have only been “called” (Matthew 22:14). Let “him that thinketh he standeth”—on that very account—“take heed” all the more.
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Matthew 22:1-14. Two ways of despising God’s feast.—
I. The judgment on those who refuse the offered joys of the kingdom.—In the previous parable the kingdom was presented on the side of duty and service. That is only half the truth, and the least joyful half.
1. So this parable dismisses all ideas of work, duty, service, requirement, and instead gives the emblem of a marriage feast as the picture of the kingdom.—It therein unites two familiar prophetic images for the Messianic times—those of a festival and of a marriage. How pathetic this designation of His kingdom is on Christ’s lips, when we remember how near His bitter agony He stood, and tasted its bitterness already!
2. The invitations of the king.—There had been an invitation before the point at which the parable begins, for the servants are sent to summon those who had already been “called.” That calling, which lies beyond the horizon of our parable, is the whole series of agencies in Old Testament times. So this parable begins almost where the former leaves off. They only slightly overlap.
3. The two classes of rejecters.
4. The fatal issue is presented, as in the former parable, in two parts: the destruction of the rebels, and the passing over of the kingdom to others. But the differences are noteworthy. Here we read that “the king was wroth.” The insult to a king is worse than the dishonesty to a landlord. The refusal of God’s proffered grace is even more certain to awake that awful reality, the wrath of God, than the failure to render the fruits of the good possessed. Love repelled and thrown back on itself cannot but become wrath.
5. The command to gather in others to fill the vacant places.
II. The judgment of the unworthy accepters of the invitation.—There are two ways of sinning against God’s merciful gift: the one is refusing to accept it; the other is taking it in outward seeming, but continuing in sin. The former was the sin of the Jews; the latter is the sin of nominal Christians. Note, that there is one man only without the dress needed. That may be an instance of the lenity of Christ’s charity, which hopeth all things; or it may rather be intended to suggest the keenness of the king’s glance, which, in all the crowded tables, picks out the one ragged losel who had found his way there—so individual is His knowledge, so impossible for us to hide in the crowd.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Matthew 22:1-10. The parable of the marriage feast.—
I. The undeserved goodness of the invitation.
II. The well-deserved severity of the exclusion.—Sir E. Bayley, Bart., B.D.
The royal marriage feast: the wedding guests.—
I. The marriage festival made by the king in honour of his son, points manifestly to redemption completed in the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. Banquets had before this period been provided by the King, and enjoyed by the favoured circle of His guests; much advantage was possessed by the Jews over the Gentiles in every way, but especially in that to them were committed the oracles of God. But the feast depicted in this parable was the last and best; it was the way of salvation in its completed state.
II. When the fulness of time had come, the Lord Himself undertaking the work, as well as assuming the form, of a servant, carried to the chosen people the message, “Come, for all things are now ready.” His immediate followers and their successors repeated and pressed the invitation. The servants when they went out with the commission of the king, did not announce the feast as a new thing, then for the first time made known; they spoke of it as that which was promised before, and actually offered them; they summoned those who had previously been fully informed that the feast was provided for their use. These favoured but unthankful people were not taken at their word; after the first refusal, another and more urgent invitation is sent. The successive reiterated mission of the servants to the class who were originally invited, may be understood to point to the ministry of the Lord and the Seventy until the time of the crucifixion, and the second mission of the Apostles after the Pentecost, and under the ministration of the Spirit.
III. Significant are the differences in the treatment which the message and the messengers received from different classes within the privileged circle of the first invited. We learn here the solemn lesson that though there is much diversity in the degrees of aggravation with which men accompany their rejection of the Saviour, all who do not receive Him perish in the same condemnation. At first, no distinction is made between class and class of unbelievers; of all, and of all alike, it is recorded, “they would not come.” But when the offer became more pressing and more searching, a difference began to appear, not as yet the difference between the believing and the unbelieving, but a difference in the manner of refusing, and in the degrees of courage or of cowardice that accompanied the act. The greater number treated the message lightly, and preferred their own business to the life eternal which was offered to them in Christ; while a portion, not content with spurning away the offer, persecuted to the death the ambassadors who bore it.
III. Although those privileged Hebrews rejected Him, Christ did not remain a king without subjects, a shepherd without a flock. In the exercise of the same sovereignty through which He chose Abraham at first, He passed over Abraham’s degenerate posterity, and called another family. This family was Abraham’s seed, not by natural generation, but in the regeneration through faith. Peter went to the house of Cornelius, and in that lane of the world’s great city found a whole household willing to follow him to the feast his royal Master had prepared. Soon thereafter Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, and others traversed the continents of Europe and Asia, bringing multitudes of neglected outcasts into the presence and the favour of the King. “They brought in good and bad.” This is a cardinal point in the method of Divine mercy, and therefore it is articulately inserted in the picture. The thought and the style of ordinary life are adopted in the parable, and every reader understands easily what is meant. The invitations of the gospel come to fallen human kind, and to all without respect either of persons or of characters.—W. Arnot, D.D.
Matthew 22:5-6. Different treatment of the gospel message.—There are two different classes of unbelievers:—
1. The indifferent.
2. The absolutely hostile. Or:
1. Contemptuous scorners.
2. Bitter persecutors.—D. Brown, D.D.
Matthew 22:7. Anger in God.—Our Lord’s parable has fulfilled itself again and again in history, and will fulfil itself as long as foolish and rebellious persons exist on earth. This is one of the laws of the kingdom of heaven. It must be so, for it arises by necessity out of the character of Christ, the King of heaven—infinite bounty and generosity; but if that bounty be despised and insulted, or still more, if it be outraged by wanton tyranny or cruelty, then—for the benefit of the rest of mankind—awful severity. So it is, and so it must be, simply because God is good. The king in the parable was very angry, as he had a right to be. Let us lay that to heart, and tremble, from the very worst of us all to the very best of us all. There is an anger in God. There is indignation in God. An awful thought, and yet a blessed thought. Under God’s anger or under God’s love we must be, whether we will or not. We cannot flee from His presence. We cannot go from His Spirit. If we are loving, and so rise up to heaven, God is there—in love. If we are cruel and wrathful, and so go down to hell, God is there also—in wrath. With the clean He will be clean; with the froward man He will be froward. On us, and us alone, it depends whether we shall live under God’s anger or live under God’s love.—C. Kingsley, M.A.
Matthew 22:11-13. Profession tried.—
I. A visit.—“When the king came.”
II. A scrutiny.—“He saw a man.”
III. An interrogation.—“How earnest thou in?”
IV. Conviction.—“He was speech less.”
V. Bondage.—“Bind him hand and foot.”
VI. Exclusion.—“Cast him into outer darkness.”
VII. Torment.—“There shall be weeping,” etc.—W. W. Whythe.
The wedding garment.—Some customs and allusions connected with the scene remain obscure to us, after all that modern research has done to illustrate them, but the lesson which our Lord intended to teach stands relieved in clearest light and sharpest outline, like distant mountain tops when the sun has newly set behind them.
1. The wedding garment was something conspicuous and distinctive.
2. It was not a necessary part of a man’s clothing, but rather a significant badge of his loyalty.
3. The want of it was, and was understood to be, a decisive mark of disloyalty. The man who came to the feast without a wedding-garment endorsed substantially the act of those who had proudly refused to comply with the king’s invitation. It was the same heart-disobedience accompanied by a hypocrisy that would fain commit the sin and yet escape the consequences.
4. The question whether a wedding garment was proferred to every guest as he entered, out of the royal store, is attended with some difficulty. The preponderance of probability seems to lie with those who think that these decorations were freely distributed in the vestibule to every entrant, in some such way as certain badges are sometimes given to every one of a wedding-party amongst ourselves in the present day. But the point is not of primary importance. From what is tacitly assumed in the narrative it may be held as demonstrated alternatively, that either the king gave every guest the necessary garment, or it was such that every guest, even the poorest, could on the shortest warning easily obtain it for himself. Two silences become the two witnesses out of whose mouths the conclusion is established—the silence of the king as to the grounds of his sentence, and the silence of the culprit when judgment was pronounced. The judge does not give any reason why sentence should be executed, and the criminal does not give any reason why it should not. On both sides it is confessed and silently assumed that the guest had not, but might have had, the wedding-garment on. If there had been any hardship in the case, the king would have vindicated his own procedure, and the condemned guest would not have remained speechless when he heard his doom.—W. Arnot, D.D.
Matthew 22:12. “I am too well dressed for that.”—At one of the Paris stations of the McAll Mission an aged woman who had learned by heart many of the hymns, and seemed to find all her delight in them, came to the meeting leaning on a crutch, and evidently very feeble. The subject of discourse that night was “Dress”—the robe of righteousness, the wedding garment. At the close she said to the preacher, “I believe this is my last visit to the hall; if I can never come again, you will know where I have gone. My infirmities increase rapidly.”—“I will come to see you,” said the preacher; “but if God called you meanwhile, have you any fear of appearing before Him?”—“Oh, no!” she replied, “I am too well dressed for that—too well dressed to dread the judgment. He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation; He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”—Quiver.
Loyalty a question of will.—It was not the inherent worth of the material, but the meaning of the symbol that bulked in the estimation of both the entertainer and his guests. It may, from analogous cases, be shown to be probable that a loyal heart could have easily extemporised the appropriate symbol out of any material that lay next at hand. Where there is a will there is a way. Italian patriots, at the crisis of their conflict with multiform oppression, and while the strong yoke of the despot was still upon their necks, contrived to display their darling tricolour by a seemingly accidental arrangement of red, white, and green among the vegetables which they exhibited in the market or carried to their homes. Nay, more, the loyalty of a loyal man may, in certain circumstances, be more emphatically expressed by a rude, extemporaneous symbol, hastily constructed of intractable materials, than by the most elaborate and leisurely products of the needle or the loom. In such cases, the will of the man is everything; the wealth of the man nothing. The meanest rag suddenly thrown across the shoulders, arranged so as unequivocally to express the wearer’s faith may be a better evidence of loyalty than the richest silks of the East.—W. Arnot, D.D.
What does the “wedding-garment” signify?—I do not attach much value to the question which has been much canvassed here, whether the wedding garment specifically signifies Faith or Charity, whether it points to what the saved get from God, or what they do in His service. To wear the garment at the feast means that the wearer takes God’s way of salvation and not his own; to want it, means that the wanter takes his own way of salvation and not God’s. This is the conclusion of the whole matter. If you suppose that the garment means evangelical obedience, you must assume that faith in Christ is the root on which obedience grows; if, on the other hand, you suppose that the garment means faith in Christ, you must assume that it is a living, not a dead faith, a faith that will work by love and overcome the world.—Ibid.
The wedding garment.—This righteousness we so appropriate by faith as to make it ours, so that it becomes, in that singularly expressive term, our habit.—Archbishop Trench.
Royal wardrobes.—Horace tells of Lucullus (Epist.,
1. vi. 40), that he had not less than five thousand mantles in his wardrobe. Chardin says of the king of Persia that he gave away an infinite number of dresses. Dr. Owen says we have abundant evidence that kings wore provided with extensive wardrobes, from which each invited guest was furnished with a suitable garment.—P. Schaff, D.D.
Matthew 22:14. The called and the chosen.—We have to do in the text not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice, as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a few, and making His choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not render ourselves fit for it.
I. We have all been called, in a Christian sense.—We have been called to enter into Christ’s kingdom; we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness from this time forth even for ever.
II. Now, if this be the prize to which we are called, who are they who are also chosen to it?
1. In the first and most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest; who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is altogether past, the victory securely won.
2. Those who, having heard their call, have turned to obey it, and have gone on following it.
3. Those who, having found, in themselves the sin which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or in a great measure, have overcome it.
III. What is the proportion between those who are chosen and those who are called only?—This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is unseen by the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us most nearly and most narrowly. All we can say is, that there are too many who, we must fear, are not chosen; there are too few of whom we can feel sure that they are.—T. Arnold, D.D.