Matthew 8:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

See thou tell no man— Jesus commanded the leper without all delay to haste to Jerusalem, lest, if the report of his cure should arrive before him, the priests, through envy, might refuse to pronounce him cleansed; for it was the province of the priest to judge of and to determine concerning the leprosy. For a testimony unto them, means to the Jews, and particularly to the priests and Pharisees, who withstood the doctrine of Christ. The sense of the passage is, "that the sacrifice offered by the leper may be a proof of the reality of this miracle, and consequently of my divine mission." These words may also be rendered, that it may be a testimony against them: compare Mark 6:11.Luke 9:5. The plain meaning seems to be, "Go without delay, and shew yourself, cleansed as you are, to the priest, and present the sacrifices which the law requires for your purification, that we may convince them of the reality of the cure, and yet not give them any occasion of calumny." But though our Saviour here might enjoin secresy on the leper only till he had shewn himself to the priest; yet he commanded many others to tell none of the miracles he had wrought upon them. It was not in our Lord's plan to be universally received as the Messiah during his abode upon earth in the flesh. Those who had even then sufficient evidence proposed to them of our Lord's divine mission, and notwithstanding rejected it, were utterly inexcusable; but who those were, He alone in most instances could determine, who judges the heart. He was indeed to fulfil all the prophetical characters of the Messiah, that, when the time appointed for his erecting his kingdom arrived, the foundation on which it was to rest might want nothing of the strength and solidity which was necessary to support so great a fabric as the faith of the world. But all those prophetical characters of the Messiah, Jesus fulfilled, and appropriated to himself, when in his own lifetime on the earth he proved his divine mission; and by miracles communicated to a competent number of disciples every thing necessary in order to their propagating it through the world; and in the conclusion, by his sufferings and death, not only confirmed his doctrine, but made atonement for the sins of men. The wisdom of his plan was therefore worthy of its author.