Matthew 4:17

Matthew 4:17 is the seventeenth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. In the previous verses Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist and then left Nazareth for Capernaum. This verse reports that once in Capernaum, Jesus began to preach.

Content

The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads:

:απο τοτε ηρξατο ο ιησους κηρυσσειν και λεγειν

:μετανοειτε ηγγικεν γαρ η βασιλεια των ουρανω

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

:From that time Jesus began to

:preach, and to say, Repent: for

:the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

The New International Version translates the passage as:

:From that time on Jesus began

:to preach, "Repent, for the

:kingdom of heaven is near."

For a collection of other versions see BibleHub Matthew 4:17.

Analysis

This verse is often seen as the beginning of the main section of Matthew's gospel: Jesus' ministry. The author of Matthew uses the phrase "from that time" three times: here, Matthew 16:21, and Matthew 26:16. Each of the verses is often seen as a turning point in the narrative.

Jesus here uses a line identical to that ascribed to John the Baptist in Matthew 3:2, but here Jesus's call to repentance is calling men to reassess all personal and social values in the approach of the divine kingdom of his ministry. This reassessment reappears in the beatitudes (. Therefore, 'the message of the kingdom has not changed, but the messenger has'; the difference is crucial. Thomas Long gives a representation that the message by John the Baptist is like a person pointing to the cloud on the horizon and saying that the rain is near, whereas the message by Jesus is saying that the kingdom begins to happen and through him.

Commentary from the Church Fathers

Pseudo-Chrysostom: Christ's Gospel should be preached by him who can control his appetites, who contemns the goods of this life, and desires not empty honours. From this time began Jesus to preach, that is, after having been tempted, He had overcome hunger in the desert, despised covetousness on the mountain, rejected ambitious desires in the temple. Or from the time that John was delivered up; for had He begun to preach while John was yet preaching, He would have made John be lightly accounted of, and John's preaching would have been thought superfluous by the side of Christ's teaching; as when the sun rises at the same time with the morning star, the star's brightness is hid.

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Analysis

Commentary from the Church Fathers

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Further reading