I am posting this as a note from Sunday’s sermon. As a little background, as i am teaching on Mark 13, I am using the idea of double fulfillment to demonstrate how Jesus spoke both about AD 70 AND the end of days mixed together. This is in response to the rising preterism that is sweeping churches today. the following is an excerpt from a theological journal article written by Craig Blomberg.
Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 23:1 (Spring 2002)
Article: Interpreting Old Testament Prophetic Literature In Matthew: Double Fulfillment Author: Craig L. Blomberg
Interpreting Old Testament Prophetic Literature In Matthew: Double Fulfillment
Craig L. Blomberga
The mid-to-late-1980s saw a flurry of evangelical interest in the NT’s use of the OT. Moisés Silva and Darrell Bock discussed how one might categorize the various uses in terms of both hermeneutics and text type.1 Walter Kaiser strongly maintained that OT authors consciously intended much of what the NT writers described in terms of fulfillment,2 while Douglas Moo defended a cautious use of sensus plenior.3 Richard Longenecker and Gregory Beale debated the reproducibility of NT exegesis of the Old.4 An anthology edited by D. A. Carson and Hugh Williamson presented a survey of each NT corpus’ use of the OT and key scholarship on the topic.5 But no consensus on any of the major issues was established and evangelical interest seemingly turned to other issues.6 During the
TrinJ 23:1 (Spring 02) p. 18
1990s the majority of the discussion of “intertextuality” between the Testaments, as it is increasingly termed, took place outside evangelical circles and, across the entire theological spectrum, published research consistently narrowed itself to more focused studies of specific passages and themes rather than treating broader hermeneutical questions.7
The new millennium holds out hope for progress on the projects largely abandoned after the eighties, as Carson and Beale are editing a major reference work to be published by Baker on the use of the OT in the New.8 Employing Richard Hays’s categories of quotation, allusion, and echo,9 it is designed to be a fairly comprehensive analysis of the meaning of each major NT reference to the Old and, for full-fledged quotations, an assessment of the OT passage in its original context, its pre-Christian Jewish history of interpretation, the text-form used by the NT writer, and a categorization of the hermeneutic employed in its NT context.10 This project is an extremely welcome development. Focusing simply on the particular area of interest of this essay, the gospel of Matthew, it is noteworthy that the major works on Matthew’s use of the OT are even older than the flurry of more general interest in the 1980s,11 largely because that decade was also spent debating, and for the most part refuting, the notion that Matthew in its overall literary genre corresponds to the Jewish category of midrash.12 My previous research on Matthew has
TrinJ 23:1 (Spring 02) p. 19
suggested that a particular OT prophetic text cited by Matthew often points both to and beyond its immediate historic context, without necessarily affirming all that the gospel writer or the individuals he quotes maintains.13 This phenomenon, which I am provisionally entitling “double fulfillment” emerges particularly prominently in Isaiah. Inasmuch as I know of only one recent study on “Matthew and Isaiah” per se,14 it seems unlikely that this essay will prove too redundant.
Now a clarification is required at the outset. The expression “double fulfillment” at times has been a virtual synonym for sensus plenior, that is, the idea that an OT text has a straightforward literal meaning and a second, more esoteric or opaque meaning, often understood to be part of the divine intent of the text but not consciously in the human author’s mind.15 That is most assuredly not how I am using the expression. Rather, by double fulfillment I mean that in a number of texts from the latter prophets cited by Matthew, and especially in Isaiah, the results of an ordinary grammatico-historical exegesis of the OT text point clearly to a referent within the time frame of the OT books. Yet those same passages, especially when read within the context of their immediately surrounding paragraphs or chapters, disclose a further dimension of meaning never approximated by any OT-age event.
It seems plausible, therefore, to affirm that the prophetic author consciously looked both for a relatively immediate referent and for a more longer-term eschatological fulfillment. Usually Matthew provides more information about the nature of that fulfillment than the prophet could have been expected to know, and normally no intermediate events or processes in between the two fulfillments appear to support Kaiser’s notions of generic fulfillment or single intent.16 On the other hand, more than pure typology—the repetition of theologically significant patterns of God’s actions in history17 —seems at work in these texts, even though Matthew frequently does use simple typology and also appeals to the more direct fulfillment of prophetic promises that had no short-term precursors. If double fulfillment is too confusing a term to describe these uses of Isaiah by Matthew, then by all means a better term may be suggested—it is the concept and not the label with which I am
TrinJ 23:1 (Spring 02) p. 20 concerned. But enough prolegomena; it is time to turn to the texts. I will proceed in their order of occurrence
in the narrative of Matthew.
I. Isa 7:14 in Matt 1:23
Because of the controversies spawned by Isaiah’s famous prophecy of a virginal conception, it might seem unwise to begin with this illustration. But in fact it seems to me one of the clearest examples, and one that sets the stage for several others. Despite staunch conservative resistance to the idea,18 I cannot see how the “plain meaning” of Isa 7:15—“before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste”19 —can mean anything other than that Isaiah believes the child he has just described (v. 14) will be born within his lifetime, as a harbinger of the destruction (by Assyria!) of kings Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Remaliah (7:1).20 The language of 8:3 echoes that of 7:14 as Isaiah goes in to the prophetess and she conceives and gives birth to a son. It is no longer controversial to observe that the ‘almah of 7:14 simply refers to a young woman of marriageable age, without settling the question of her virginity.21 Thus it seems most likely that the child of 7:14 is Isaiah’s son, Maher-Shalal- Hash-Baz.22 Isaiah 8:4 reinforces this equation, with language carefully reminiscent of 7:15—“Before the boy knows how to say ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.” Only now Israel is explicitly included among Assyria’s victims.
At the same time, 7:14 also refers to the enigmatic child as Immanuel, “God with us,” the name that recurs in 8:8 and 10. This name likewise links the child with Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz but also points forward to a more distant time when the plans of Israel’s enemies will be thwarted (8:9–10).23 This “bifocal vision” prepares the reader for 9:1–7, which is all about restoration after the punishment begun by Assyria. In this context appear the words musically immortalized by Handel, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (9:6a). Against the current critical consensus it is difficult to identify this son, who is an heir to David’s throne, “Mighty God,” “Everlasting Father,” “Prince of Peace,” and governing eternally
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(9:6b–7), with anyone other than Israel’s royal Messiah,24 and we ought not be surprised to learn that that is precisely how the post-Christian Jewish Targum understood it. While dating traditions in the Isaiah Targum proves notoriously difficult, it does seem unlikely that any Scripture would first be taken as messianic in any Jewish context aware of Christian claims for that text.25 We do not know why the translators of the LXX chose parthenos—a term that does imply sexual virginity—to render ‘almah, but it seems reasonable to assume that part of the reason was that they too recognized Immanuel was no ordinary child whose fulfillment was exhausted in the life of Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz.26 Certainly no figures in between Isaiah’s day and Jesus’ birth even remotely qualify for this child who is a sign of divine presence;27 hence it seems appropriate to use the expression, “double fulfillment.” Isaiah recognized that his son would be a sign and symbol (8:18), both of God’s activity in his day and of the ultimate child who would comprehensively fulfill the Immanuel promises of chaps. 7–9.28 II. Isa 40:3 in Matt 3:3
The Isa 7:14 quotation formed one of Matthew’s distinctive fulfillment citations that he introduced as the gospel’s narrator. Isaiah 40:3 appears already in the gospel of Mark (cf. Mark 1:2) as a summary of the ministry of John the Baptist. In both gospels, the quotation is introduced as the explicit prophecy of Isaiah, whereas in Matt 1:23 no mention of the prophet’s name appears. Irrespective of debates over the unity and authorship of the sixty-six chapters of canonical Isaiah, chap. 40 clearly marks a major jump forward chronologically to a time after the Babylonian captivity when the Jewish exiles can return to their homeland in Israel. Isaiah 39 concludes the first main section of the book by referring to that coming captivity; 40:2 thus most naturally refers to its end: “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has
TrinJ 23:1 (Spring 02) p. 22
been completed.” While some commentators restrict the meaning of the preparation of a way for the Lord in v.3 to the (metaphorical) highways smoothed out to welcome a visiting king,29 it seems likely that the straight paths allude to the roads on which the exiles returned to Israel as well, especially in light of the more explicit metaphor to that effect in 35:8–10.30 While individual Jews as well as small groups returned to the Holy Land off and on throughout the centuries until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, only the return initiated by Cyrus in 538 B.C. was ever widely regarded as the return from exile prophesied by so many of the latter prophets. In this respect, we again have one primary referent, this time not within Isaiah’s lifetime, but still well within the period of history during which the Hebrew Scriptures were written.
At the same time, this return from exile never reestablished the Davidic monarchy in complete freedom from imperial overlords according to the models set up before the divided kingdom. Israel’s sins were never fully paid for (v. 2), every valley, even metaphorically, was never raised up (v. 4), and all humanity hardly saw the glory of the Lord (v. 5). Not surprisingly, a pre-Christian Jewish sect like the Essenes in Qumran could believe that they were beginning to experience the more complete or ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy (1QS 8:13–14). Texts like Sir 48:24, 1 En 1:6, and 1 Bar 5:7 could similarly take Isaiah’s text to allude to the eschatological comfort at the end of the age, which no return from exile had yet fully provided.31 Once Jesus’ followers believed that in his ministry God was decisively and redemptively coming to his people, it was natural to associate John the Baptist’s ministry with the preparation for that coming. In light of the already existing Jewish eschatological hopes, it is not implausible to imagine even the Baptist thinking of himself in that same light (as in John 1:23).32 Double fulfillment again appears to be a helpful concept to describe the phenomena involved.33
IIII. Isa 9:1-2 in Matt 4:15-16
The theme of return from exile continues, as Matthew intriguingly associates Jesus’ move to Capernaum on the Sea of
TrinJ 23:1 (Spring 02) p. 23
Galilee with Isaiah’s prophecy of future honor for “Galilee of the Gentiles.” Here we have another one of Matthew’s unique fulfillment formulae. The context in Isaiah is the identical passage that culminates in the prediction of the wonderful child of 9:6, which we have already discussed. Again there is clear bifocal vision present in Isaiah’s prophecy. The gloom for those humbled and in distress, in the area partly contiguous with the territories of the ancient tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun, obviously refers to those afflicted by the invasion by the Assyrians of Israel (v. 1a).34 Yet immediately Isaiah adds, “but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles” (v. 1b), a reference to coming restoration after Israel’s two exiles, and a key to understanding the perfect tenses of v. 2 as prophetic: “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”35 “The way of the sea, along the Jordan” (v. 1b) will thus refer to the highway from the northeast that returning exiles would take to the Sea of Galilee and, for some, on beyond in the direction of the Mediterranean.36
In their euphoria, the first Jews heading home under Cyrus’ edict permitting repatriation might well have imagined that they would live to see the complete fulfillment of these promises of restoration, but it would not take many generations for Israel to realize that much remained unfulfilled. Obviously, no king like that described in 9:6–7 had yet been born. The Qumran sectarians recognized that even they, to some extent, still walked in darkness (1QS 11:10). So Matthew is perfectly understandable when he applies this text to Jesus (by Matthew’s time, recognized in his community as the Messiah) taking up residence in the same geographical area, as he prepares to inaugurate his public ministry of proclaiming the full good news of the in-breaking kingdom—a truly great light for those living in spiritual darkness.37 There is a partial fulfillment within OT times and a more complete fulfillment with Jesus, two events which suggest the expression “double fulfillment.”
Craig L. Blomberg is Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary in Denver, Colorado. 1
Moisés Silva, “The New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in Scripture and Truth (ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 147–65, 381–86; Darrell L. Bock, “Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament in the New,” BSac 142 (1985): 209-23, 306 –19.
2
Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Uses of the Old Testament in the New (Chicago: Moody, 1985).
3
Douglas J. Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 175–211.
4
Richard N. Longenecker, “Who Is The Prophet Talking About? Some Reflections on the New Testament Use of the Old,” Them 13 (1987): 4-8; G. K. Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach the Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?” Them 14 (1989): 89-96.
5
D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture (Cambridge: CUP, 1988).
6
Other noteworthy evangelical contributions during the 1980s included S. Lewis Johnson, The Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980); Douglas J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives (Sheffield: Almond, 1983); Gleason L. Archer and Gregory Chirichigno, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1983); Vern S. Poythress, “Divine Meaning of Scripture,” WTJ 48 (1986): 241-79; Norman R. Ericson, “The New Testament Use of the Old Testament: A Kerygmatic Approach,” JETS 30 (1987): 337-42; E. Earle Ellis, “How Jesus Interpreted His Bible,” CTR 3 (1989): 341-51; Douglas A. Oss, “The Interpretation of the ‘Stone’ Passages by Peter and Paul: A Comparative Study,” JETS 32 (1989): 181-200. A search of the identical swath of major academic journals and book publishers discloses only two new evangelical contributions of comparable scope to these studies during the 1990s, both by the same author: S. Moyise, “Does the New Testament Quote the Old Testament Out of Context? Anvil 11 (1994): 133-43; id., “The Old Testament in the New: A Reply to Greg Beale,” IBS 21 (1999): 54-58.
7
Most notably, Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders, eds., Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel (Sheffield: SAP, 1997); id., The Function of Scripture in Early Jewish and Christian Tradition (Sheffield: SAP, 1998); James A. Sanders, “Intertextuality and Dialogue,” BTB 29 (1999): 35-44; M. C. Albl, “And Scripture Cannot Be Broken”: The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections (Leiden: Brill, 1999); S. Moyise, ed., The Old Testament in the New Testament: Essays in Honour of J. L. North (Sheffield: SAP, 2000); R. Penna, “Appunti sul come e perché il Nuovo Testamento si rapporta all’ Antico,” Bib 81 (2000): 95-104; Craig A. Evans, ed., The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity: Studies in Language and Tradition (Sheffield: SAP, 2000).
8
D. A. Carson and Gregory K. Beale, eds., Commentary on the Use of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, forthcoming).
9
Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale, 1989).
10
I have been asked to write the chapter on Matthew, which alone is to amount to about 80,000 words, of which this essay is a small offshoot. It is also a slightly revised form of a paper delivered to the ETS at its annual meeting, November 2001, in Colorado Springs. I am grateful to James de Young and the Hermeneutics Study Group for the invitation to participate and for the flexibility to allow me to tailor my presentation to dovetail with my larger research project.
11
See esp. Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament (Lund: Gleerup, 1954); Robert H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 1967); G. M. Soarés Prabhu, The Formula Quotations in the Infancy Narrative of Matthew (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1976).
12
The debate was triggered by Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982). Key responses included D. A. Carson, “Gundry on Matthew: A Critical Review,” TJ 3NS (1982): 71-91; Philip B. Payne, “Midrash and History in the Gospels With Special Reference to R. H. Gundry’s Matthew ,” in Gospel Perspectives , vol. 3 (ed. R. T. France and David Wenham; Sheffield: JSOT, 1983): 177-215; Douglas J. Moo, “Matthew and Midrash: An Evaluation of Robert H. Gundry’s Approach,” JETS 26 (1983): 31-39; and Scott Cunningham and Darrell L. Bock, “Is Matthew Midrash?” BSac 144 (1987): 157-80.
13
Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), passim. 14
Adrian M. Leske, “Isaiah and Matthew: The Prophetic Influence in the First Gospel,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (ed. William H. Bellinger Jr. and William R. Farmer; Harrisburg: Trinity, 1998), 152–69.
15
See the discussion in Kaiser, Uses, 63.
16
Ibid., 66-70.
17
See esp. the classic study by Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982; German original 1939).
18
E.g., Robert L. Reymond, “Who is the ‘LMH of Isaiah 7:14?” Presb 15 (1989): 1-15; J. Alec Motyer, The
Prophecy of Isaiah (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), 84–86. 19
All scriptural quotations follow the NIV.
20
Cf. Michael E. W. Thompson, “Isaiah’s Sign of Immanuel,” ExpTim 95 (1983): 67-71. 21
Thus, e.g., even Motyer, Prophecy , 84 n. 4.
22
Cf. John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah Chapters 1–39 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 213; Herbert M.
Wolf, “Solution to the Immanuel Prophecy in Isaiah 7:14–8:22, ” JBL 91 (1972): 449-56. Contra the view that sees Immanuel as Hezekiah (or a collection of Davidide kings).
23
Cf. Oswalt, Isaiah 1–39, 210–11; Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed
Church Under Persecution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 25.
24
See esp. Oswalt, Isaiah 1–39, 244–48; cf. Motyer, Prophecy , 101–5. 25
Cf. the similar logic used by Joachim Jeremias (“παις͂ θεοῦ,” TDNT 5:697–98) with respect to the suffering servant song of Isa 52:13–53:12. Bruce D. Chilton (The Glory of Israel [Sheffield: JSOT, 1982], 92–93) questions this approach, pointing out that during the earliest rabbinic period (just after A.D. 70) not all Jewish usage would be aware of Christian interpretation. But when a messianic interpretation appears in a widely known source like a major Targum, developed and utilized over a period of centuries, it becomes much harder to assume that none of its tradents were aware of Christian use.
26
Likewise Edward E. Hindson, Isaiah’s Immanuel (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1978), 67–68.
27
Contra what would be required to sustain the approach of Walter C. Kaiser Jr., “The Promise of Isaiah 7:14 and the Single-Meaning Hermeneutic,” EvJ 6 (1988): 55-70.
28
A similar conclusion, at least at the redactional level of canonical Isaiah, arrived at only after postulating an earlier tradition-history involving more than one author, appears in H. G. M. Williamson, “The Messianic Texts in Isaiah 1–39, ” in King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. John Day; Sheffield: SAP, 1998), 238–70.
29
E.g., Motyer, Prophecy , 300. 30
Cf. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 259. The Jewish tradition subsequently shifted the focus even more away from the Lord’s coming to the people’s return; see Klyne Snodgrass, “Streams of Tradition Emerging from Isaiah 40:1–5 and Their Adaptation in the New Testament,” JSNT 8 (1980): 27.
31
Cf. George J. Brooke, “Isaiah 40:3 and the Wilderness Community,” in New Qumran Texts and Studies (ed. George J. Brooke; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 130–31.
32
E. W. Burrows, “Did John the Baptist Call Jesus ‘The Lamb of God’?” ExpTim 85 (1974): 246.
33
Cf. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (Dallas: Word, 1993), 48: “The words in Isaiah occur in a context of comfort and deliverance from the exile, but they also allude to messianic fulfillment.”
34
E.g., Dan P. Cole, “Archaeology and the Messiah Oracles of Isaiah 9–11, ” in Scripture and Other Artifacts (ed. Michael D. Coogan, J. Cheryl Exum, and Lawrence E. Stager; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 53–69.
35
E.g., Paul D. Wegner, “A Re-Examination of Isaiah IX 1–6, ” VT 42 (1992): 103-12.
36
Cf. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew , vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 383.
37
Cf. Childs, Isaiah, 80, at least at his “canonical” level of the completed book of Isaiah. On p. 81, he adds that 9:6 “makes it absolutely clear that [the child’s] role is messianic.”
38
These explicit equations make it difficult to follow those who see the near-fulfillment of the “servant” as an anonymous individual in ancient Israel, as, e.g., in Anthony R. Ceresko, “The Rhetorical Strategy of the Fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12): Poetry and the Exodus-New Exodus,” CBQ 56 (1994): 42-55; Ronald L. Bergey, “The Rhetorical Role of Reiteration in the Suffering Servant Poem (Isa 52:13–53:12),” JETS 40 (1997): 177-88.
39
For a slightly different kind of progression than that envisioned here, see Hans-Jürgen Hermisson, “Das vierte Gottesknechtslied in deuterojesajanischen Kontext,” in Der leidende Gottesknecht: Jesaja 53 und seine Wirkungsgeschichte (ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher; Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), 1–25.
40
For the need to see an individual here, see esp. Henri Blocher, Songs of the Servant (London: Inter-Varsity, 1975), 67; for the presence of substitutionary sacrifice, John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah Chapters 40–66 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 377.
41
Sydney H. T. Page, “The Suffering Servant Between the Testaments,” NTS 31 (1985): 481-97.
42
Martin Hengel, “Zur Wirkungsgechichte von Jes 53 in vorchristlicher Zeit,” in Der leidende Gottesknecht , 49 –91.
43
As stressed in Roger Syrén, “Targum Isa 52:13–53:12 and Christian Interpretation,” JJS 40 (1989): 201-12.
44
Blomberg, Matthew , 145. Cf. Daniel Patte, The Gospel According to Matthew: A Structural Commentary (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 117.
45
Gundry, Use, 230. Cf. Childs, Isaiah, 422–23, again at the canonical level. Gordon P. Hugenberger would appear to support this perspective as well in “The Servant of the Lord in the ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah,” in The Lord’s Anointed (ed. Philip E. Satterthwaite, Richard S. Hess, and Gordon J. Wenham; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 105–40.
46
Again, contra Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward a Theology of the Old Testament 1978), 215–17.
47
J. Alec Motyer, Isaiah (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999), 259. 48
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
Hyun C. P. Kim, “An Intertextual Reading of ‘A Crushed Reed’ and ‘A Dim Wick’ in Isaiah 42.3,” JSOT 83 (1999): 113-24.
49
See esp. Oswalt, Isaiah 40–66, 108–12. 50
Cf. Geoffrey Grogan, “Isaiah,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 6 (ed. Frank E. Gaebelein; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 254–55: “There can be little doubt that we are intended to make the identification with Israel to begin with that we might be gently led to him who is the incarnation of God’s mind for Israel (cf. Matt 12:15–21).”
51
E.g., R. T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament (London: Tyndale, 1971), 68. 52
W. C. Allen (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1907)], 145) also notes that the future tense (as in v. 13) in the LXX of Isaiah readily leads to the use of the passage as a prediction of future events.
53
John L. McLaughlin (“Their Hearts Were Hardened: The Use of Isaiah 6, 9–10 in the Book of Isaiah,” Bib 75 [1994]: 1-25) demonstrates the recurrence of this pattern in all three major parts of Isaiah (29:9–10; 44:18; 63:17). The chronological gaps between these passages support this idea that Isaiah understood an ongoing fulfillment to his prophecy concerning Israel’s obduracy.
54
See above, n. 15. Cf. Willis J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise (New York: Crowell, 1905), 130. 55
Gundry (Matthew: Handbook , 257) further argues that “completely fulfilled” implies human responsibility and that Matthew’s overall introductory formula is phrased “to avoid any thought of divine causation that might be mistaken as a lessening of human responsibility.”
56
E.g., France, Jesus, 68–69.
57
On the programmatic nature of vv. 9–10 themselves, see esp. Craig A. Evans, To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6.9-10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989), 52.
58
Grogan (“Isaiah,” 188) highlights how striking the spiritual parallels between the two situations actually are: “In both cases wrong teaching was based on a mishandling of God’s true revelation, the sacrificial regulations, and the Mosaic Law as a whole respectively. In each case tradition allied to bad theology resulted in a mishandling of Scripture, and in each case the result was a self-justifying complacency in the presence of the most holy God.”
59
C. K. Barrett, “The House of Prayer and the Den of Thieves,” in Jesus und Paulus (ed. E. Earle Ellis and Erich Grässer; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1975), 16.
60
Cf. Childs, Isaiah, 458. 61
Motyer, Prophecy , 467. See also 1 Kgs 8:27–30 for the temple as a house of prayer more generally and cf. John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1–33 (Waco: Word, 1985), 249–50.
62
Cf. Oswalt, Isaiah 40–66, 460–61; Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 500.
63
For a detailed chart of the parallel phraseology of the two parables, see Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (Nashville: Nelson, 2001), 225.
64
On which, see, respectively, Wim J. C. Weren, “The Use of Isaiah 5, 1–7 in the Parable of the Tenants (Mark 12, 1–12; Matthew 21, 33–46),” Bib 79 (1998): 1-26; and George J. Brooke, “4Q500 1 and the Use of Scripture in the Parable of the Vineyard,” DSD 2 (1995): 268-94.
65
Craig A. Evans, “On the Vineyard Parables of Isaiah 5 and Mark 12, ” BZ 28 (1984): 82-86. 66
On the other hand, the larger targumic use of Isa 5:1–7 as messianic makes a Christological interpretation of Jesus’ overall parable both probable and probably authentic. See esp. Johannes C. de Moor, “The Targumic Background of Mark 12:1–12: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants,” JSJ 29 (1998): 63-80.
67
For both allusions, see Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 , 327–28.
68
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 280–338. 69
See throughout Carey C. Newman, ed., Jesus and the Restoration of Israel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999); and esp. Dale C. Allison Jr., “Jesus and the Victory of Apocalyptic,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel , 126–41.
70
Cf. Oswalt, Isaiah 1–39, 306–8. 71
Cf. Motyer, Isaiah, 112.
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