Matthew 11:3

11:2-6 Some think that John sent this inquiry for his own satisfaction. Where there is true faith, yet there may be a mixture of unbelief. The remaining unbelief of good men may sometimes, in an hour of temptation; call in question the most important truths. But we hope that John's faith did not fail in this matter, and that he only desired to have it strengthened and confirmed. Others think that John sent his disciples to Christ for their satisfaction. Christ points them to what they heard and saw. Christ's gracious condescensions and compassions to the poor, show that it was he that should bring to the world the tender mercies of our God. Those things which men see and hear, if compared with the Scriptures, direct in what way salvation is to be found. It is difficult to conquer prejudices, and dangerous not to conquer them; but those who believe in Christ, their faith will be found so much the more to praise, and honour, and glory.

3 . he that should come ] Literally, He that cometh . One of the designations of the Messiah; in every age the prophet said “He cometh.” It is often disputed whether John sent this message (1) from a sense of hope deferred and despondency in his own soul; he would ask himself: ( a ) Is this the Christ whom I knew and whom I baptized? ( b ) Are these works of which I hear, the works of the promised Messiah? or (2) to confirm the faith of his disciples, or (3) to induce Jesus to make a public profession of His Messiahship. (1) The first motive is the most natural and the most instructive. In the weariness and misery of the prison the faith of the strongest fails for a moment. It is not doubt, but faith wavering: “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” (2) The second has been suggested and found support rather from the wish to uphold the consistency of the Baptist’s character than because it is the clearest inference from the text. (3) The third motive would have been hardly less derogatory to John’s faith than the first. And would not our Lord’s rebuke Matthew 11:6 have taken a different form, as when He said to Mary, “Mine hour is not yet come”?

Matthew 11:3 . εἶπεν αὐτῷ , said to Jesus, by them, of course.— Σὺ εἶ : the question a grave one and emphatically expressed: Thou , art Thou ὁ ἐρχόμενος ? Art Thou He whom I spoke of as the One coming after me when I was baptising in the Jordan ( Matthew 3:11 )? It is a question whether Jesus be indeed the Christ . Lutteroth, basing on the hypothesis that for popular Jewish opinion the Christ and the coming One (a prophet like Moses) were different persons, interprets the question thus: “Art Thou, Jesus, whom I know to be the Christ, also the coming Prophet, or must we expect another to fill that rôle?”— ἢ ἕτερον , not ἄλλον , which would have been more appropriate on Lutteroth’s view = a numerically distinct person. ἕτ . suggests a different kind of person.— προσδοκῶμεν : may be present indicative (for future) as Beza and Fritzsche take it, or present subjunctive deliberative = ought we to look? (Meyer-Weiss, Holtz., H.C.), the latter preferable. What was the animus or psychological genesis of the question? Doubt in John’s own mind, or doubt, bred of envy or jealousy, in the minds of his disciples, or not doubt on Baptist’s part, but rather incipient faith? Alternative (2), universal with the fathers (except Tertullian, vide de prœscrip. , 8, de baptis. , 10); (1) common among modern commentators; (3) favoured by Keim, Weizsäcker, and Holtz., H.C.: “beginnende Disposition zum Glauben an Jesu Messianität”.

The view of the fathers is based on a sense of decorum and implicit reliance on the exact historical value of the statements in fourth Gospel; No. (3), the budding faith hypothesis, is based on too sceptical a view as to the historic value of even the Synoptical accounts of John’s early relations with Jesus; No. (1) has everything in its favour. The effect of confinement on John’s prophetic temper, the general tenor of this chapter which obviously aims at exhibiting the moral isolation of Jesus, above all the wide difference between the two men, all make for it. Jesus, it had now become evident, was a very different sort of Messiah from what the Baptist had predicted and desiderated ( vide remarks on chap. Matthew 3:11-15 ). Where were the axe and fan and the holy wind and fire of judgment? Too much patience, tolerance, gentleness, sympathy, geniality, mild wisdom in this Christ for his taste.

(3) Art thou he that should come? —There are no adequate grounds for assuming, as some have done, that the Baptist sent the disciples only to remove heir doubts. The question comes from him; the answer is sent to him. No difficulty in conceiving how the doubt which the question seems to imply could enter into the mind of the Baptist after the testimony which he had borne and that which he had heard, can warrant us in doing violence to what would seem to be the plain meaning of the history. And the meaning of the question is not far to seek. The sickness of deferred hope turns the full assurance of faith into something like despair. So of old Jeremiah had complained, in the bitterness of his spirit, that Jehovah had deceived him ( Jeremiah 20:7 ). So now the Baptist, as week after week passed without the appearance of the kingdom as he expected it to appear, felt as if the King was deserting the forerunner and herald of His kingdom. The very wonders of which he heard made the feeling more grievous, for they seemed to give proof of the power, and to leave him to the conclusion that the will was wanting. And so he sends his disciples with the question, which is one of impatience rather than doubt, “Art Thou the coming One of whom the prophets spoke” ( Psalm 40:7 ; Psalm 118:26 ; Malachi 3:1 )? but if so, why tarry the wheels of Thy chariot? Are we still to look for another and a different Christ?”

Matthew 11:3 . Ὁ ἐρχόμενος , he that should come ) cf. Psalm 40:7 ; Hebrews 10:37 .— ἤ , κ . τ . λ ., or , etc.) There was not at that time any other, for John excludes himself by this disjunctive particle.— ἕτερον , another ) They recognise as a certain fact that there is some one who should come.— προσδοκῶμεν , must we await ) sc. with longer delay.[510] [510] The time of waiting in expectation was now by this time coming to an end; for the Seventieth week of Daniel was close at hand.—V. g.

Ver. 2,3. The instance of this text alone is enough to convince the observing reader of holy writ, that the evangelists do not set down all things in that order as they were done. We have heard nothing before of John’s being cast into prison in this gospel, nor do we hear any thing here of the story of it, till Matthew 14:6 , when our evangelist occasionally relates it something largely. He here tells us of something done during his imprisonment, viz. his sending two of his disciples to Christ, to be satisfied whether he was the promised Messias, or they must look for another. Luke reports the same thing, Luke 7:19 . Could he that was sent before Christ to prepare his way, and that had baptized him, and seen the Spirit descending on him, and heard the voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and who had showed Christ to his disciples, John 1:29-31 , &c., doubt whether he was the Messiah? Undoubtedly no; but John saw how some of his disciples, either envying for his sake, as John 3:26 , or else inclinable to the common error of the Jews about the Messiah, were something shaken with the clamours of the scribes and Pharisees (who were far more favourable to John than to Christ). That they might be satisfied from their own sight of the works of Christ, he a little before his death sendeth them to Christ on this errand, Art thou he who should come (in the Greek, who is coming)?

Matthew 11:3 . Σύ ] Placed first for sake of emphasis. Comp. ἕτερον . ὁ ἐρχόμενος ] He who is coming ( Hebrews 10:37 ), i.e . the Messiah , who, because His advent, as being certain and near, was the object of universal expectation, is called, κατʼ ἐξοχήν , the coming one ( הַבָּא ), perhaps in accordance with Psalm 40:8 . Olshausen, Hilgenfeld, Keim, suggest Psalm 118:26 ; Hengstenberg suggests Malachi 3:1 ; Hitzig, Daniel 9:26 . ἕτερον ] so that thou too wouldst, in that case, be only a forerunner. προσδοκῶμεν ] may be conjunctive (as commonly preferred) or indicative (Vulg. Erasmus, Beza, Calvin, Fritzsche). The idea of deliberation is, for psychological reasons, more appropriate. The we in the question is the expression of the popular expectation.