Matthew 9:16

New (ἀγνάφου) From ἀ, not, and γνάπτω, to card or comb wool; hence to dress or full cloth. Therefore Rev. renders more correctly undressed cloth, which would shrink when wet, and tear loose from the old piece. Wyc. renders rude. Jesus thus pictures the combination of the old forms of piety peculiar to John and his disciples with the new religious life emanating from himself, as the patching of an old garment with a piece of unfulled cloth, which would stretch and tear loose from the old fabric and make a worse rent than before.

16 . No man ] Rather, but no man. The particle δέ (but) is omitted in E. V.; it marks a turn in the argument which is indicated still more clearly in Luke ( Luke 5:36 ), “And (but) He spake also a parable unto them.” The words of Jesus here take a wider range. He says in effect to John’s disciples: “Your question implies ignorance of my teaching. My doctrine is not merely a reformed Judaism like the teaching of John and Pharisaism, it is a new life to which such questions as these concerning ceremonial fasting are quite alien.” new ] Literally, uncarded, raw . The old garment is Judaism. Christianity is not to be pieced on to Judaism to fill up its deficiencies. This would make the rent—the divisions of Judaism—still more serious. The word translated “rent” is used of the “schisms” in the Corinthian Church, 1 Corinthians 1:10 , and has so passed into ecclesiastical language; it is the English “schism.”

Matthew 9:16-17. No man putteth a piece of new cloth, &c. — Our Lord, having assigned one reason why he did not enjoin his disciples to fast, namely, because it was not a proper time for it, now proceeds to give another. They were not ripe, or prepared for it, nor could have borne such severe injunctions. As if he had said, Nor do I now think it fit to lay such rigorous commands upon them, but rather to accommodate their trials to their strength; even as when a man is repairing clothes, he will not sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment, but rather chooses what is a little worn, for otherwise it will be found that the new, which is put in, being stronger than the other, taketh from the garment, and the rent is increased. The original words, ρακος αγναφον , properly signify, “ cloth that has not passed through the fuller’s hands, and which is consequently much harsher than what has been washed and worn; and therefore, yielding less than that, will tear away the edges to which it is sewed.” Neither do men put new wine into old bottles — Namely, bottles made of leather, then commonly used, as they are still in some countries. Else the bottles break — Such bottles, chiefly made of goats’ skins, when old, were not easily distended, and consequently would burst by the fermentation of new wine.

But they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved — Thus our Lord would suit the doctrine he inculcated on his disciples, and the duties which he enjoined them, to their circumstances, and kindly proportion their work to their strength, with a tender regard to their weakness, till, by degrees, they should be fitted for more difficult and humbling services. “And from his example,” says Dr. Doddridge, “and the whole genius of his gospel, let us learn to make all proper allowances to those about us, that we may teach them, and train them up as they are able to bear it; not crushing them under any unnecessary load, nor denying them any indulgence which true friendship will permit us to grant them; lest the good ways of God should be misrepresented, disgraced, and abandoned, through our imprudent, though well-meaning severity: a caution to be peculiarly observed in our conduct toward young persons.”

Matthew 9:16-17 . The substitution of νησ . τεύουσιν for πενθεῖν , in the close of Matthew 9:15 , implicitly suggested a principle which is now explicitly stated in parabolic form: the great law of congruity ; practice must conform to mood; the spirit must determine the form. These sayings, apparently simple, are somewhat abstruse. They must have been over the head of the average Christian of the apostolic age, and Luke’s version shows that they were diversely interpreted. Common to both is the idea that it is bootless to mix heterogeneous things, old and new in religion. This cuts two ways. It defends the old as well as the new; the fasting of John’s disciples as well as the non-fasting of Christ’s. Jesus did not concern Himself about Pharisaic practice, but He was concerned to defend His own disciples without disparagement of John, and also to prevent John’s way and the respect in which he was justly held from creating a prejudice against Himself. The double application of the principle was therefore present to His mind.

(16) No man putteth a piece of new cloth. —There is a closer connection between the three similitudes than at first sight appears. The wedding-feast suggested the idea of the wedding-garment, and of the wine which belonged to its joy. We may even go a step further, and believe that the very dress of those who sat at meat in Matthew’s house, coming as they did from the lower and less decently-habited classes, made the illustration all the more palpable and vivid. How could those worn garments be made meet for wedding-guests? Would it be enough to sew on a patch of new cloth where the old was wearing into holes? Not so He answers here; not so He answers again when He implicitly makes the king who gives the feast the giver also of the garment ( Matthew 22:2 ); New cloth—i.e., cloth that has not passed through the fuller’s hands—new and undressed, in its freshest and strongest state. Such a patch sewn upon a weak part of the old cloak would, on the first strain, tear the cloth near it. The rent is made worse.—Better, there comes a worse rent. St. Luke adds another reason, “the piece put in agrees not with the old.” The meaning of the parable in its direct application lies very near the surface. The “garment” is that which is outward, the life and conversation of the man, which show his character.

The old garment is the common life of sinful men, such as Matthew and his guests; the new garment is the life of holiness, the religious life in its completeness; fasting, as one element of that life, is the patch of new cloth which agrees not with the old, and leads to a greater evil, a “worse rent” in the life than before. No one would so deal with the literal garment. Yet this was what the Pharisees and the disciples of John were wishing to do with the half-converted publicans. This, we may add, is what the Church of Christ has too often done in her work as the converter of the nations. Sacramental ordinances or monastic vows, or Puritan formulæ, or Quaker conventionalities, have been engrafted on lives that were radically barbarous, or heathen, or worldly, and the contrast has been glaring, and the “rent” made worse. The more excellent way, which our Lord pursued, and which it is our wisdom to pursue, is to take the old garment, and to transform it, as by a renewing power from within, thread by thread, till old things are passed away, and all things are become new.

Matthew 9:16 . Οὐδεὶς , no one ) Our Lord chose, as His disciples, men who were unlearned, fresh and simple, and imbued with no peculiar discipline.—See ch. Matthew 15:2 ; cf. Gnomon on Luke 7:20 . The old raiment was the doctrine of the Pharisees; the new, that of Christ.— αἴρει , taketh away ) both itself and more.— αὐτοῦ , his ) The word is here in the masculine gender.[419]— χεῖρον σχίσμα γίνεται , the rent becomes worse ) Therefore, there was before some rent. A ragged garment, altogether ragged, is intended. [419] Rosenmüller more naturally refers αὐτοῦ to ῥάκους , “pannus impexus a vestimento vetustate contrito aliquid aufert” Beng. seems to take αὐτοῦ with πλήρωμα , as “the portion put in by him to fill up the rent.”—ED.

Matthew 9:16-17 . No one puts a patch consisting of cloth that has not been fulled upon an old robe, for that which is meant to fill up the rent (the patch put on to mend the old garment) tears off from the (old rotten) cloak , when it gets damp or happens to be spread out, or stretched, or such like. That αὐτοῦ does not refer to the piece of unfulled cloth (Euth. Zigabenus, Grotius, de Wette, Bleek), but to the old garment, is suggested by the idea involved in πλήρωμα ( id quo res impletur , Fritzsche, ad Rom. II. p. 469). Τί is not to be supplied after αἴρει , but the idea is: makes a rent . Comp. Revelation 22:19 , and especially Winer, p. 552 [E. T. 757]. The point of the comparison lies in the fact that such a proceeding is not only unsuitable , but a positive hindrance to the end in view . “The old forms of piety amid which John and his disciples still move are not suited to the new religious life emanating from me. To try to embody the latter in the former, is to proceed in a manner as much calculated to defeat its purpose as when one tries to patch an old garment with a piece of unfulled cloth, which, instead of mending it, as it is intended to do, only makes the rent greater than ever; or as when one seeks to fill old bottles with new wine, and ends in losing wine and bottles together.