The man of St Matthew

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

Chapter 9: Overview

Chapter 9 continues the presentation of Jesus as Messiah by his deeds which we explored in the overview of chapters 8 and 9.

We will follow the chapter division of the Gospel here even though it does not follow Matthew's own arrangement of his episodes.
Our reading of the chapter therefore begins with the healing of the Paralytic (9,1-8). This as we saw in the overview, is the third episode of the second trio of the deeds of power by Jesus.
We will therefore read this episode as our first page for this chapter even though it is only a few verses long.

Our second page for this chapter will also be quite short. This is the interlude (9,9-17) that follows this healing. We can take together the calling of the tax collector, the meal and the subsequent question about fasting. They would seem to be have been linked already in the traditions available to Matthew because we find them together in Mark (Mk 2,13-22) as well.

Our third page for this chapter will then be the third trio of Jesus' deeds of power and the comment that follows (9,18-34).

Finally, look at the final verses of this chapter (9,35-38) and see that they continue into the beginning of the next chapter. Verse 35 actually points in both directions, we have seen that it repeats 4,23. Even so, it is best to read these verses with chapter 10 so that 9,35-10,4 becomes the introduction to the discourse which then follows.

We can read the healing of a paralytic as the first episode of the chapter, 9,1-8.