God’s revelation of Jesus’ identity to Peter contrasts with the idolatrous quest of the Jewish people, as epitomized by the Pharisees and Sadducees for alternate revelation – a miraculous sign from heaven (16:17 cf. vv1-4). To the religious leaders Jesus rejoins:
A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah (v4).
The sign of Jonah is the sign of the resurrection, with Jesus’ statement here recalling his response to the same demand at 12:38-40:
Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.”
He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Significantly, yet again, the adulterous, that is, idolatrous hearts of the Jewish people, as represented by their leaders, is expressed in their rejection of God’s revelation and their improper demand for revelation on their own terms:
The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here (12:41-42; my emphasis).
Matthew 12 goes on to explain that this generation’s idolatrous rejection of divine revelation via the preaching and expressed wisdom of Jesus is precisely what opens them up to demonic invasion (vv43-45). By contrast stand Jesus’ disciples who because they do “the will of [Jesus’] Father in heaven” are his family (12:46-50).
In Matthew 16, having reiterated that the sign of Jonah, the sign of resurrection, will be the only miraculous sign to be given to this idolatrous generation, it must be noted that it is precisely because of the contrasting God-given revelation to Peter, representing the disciples, that Jesus “from that time on” explains the necessity not only of going to Jerusalem to be killed, but to stress that this will culminate with him being raised to life on the third day (v21).
Consequently, the revelation to Peter is intimately tied to Jesus’ teaching concerning the necessity of his death and resurrection in Jerusalem. It is because this is plainly so that we may assume that Jesus’ mode of addressing Simon as “son of Jonah” is deliberate. Jesus evidently plays on the fact that Simon’s father’s name happened to be Jonah because the revelation to Peter of his true identity is precisely that which opens the way for Jesus to teach about the sign of Jonah, his resurrection, which, of course, presupposes his prior death.
Posted October 5, 2009
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