Matthew 11:5

“The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them.”

We have already noted how all these ‘signs' have been fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus as outlined in Matthew 8:1 to Matthew 9:35. See introduction to Matthew 8:1. Jesus is here thus recounting to John the details of His ministry. They are also the signs that His Apostles will perform, something which stresses their importance in the Messianic ministry (Matthew 10:8). And He words His reply so as to make clear that it has in mind the prophecies of Isaiah, and are also a reminder of the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. For ‘the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, --- and the deaf hear' we can compare Isaiah 35:5, ‘the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped, then will the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will sing.' We can also note Isaiah 29:18, ‘and in that day shall the deaf hear --- and the eyes of the blind will see --', where he is speaking of spiritual truth, the verbal similarity thus being a direct hint to John that like those of whom Isaiah was speaking he is to see and understand. And these were events which were to take place at the time of the restoration of Israel, and would accompany the fact that God would also judge His people (Isaiah 35:4). They were therefore very relevant to John's view of the Coming One, This connection between these Isaianic promises and the Messiah is also found at Qumran. Note also in Jesus' words ‘the dead are raised up' which echoes Isaiah 26:19 ‘your dead shall live'.

This healing ministry of Jesus again looks back to Matthew 8:17 where ‘He bore our afflictions and carried our sicknesses'. But we may also compare it with Matthew 12:17 where He cares for the bruised reed and the smoking flax. It is swallowed up between the two, stressing the Servanthood of Jesus

However, ‘the lepers are cleansed --- and the dead are raised up' was probably also intended to indicate that a greater than Elijah and Elisha was here. The remarkable healing of a leper by Elisha (although in his case indirectly - 2 Kings 5), and the raising of the dead by both Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 4:32), were seen as outstanding and memorable miracles which demonstrated their uniqueness, for they were the only examples of such miracles. So to heal lepers and raise the dead in the plural as to be greater than Elijah and Elisha. And that Jesus in other ways fulfilled even more abundantly what they had begun will later come out in the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, for which compare the feeding of one hundred in 2 Kings 4:42. And they too were men of the Spirit (2 Kings 2:9; 2 Kings 2:15), another connection with Matthew 12:17. So Jesus is certainly depicting Himself as greater than Elijah and Elisha combined. He sums up in Himself all the wonders of the prophets.

‘And the poor have good tidings preached to them.” This is an echo of Isaiah 61:1, thus identifying Jesus with the anointed Prophet in a passage which is also accompanied by a warning of coming judgment (Isaiah 61:2), which is again a point of contact with Matthew 12:17. Thus Jesus' words were to be recognised by John as indicating that Jesus really was the Coming One in three aspects, the Coming One of Isaiah, the Coming One Who was greater than Elijah, and the Coming Prophet and bearer of Good News, and their contexts would confirm to John that the judgment that he was expecting would indeed at some stage inevitably follow (notice Jesus' certainty concerning John's knowledge of the Scriptures).

Note how the six items are split into two pairs of healings, followed by the raising of the dead and the proclamation of Good News, each of the last two standing on its own (the split distinguished by the use of ‘and' (kai)). He is thus the overall healer and cleanser, the raiser of the dead and the proclaimer of the Good News.