Matthew 10:5-42

The Charge to the Twelve. The section forms the second of five passages into which Mt. col lected the sayings of Jesus. The Markan account (Matthew 6:7) is followed by Luke 9:1, but Luke 10:2 (the Seventy) is from Q; Matthew 10:5 combines the two sources. The mission is limited to Jews, hardly, in view of Matthew 10:6; Matthew 10:23, to the Jews of Galilee. Luke 10 omits the limitation; he wrote mainly for Gentiles. Indeed, when Mt. wrote, the limitation was obsolete. Yet it shows that Jesus came to realise the Jewish hope, and though Gentiles are not wholly barred from the Kingdom (Matthew 8:11 f.), they enter only as an appendage. Not yet is humanity welcomed without distinction. The Apostles preach the imminence of the Kingdom rather than repentance (Mark 6:12, but cf. Mark 1:15); Mt. (Matthew 10:8) expands the phrase heal the sick, and en joins gratuitous service. Get you no gold, etc. (Matthew 10:9), means either Do not acquire (a repetition of the sense of Matthew 10:8) or, better, Do not procure as provision before starting, though Jesus would not expect them to make money by announcing the Kingdom. The staff and sandals permitted in Mk. are forbidden here. The Fathers got over the contradiction by making the forbidden stick an ordinary one, the permitted one an apostolic wand of office. All these injunctions, encouraging the trust enjoined in Matthew 6:25, powerfully influenced the first mediaeval friars, especially Francis of Assisi.