Matthew Chapter 11 verse 7 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 7-15. - Jesus recognition of the greatness of John as herald. Vers. 7-11: parallel passage: Luke 7:24-28. Verse 7. - And as they departed; and as these went their way (Revised Version). Fulfilling his command (ver. 4). It' we may combine the language of St. Matthew and St. Luke ("when the messengers of John were departed"), we may say that they had left the circle immediately round our Lord, but were hardly further than the outskirts of the crowd. What went ye out into the wilderness to see? to behold (Revised Version); θεάσασθαι (cf. θέατρον,). It almost suggests that they went out as though to see a spectacle. They were stirred by no deeper motive. Bengel compares John 5:35. A reed shaken with the wind? If the reed referred to by our Lord was the papyrus, which still grows freely in certain parts of the Jordan valley, the description of this plant in 'Rob Roy on the Jordan,' ch. 17, is specially interesting: "There is first a lateral trunk, lying on the water and half-submerged. This is sometimes as thick as a man's body, and from its lower side hang innumerable string-like roots from three to five feet long, and of a deep purple colour .... These pendent roots... retard much of the surface-current where the papyrus grows On the upper surface of the trunks the stems grow alternately in oblique rows;, their thickness at the junction is often four inches, and their height fifteen feet, gracefully tapering until at the top is a little round knob, with long, thin brown, wire-like hairs eighteen inches long, which rise and then, recurving, hang about it in a thyrsus-shaped head." He also says, "The whole jungle of papyrus was floating upon the water, and so the waves raised by the breeze were rocking the green curtain to and fro." This explained "a most curious hissing, grinding, bustling sound, that was heard like waves upon a shingly beach," as "the papyrus stems were rubbing against each other as they nodded out and in." It is, however, much more probable that the reed referred to was "the Arundo donax, a very tall cane, growing twelve feet high, with a magnificent panicle of blossom at the top, and so slender and yielding that it will lie perfectly flat under a gust of wind, and immediately resume its upright position." It grows especially on the western side of the Dead Sea (cf. Tristram, 'Natural History of the Bible,' p. 4,37, edit. 1889). To our Lord's question no answer was needed. John had rejected the overtures of the nationalists (John 1:19-21), and had not feared to rebuke a king (Matthew 14:4).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(7) As they departed.--There was an obvious risk that those who heard the question of the Baptist, and our Lord's answer, might be led to think with undue harshness, perhaps even with contempt, of one who had so far failed in steadfastness. As if to meet that risk, Jesus turns, before the messengers were out of hearing, to bear His testimony to the work and character of John. But a little while before, almost as his last public utterance, the forerunner had borne his witness to the King (John 3:23-36), and now He, in His turn, recognises to the full all the greatness of the work which that forerunner had accomplished.What went ye out . . .?--The tense points to the time when the first proclamation of the Baptist, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, drew out crowds to listen to him. Jesus, by His question, bids them recall the impression which had then been made upon them. Had they gone out to see "a reed shaken by the wind?" The imagery was, of course, drawn from the rushes that grew upon the banks of the Jordan, but the use of the singular shows that it was meant to be understood symbolically. Had they gone out to see one who was swayed this way and that by every blast of popular feeling? No, not that; something quite other than that was what they had then beheld.