Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Evidently the fourth commandment was urgently necessary for this purpose. The Torah, and the Old Testament Wisdom literature, both reveal that it repeatedly happened that weak and vulnerable parents were taunted by their sons (Prov 30:17), cursed (Exod 21:17), beaten (Exod 21:15), robbed (Prov 28:24), mistreated (Prov 19:26), and even driven from their own property (Prov 19:26). Such excesses were, of course, also related to the fact that in Israel, as throughout the ancient Near East, the father of a family possessed a power over his children that is unimaginable to us; it could not fail to provoke a reaction. Add to this that in Israel the security given to aged parents by the cult of the ancestors was a thing of the past. For that very reason, the fourth commandment of the Decalogue fulfilled an extraordinarily important social function.³⁰ Its role was completely different from the one it serves nowadays, when it is mainly addressed to young children who are supposed to behave well and be obedient to their parents.

When Jesus says to someone who wants first to go home and bury his father, “let the dead bury their own dead!” it must have been very disturbing to those who heard him. It was fundamentally scandalous to them. The theologian and Judaism scholar Martin Hengel (1926–2009) remarks on Luke 9:60:

There is hardly one logion of Jesus which more sharply runs counter to law, piety and custom than does Mt 8.22 = Lk 9.60a, the more so as here we cannot justify the overriding of these in the interests of humanitarian freedom, higher morality, greater religious intensity or even “neighbourliness.” The saying is completely incompatible with the old liberal picture of Jesus and with more modern attempts to resuscitate this.

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So does Jesus speak “counter to” the fourth commandment in this harsh saying, and thus against the Torah? Does he override the Torah, at least on this one important point? I most certainly would not say that, for in other places, such as Mark 7:9-13, Jesus can just as emphatically and uncompromisingly defend the rights of parents against their impious children.³²

Jesus always looks at the individual case. He sees it precisely as it is. He considers each instance for its own sake. He possesses an unimaginable feeling for what God’s cause demands in each case and where God’s will is being avoided and twisted into its opposite, even when that takes place under the cover of devotion to the Law.

For Jesus, that the man who first wanted to bury his father or be beside him in his last days should instead follow him immediately was more important than the fourth commandment. The reign of God, now arriving, surpasses everything in its urgency and shoves it into second place. The advancing reign of God leaves no more time for anything else. Therefore Jesus’ disciples have to divest themselves of all familial considerations and ties.

Jesus’ intent here is neither to offend against the Torah nor to abrogate it; he is simply concerned with the more important and urgent matter within the Torah. The fourth commandment is not eliminated, but in a particular concrete instance it is subordinated to the first commandment. We have already seen that for Jesus the coming of the reign of God is nothing but the eschatological historicization and making present of what the first commandment intends (cf. chap. 11 above).

Jesus against the Third Commandment?

The case is similar with regard to the Sabbath question, much discussed among scholars. The gospels offer us a whole series of texts in which Jesus appears to offend against the third commandment by healing on the Sabbath or allowing his disciples to break the Sabbath commandment. More precisely, these appear to be offenses against the third commandment as it was interpreted in his time by important groups within Judaism. The following texts are relevant:

the man with the withered hand (Mark 3:1-6)

the bent-over woman (Luke 13:10-17)

the man with dropsy (Luke 14:1-6)

the lame man at the pool of Beth-zatha (John 5:1-18)

the man born blind (John 9:1-41)

plucking grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28)

It would not make much sense here to go into the details of how healing on the Sabbath was regarded in Jesus’ time by the various groups within Israel—especially the Qumran community and the Pharisaic groups. It is evident that on particular occasions Jesus offended against the casuistic rules of these groups. The question is only whether his intention in doing so was to flout the third commandment, or even to abolish it.