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Mt 3:1. “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea.”
The time is indicated in which Christ, with Mary the Virgin His Mother and with Joseph, was still living at Nazareth. It was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, as Luke notes (Luke 3:23). Christ was “about thirty years old,” a manner of speaking which admits some latitude above or below the exact thirtieth year, without precisely defining it. This was the age suitable for fulfilling the sacred functions of a priest, teacher, or prophet, before which no one was permitted to exercise them according to the customs of the Hebrews, as may also be gathered from Sacred Scripture (1 Chronicles 23). Therefore Jesus willed to remain hidden, and in silence, in sacred prayers and meditations, in perpetual adoration of the Father, and in duties toward His parents to whom He was subject, to prepare Himself for that august office of Teacher, Lawgiver, Prophet, Priest, King of the Jews and of the Gentiles—a mission laid upon Him by the Father—until He reached the proper age to teach with authority.
But when the time appointed by God for Christ’s manifestation and the beginning of His public life or ministry had arrived, John the Baptist—so called either because he baptized Christ or because he was the first to begin baptizing publicly—came forth, that is, appeared in public, having previously lived unknown to most. He undertook the ministry of preaching and of baptism in the desert of Judea, around the river Jordan, in the farthest region of Ennon and Salim, not far from Jericho, in that district called “the plains of the desert” (2 Kings 12:16). There he began to preach, saying, as Augustine comments (Sermon 2):
Mt 3:2 “Do penance.”
Grieve for your sins from the heart; amend your conduct for the better; make satisfaction to divine justice by good works. “No adult,” says Augustine, “passes over to Christ so as to begin to be what he was not unless first he repent of having been what he was” (Sermon 351 on Penance). Elsewhere he says: “Where there is no amendment, there is necessarily a vain repentance.” Tertullian also says (Hom. 50): “He is a mocker, not a penitent, who still does what he says he repents of.” Nor does he truly seek God, says Isidore, but rather derides Him, who is still proud (Isidore of Seville, Sentences 2.3).
“For the kingdom of heaven is at hand”—the kingdom of Christ the Messiah, promised to your fathers (Genesis 49; 2 Samuel 7) and expected by you, is now near and is about to begin. Of this Daniel speaks (Daniel 7:13–14): “I was looking in the vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming… And to him was given power and honor and a kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him; his power is an everlasting power which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed… And the kingdom and the power and the greatness of the kingdom under all heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High… All kings shall serve and obey Him” (v. 27).
“Kingdom of heaven” refers to Christ’s kingdom, which is heavenly in its mode, inasmuch as it is begun on earth and perfected in heaven; whose administration is spiritual, and therefore distinguished from the earthly or carnal kingdom which the Jews expected—an erroneous expectation Christ overthrew at the very beginning of the preaching of the Gospel. This kingdom is the living image of that heavenly kingdom which we believe to exist in heaven, and which has been restored to us by Christ, a kingdom we hope to attain and possess through His merits. “Kingdom of heaven” is also taken to mean the manifestation of Christ and the revelation of His power: “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28).
Christ’s kingdom consists especially in two things: first, that He subject men to Himself through the preaching of the Gospel and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and thus reign in their hearts—“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21); and second, that He reward His faithful subjects with the possession of the eternal kingdom, and rule His rebellious enemies with a rod of iron, punishing them. Hence Malachi (4:5–6) foretells that Elijah—that is, John—is to be sent “before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes,” lest the Lord come and strike the land with a curse. Christ Himself explains this (Matthew 17:10–12): “I say to you that Elijah has already come… Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist.”
Therefore here also the coming wrath and the axe laid to the root of the tree are announced (see v. 10 below). Fittingly John, the Forerunner of Christ, after exhorting to penance, adds this reason: because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, since the offer of grace and pardon from Christ is the most powerful incentive to repentance. And because that heavenly kingdom—prepared for the elect from the foundation of the world, indeed from eternity—is open only to the innocent or to the truly penitent, since nothing unclean enters (Revelation 21:27). Tertullian says (On Penance 6): “Since this is the covenant made by God with sinners—the condition of the reward—if traders examine the coin with which they bargain, lest it be counterfeit or adulterated, shall we not believe that God first tests the proof of repentance before granting so great a recompense, namely eternal life?” Therefore God, who had promised to grant grace and who would illuminate the whole world through His Spirit in the last times, willed that the baptism of John should go before as a sign of repentance, to prepare those whom He would call by grace to the promise made to the seed of Abraham. John does not conceal this, saying: “Do penance, for salvation will soon draw near to the nations,” bringing, as God promised, the Lord who was destined to bestow repentance for the cleansing of minds, so that repentance might sweep away whatever the old error had defiled or ignorance had stained in the human heart, casting it out and preparing the house of the heart to be clean for the coming of the Holy Spirit. One of these goods is salvation itself—the abolition of past sins.
Hence the cause and work of repentance. “It profits man, but serves God,” says Augustine (Against Faustus 31).
It is to be observed with Augustine that this expression “kingdom of heaven” properly belongs to the revelation of the New Testament and does not occur in the Old. John the Baptist is the first to indicate it.
Mt 3:3 “This is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying: A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His paths” (Isaiah 40:3).
These are either Matthew’s words concerning John the Baptist or John’s concerning himself. Although this prophecy of Isaiah, according to the literal historical sense, concerns the liberation of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity, it is referred—according to the literal prophetic sense, though higher—to the liberation of the human race from the slavery of sin and the captivity of the devil through Christ.
John is the “voice,” the vox, of the Word. As Epiphanius explains (Panarion 69): “Those who call from afar utter at first a kind of sound, not yet articulate, so that those whom they call may give attention. When the hearer has inclined his ear, then the caller expresses distinctly what he intends to say.” Thus John was a kind of voice to prepare the ears of men. He was not the Word Himself, but after him the Word came, for whose sake that preparing voice preceded. Hence: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.” The voice prepares; the Lord enters the way thus readied. The voice disposes the ears to hearing; and when they are ready, the Word enters.
“Prepare the way of the Lord.” As subjects prepare and level the roads for the entrance of a king, clearing and adorning them, so, at the coming of Christ the King to men and into men, their ways—hindered with evil affections as a desert is with thorns, uneven with hollows or heights, and rough with stones—must be leveled, smoothed, prepared, and adorned. The ways of man are his morals in the language of Scripture; their preparation is repentance.
Mt 3:4. “Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt.”
Such rough, hairy, coarse clothing—cilicium—was proper to the prophets. Such was the garment of Elijah (2 Kings 1:7–8), whom John prefigures and imitates. Isaiah also was commanded to go “naked and barefoot,” that is, girded with sackcloth (Isaiah 20:2). Zechariah speaks similarly (Zechariah 13:4). Paul describes the prophets as “wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins” (Hebrews 11:37). Thus John’s garment was woven of camel hair, like sackcloth, so that he who came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17) might resemble Elijah also in outward habit.
“His food was locusts and wild honey.” John’s fare was so austere and unlike the ordinary meals of the Jews that it is said: “John came neither eating nor drinking” (Matthew 11:18). He abstained entirely from wine and strong drink. Some wished to understand the word ἀκρίδιον as meaning herbs or shoots, but the Fathers and ancient writers agree that real locusts are meant—an insect described by Bede from the account of Bishop Arculf, who traveled in those regions. Locusts, dried with smoke, are still eaten in those parts, though they have a heavy odor and unpleasant taste. The Law permits the eating of locusts (Leviticus 11:22). What was unusual in John was not that he ate locusts, but that he lived on them as they were found, prepared with no art, and on wild honey.
John’s chosen place, clothing, and food carry a spiritual meaning. He came into the “desert Judea”—a desert spiritually, empty of God’s presence and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He preached repentance, by which one returns from error and from sin, professing the shame of vices and resolving to cease from them. Thus the desert Judea was to remember that it would receive Him in whom is the kingdom of heaven, and would no longer remain empty if it were purified by the confession of sins.
His rough garment of camel hair signifies the prophetic habit; the leather belt signifies readiness for every good work. The locusts, swift and fleeing at every approach, signify us, who once fled from the voice of the prophets, useless in works, restless in words, wandering in faith, but now become food and delight to the saints, together with the wild honey—sweetness not from the hive of the Law but from the hollows of the trees of the wilderness.
Mt 3:5-6. “Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea.”
People from Jerusalem and all Judea went to him, and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. Josephus distinguishes John’s baptism from the lustrations of the pagans, who believed that sins were washed away by sea water or by running water. John baptized only after minds had first been purified by the purpose of just living; the water washed the body as a sign of the interior cleansing of sins. They confessed not only their sins in general but also the particular and more serious ones, seeking pardon, counsel, and remedy from the prophet, and help from his prayers to God. The confession of individual sins was practiced among the Jews and was considered necessary for true repentance, as John Morinus demonstrates (De Poenitentia, book 11).
Mt 3:7. “Seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them: ‘Brood of vipers! Who has shown you how to flee from the wrath to come?’”
The Pharisees and Sadducees were sects among the Jews. The Sadducees denied the existence of spirit, angels, the immortality of the soul, reward and punishment after death, and the resurrection of the body. The Pharisees held doctrines contrary to these errors, clung to the faith of the synagogue, and—by their manner of life—sought to appear separated from others, professing a more exact knowledge of legal rites and of their traditions, with an outward show of religion. Some of these came to John’s baptism, pretending repentance; others despised it, as Luke says (Luke 7:29–30). Hence John sharply rebukes them as a brood of vipers—evil children of evil parents, tearing the womb of the synagogue, biting the saints with the venomous tongue of malice. That they, who considered no one superior enough to instruct them, should receive counsel of salvation is astonishing. John suggests that they come from mere novelty, rivalry, or desire for reputation.
Mt 3:8. “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance.”
If you truly wish to repent and not merely pretend, show by your amendment of life and holiness the sincerity of your repentance. “Fruit” in Scripture means works; thus the sense is the same as Paul’s: that he preached to Jews and Gentiles “that they should do works worthy of repentance” (Acts 26:20).
Mt 3:9. “Do not think to say within yourselves: ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
The Forerunner strips the Jews of confidence in both their own righteousness and the righteousness of their ancestors. Their own righteousness he challenges by calling them a brood of vipers rather than children of Abraham. Their ancestral righteousness he nullifies by showing that it profits them nothing if they do not imitate Abraham’s faith and piety. “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”—that is, from those despised ones whom you see here, like stones in the streets or on the riverbank. God, who formed Adam from earth and gave Isaac to Abraham’s body already dead, is able to raise up to Abraham children not according to flesh but according to faith, who, imitating Abraham’s works, enjoy the blessing promised to him. Though the phrase is figurative, the thing signified is not impossible to divine omnipotence. As Christ says: “The stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). The Fathers especially teach that God can raise up children to Abraham from the Gentiles, who worshipped stones and idols and are therefore compared to stones in Scripture.
Hence Hilary says (Commentary on Matthew 3): “The dignity of origin consists in the example of works; the glory of lineage is preserved by the imitation of faith… So that he who begins to have the devil as father through unbelief is changed into the devil’s progeny, but he who imitates Abraham becomes through faith the child of Abraham.”
He declares that God is able to raise up children of Abraham even from stones, and that through faith those who were once merely stones may become Abraham’s sons once more.
Mt 3:10. The axe, he says, has already been laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire. The crisis of salvation now presses upon you with utmost urgency. Formerly God delayed His vengeance on account of men’s ignorance and weakness, but now—when the doctrine of the Gospel and the grace of Christ begin to shine—no excuse remains. God will cut off your nation unless you repent; or rather, He will cut off Jerusalem, which is like the very root of the nation, whether we consider its religion or its civil order.
To this belongs what Isaiah foretold (Isaiah 10:33–34): “Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall break the whole height with terror; the lofty shall be cut down, and the exalted shall be humbled. And the thickets of the forest shall be felled with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.” And not only temporally will your nation be cut off, but spiritually as well: it will be severed from the stock and blessing promised to Abraham, and in your place the Gentiles will be brought in. “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation that will bear its fruit.” Each one of you will likewise perish unless you quickly produce fruits of repentance. A certain and imminent damnation awaits you unless your conversion is prompt and sincere. For every tree that does not bring forth good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.
In these words, two punishments of the wicked and the reprobate are signified: the first is cutting off, that is, separation from the kingdom of God; the second is condemnation to eternal fire. Nothing could be more terrible than this exhortation. John does not merely threaten them with a flying sickle, nor with the destruction of a hedge, nor with the trampling of a vineyard. Instead, he threatens an axe already poised. There is, he says, no longer any middle state—the axe hangs immediately over the root itself, and the total cutting-off is imminent. For he does not threaten the branches, nor merely the fruits, but the very root. He shows that if they neglect this warning, they will be struck incurably, without even the hope of healing. For the One who now comes is not a servant, as the former prophets were, but the Lord of all, who will inflict the most severe punishment upon the despisers of His redemption and grace.
Yet, lest he cast them into despair, he mingles comfort with his terrors. The axe, he says, is now laid to the root—but if you are willing to be converted and to become better, you will escape the blow and the cutting-off. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit shall be cut down,” he says. They object, perhaps: “But how can we produce fruit with the axe hanging over us, and with time so short?” You certainly can, he answers. For this fruit is not like the fruit of material trees which requires long seasons to grow. Here, the will is enough—and immediately the tree begins to sprout. It is not only the nature of the root that matters; the skill of the farmer who tends the tree contributes greatly toward helping it bear fruit.
Mt 3:11. He shows the ease of bearing this fruit when he adds, “I baptize you in water.” The One who comes after me is mightier than I; He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire. By this he clearly demonstrates that what is required is only the will and faith, and that to be changed and made better is as easy as to be baptized.
“I indeed baptize you with water for repentance. I cleanse you outwardly only, in accordance with the profession of repentance you make. But the One coming after me—who will soon begin His ministry—is stronger than I, far more powerful, and endowed with greater virtue. I am not worthy to carry His sandals,” he says—an expression drawn from common speech, signifying the humblest and most menial service.
“He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.” With the gifts of the Holy Spirit He will cleanse you inwardly from your sins, and by the most efficacious power of His grace—signified by fire—He will impel you with a divine force to perform good works. Thus it is written (Acts 1:5): “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” And again (John 7:38): “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” He said this of the Spirit which those who believed in Him were to receive.
Observe how admirable is the wisdom of the Baptist. When he himself preaches, he fills everything with fear; but when he sends his hearers to Christ, he announces joyful and prosperous things, such as are able to refresh the trembling: no longer the threat of an axe, nor the cutting-down and burning of a tree, nor the imminent wrath—rather, he proclaims forgiveness of sins, justification, sanctification, freedom, adoption as sons, brotherhood, co-heirship, and communion with Christ, and the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit. All these he includes together when he says: “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.”
When he adds mention of fire, he expresses the vehemence of that grace. Hence the tongues that came upon the Apostles appeared with the sound of a mighty wind and took on the form of fire (Acts 2:2–3). To this also refers Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 4:4–5): “If the Lord shall wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleanse the blood of Jerusalem from her midst in the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, then the Lord will create upon every place of Mount Zion a cloud by day and smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there shall be a covering.”
From these words of the holy Forerunner it is clear that the baptism of John did not have the same power as the baptism of Christ, although St. Luke calls it “a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” As St. John Chrysostom rightly observes, this baptism did not itself bestow remission; rather, it was the preparation for that Baptism which Christ would later institute. In that Baptism we are buried with Christ, and our old man is crucified with Him; before the Cross, there was nowhere at all the full remission of sins, for everywhere it is attributed to His Blood. St. Paul likewise affirms: “You were washed, you were sanctified—not through the baptism of John, but in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” And in another place he says: “John indeed preached a baptism of repentance”—and he does not say “of remission”—“that they might believe in the One who was to come after him.”
For since the Victim for the sins of the world had not yet been offered, and the Holy Spirit had not yet descended, nor the enmity between God and man removed, nor the curse blotted out, how could remission of sins be said to have taken place? Why then does Luke say “for the remission of sins”? Because the Jews were of utterly perverse mind. They did not feel any guilt for their sins; and though laden with great crimes, they still dared to claim righteousness for themselves. For this reason John drew them to the knowledge of their sins, urging them to take refuge in repentance, that by repenting they might become humble, and by condemning themselves for their sins they might hasten to the grace of remission. Unless they had first condemned themselves, they would not have sought grace; and unless they had sought grace, they would not have obtained forgiveness.
Thus John’s baptism was a preparation for another—that is, for Christ’s Baptism—and therefore he proclaimed that they must believe in the One who was coming after him. St. Leo, consonant with Chrysostom, writes (Epistle 16): “As the Old Testament was a testimony to the New, and as the various sacrifices prefigured the one true Sacrifice—brought to an end when the multitude of lambs was superseded by that single immolation of which it is said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’—so also John was not Christ but Christ’s herald; not the Bridegroom but the Bridegroom’s friend, so faithful that he sought not his own things but those of Jesus Christ. He confessed himself unworthy to loose the sandals of His feet, for while he baptized in water for repentance, Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire, who with a twofold power would both give life and consume sins.”
Mt 3:12. “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor, and He will gather His wheat into His granary, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”
The winnowing fan (Latin ventilabrum) or winnowing shovel (vannus) is the instrument by which grain is tossed into the air so that it may be separated from dust and chaff. By this image is signified the judicial authority of Christ, through which He will separate the good from the wicked on the last day of Judgment.
The threshing floor represents the visible Church. The wheat symbolizes the elect—those rich in virtue, firm in piety, steadfast and weighty with perseverance. The chaff signifies the reprobate, who are members of the Church not by merit but only by number: outwardly they possess an appearance of religion, yet inwardly they are empty, sterile, and lacking the marrow of righteousness.
Christ, therefore—who already begins to purify His faithful and elect through faith and the cross, as if by a winnowing fan—separates them from unbelievers. Yet most fully and plainly He will cleanse and divide in that definitive and irrevocable day of judgment. Like wheat, He will gather the elect into His granary, that is, into the kingdom of heaven. But the reprobate, like useless chaff, He will burn in fire which can never be extinguished.
This fire, as Minucius Felix notes, is not only everlasting, but the burning itself is everlasting. In hell the fire touches and penetrates the limbs, consuming and renewing them at once; it bites and nourishes simultaneously, just as lightning fires touch bodies without annihilating them, and as the fires of Etna or Vesuvius and other burning places of the earth blaze ceaselessly without being exhausted. So also that penal fire is not fed by the ruin of those who burn, but is instead sustained by the very torment of the bodies it lacerates.
St. Hilary explains this passage briefly but with clarity: “The work of the winnowing fan is to separate what is fruitful from what is unfruitful. That this is in the hand of the Lord signifies the authority of His judgment. The wheat is His—namely, the perfected believers whose fruits He stores in His granaries. The chaff, that is, the useless and unfruitful emptiness of men, He burns with the fire of judgment.”
To this interpretation by Hilary, St. Ambrose adds his agreement in his exposition.
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