Here is a saying so strange that it is avoided and therefore widely unknown.
What did Jesus mean when he said of the kingdom of heaven, ". . . the violent take it by force"?
Matthew 11:12 "From the
days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence,
and the violent take it by force."
This is a rarely heralded quote from Jesus. I have only heard it preached once---by a female Pentecostal preacher on
one of the top Christian cable networks. Her interpretation could have been
taken from a self esteem seminar. She said that you can’t just sit around
waiting for the kingdom to come to you. (That contradicts the Scriptural stance
that the kingdom is a gift, doesn’t it? And it contradicts the Lord’s Prayer
doesn’t it? Thy kingdom come?) She
said you have to get up and take the kingdom by force! Thousands in her
audience were jumping up and down and cheering. They liked her saying that
Christians should be the “violent ones” who take the kingdom by "violence." Please don’t ask me why they liked it. I have no idea.
But to be fair, the female televangelist is not
the only person to wrestle with this perplexing saying. It seems to contradict
so much of what Jesus says elsewhere about the presence of the kingdom and its
coming. What do violence and the violent have to do with kingdom living?
I won’t go into detail describing the many
optional interpretations of this verse. But here are three just to give you a
taste:
- Since John began to preach the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, the
kingdom has been under attack, and evil men are using violence to steal it
from the masses.
- Since John began to preach the kingdom, evil spiritual forces have
attacked the message and the messengers, violently snatching it from the
grasp of those who desire it.
- By doing violence to John (and soon to Jesus), violence is trying to tear the kingdom away from you.
These and variations on them never satisfied me. Then I came upon a scholarly paper written by a Jewish Christian living in Tel Aviv,
Yehoshua
credited his interpretation of Matthew 11:12 as coming from his reading of
David Biven’s “Understanding
the Difficult Words of Jesus” (Austin, TX: Center for Judaic-Christian Studies,
1984). Bivin is a Jerusalem
scholar who has written voluminously about the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark,
and Luke). He did his post graduate work at Hebrew University
I
heard of Flusser and his protégé, Brad Young, when I was in Jerusalem teaching. My friend, Brian
Kvasnika, himself a student at Hebrew
University Roman Empire , Koine Greek. They marveled at what they
found. Difficult passages in Greek seemed to make better sense in Hebrew!
In
the case of Matthew 11:12 ,
something unexpected happens when you translate the Greek to Hebrew. That’s
exactly what Avram Yehoshua did, following the
lead of David Bivin.
Yehoshua
quoted the verse from the Nestle-Aland Interlinear:
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the
Kingdom of the Heavens is forcibly
entered (by-aides-zeh-tie), and violent
men (by-ace-tie) seize it
(hah-pahdz-zu-sin).” (I put the three key terms in bold.)
When Yehoshua
translated those three key words into Hebrew, he saw exactly what Jesus was
saying:
The
first key word: “The Hebrew word for 'is forcibly entered' (the Greek
by-aides-zeh-tie) is poretzet and comes from the Hebrew verb paratz. The
primary meaning of the verb paratz is, 'to break or tear down...e.g. a
wall...to break asunder, to break forth, as a child from the womb, Gen. 38:29;
of water, to burst forth...a torrent bursts forth...also to break out, act with
violence, Hos. 4:2'.”
The second key word: “The Hebrew noun used for
'violent men' is port-zeem and is just the plural of the one who tears down
(the first key word, poretzet). These too would be breakers or breachers (of
the wall or fence).”
The third key word: “The Hebrew word for 'seize it' would be oh-hah-zeem and means, 'to seize...to take, catch, in hunting, to take or have possession'. The verb also means, 'to take possession (of the land)' (i.e.Israel , Josh.
22:9), and it also speaks of an 'eternal possession' (Gen. 17:8; 48:4; Lev.
25:34).' This parallels the possessing of the Kingdom of the Heavens in terms
of inheritance instead of 'seizing it.'”
The third key word: “The Hebrew word for 'seize it' would be oh-hah-zeem and means, 'to seize...to take, catch, in hunting, to take or have possession'. The verb also means, 'to take possession (of the land)' (i.e.
With those three key Greek words translated into Hebrew,
Yehoshua translated the whole of Matthew 11:12
from Greek into Hebrew and then into English. This is just amazing. Here it is:
“And from the days of Yohanan (John) the
Immerser (Baptizer) until now, the Kingdom of the Heavens is being breached and
the breachers are possessing it.”
What Yehoshua immediately saw was that “Jesus was alluding
to the prophetic passage in Micah about the Messiah being the Shepherd that
would breach or tear open a section of the fence or wall of the Sheepfold . . .
for the Remnant of Israel. The Sheep (believers; breachers), would then
continue to break down and break through the fence of the sheep-pen into
greener pastures (the Heavenly
Kingdom
ESV Micah 2:12-13 I will
surely assemble all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the remnant of Israel ; I will
set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture, a noisy
multitude of men. 13 He who
opens the breach goes up before them; they break through and pass the gate,
going out by it. Their king passes on before them, the LORD at their head.
Yehoshua provides his own
more literal translation of Micah 2:13:
“And the One breaking open will go up before them and they will break
open and they will go through the Gate and they will go out through Him and
their King will pass through before them, (with) Yahweh at their head.”
Now, back to Matthew 11:12: Yehoshua’s translation of the passage back into Hebrew then into English makes sense of this verse to me for the first time:
John announces the presence of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus announces it, and he as much as claims in his own humble way to be its presence. He embodied a new very present reality. Jesus was cryptically and humbly announcing that he is the shepherd in Micah 2:12-13, the wall breacher, the one who breaks down the barrier of sin and death between his Father (Yahweh) and his sheep (the human race). His death and resurrection and ascension accomplish this. And those who follow him (know and trust him and his Father—John 17:3) will bust out into the green pastures of the kingdom of heaven.
Is that cool, or what?
[Footnote:
KINGDOM VIOLENCE: MATTHEW 11:12
by Avram Yehoshua http://www.seedofabraham.net/kingdomv.html]
For more of Jesus' parables see The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.
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