“Prophets and Kings”: The Evangelist Luke’s Curious Doublet

Revised: 02-Jul-2013

In a beautiful statement that probably referred to the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus proclaimed to his disciples, according to Luke, that “many prophets and kings” desired to see and hear what they (his disciples) are seeing and hearing. Matthew preserves the same saying, but in Matthew’s account the doublet is, “prophets and righteous persons.”^[15] The wording of Jesus’ saying in these two accounts is so similar that it appears likely that their slight differences reflect literary, or editorial, changes rather than different versions of the saying uttered by Jesus on different occasions. If so, which of these gospel accounts preserves the more original form of Jesus’ saying? Did Jesus say “prophets and kings” or “prophets and righteous persons”?

“King” is not a usual Hebrew parallel or synonym for “prophet.” Israel’s kings certainly were not renowned for longing for the days of the Messiah and his Kingdom. Usually, biblical kings were the enemies of God’s prophets!^[16] Furthermore, the doublet “prophets and kings” does not appear in Hebrew literature. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, for instance, is “king” the equivalent of the word “prophet.”^[17]

Matthew’s version of the saying also has its difficulties. Like “kings,” “righteous persons” (in Hebrew, צַדִּיקִים, tsadikim) is not a Hebrew synonym for “prophets.” Furthermore, as standard commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew suggest, the doublet “prophets and righteous persons” appears to be a Mattheanism, an expression peculiar to Matthew.^[18] In the New Testament, only in Matthew’s text do we find “righteous persons” used as a synonym for “prophets.”^[19]

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• ^[1] Matt. 23:37 and Luke 13:34 preserve this saying in identical wording. The Revised English Bible translated Jesus' exclamation as, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, city that murders the prophets and stones the messengers sent to her!" As the parallel of "prophets," the REB inserted "messengers" in place of the text's "those who have been sent." Today's English Version rendered the verse, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone the messengers God has sent you!" Both versions have substituted "messengers," the usual translation of מַלְאָכִים (malachim), as the synonym for נְבִיאִים (nevi'im, prophets"). ↩
• ^[2] The perfect passive participle ἀπεσταλμένους (apestalmenous, ones who have been sent) is the reading of both Matthew and Luke. Its probable Hebrew equivalent would be שְּׁלוּחִים (shelukhim). ↩
• ^[3] In the Septuagint, 201 times the Greek translation of מַלְאַךְ (malach; pl. מַלְאָכִים, malachim), is ἄγγελος (angelos; pl. ἄγγελοι, angeloi). None of the other five Septuagintal equivalents for the word malach/malachim is used more than nineteen times. ↩
• ^[4] The Soncino edition's concluding note (4:2, note 4) to this passage is: "Here Scripture positively, clearly and unmistakably refers to a prophet as 'mal'ak', and to his task as 'mal'akuth' [being a messenger]." ↩
• ^[5] The word שָׁלִיחַ (shaliakh, pl. שְׁלִיחִים, shelikhim) is not found in the Hebrew Scriptures; however, by the time of Jesus, it had entered the Hebrew language. Over the course of a few hundred years, beginning about the second century B.C., the word shaliakh gradually replaced malach in the sense of an ordinary earthly messenger, or even, in the sense of a heavenly envoy. While shelikhim was the more normal choice for flesh-and-blood emissaries, the use of malachim came to be limited to heavenly beings (see Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature [repr. New York: Pardes Publishing House, 1950], 786, 1583; Avraham Even-shoshan, Ha-Millon He-Hadash [Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1966], 693, 1374). In the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls malach appears 169 times, especially in expressions such as malachei El (angels of God), malachei shalom (angels of peace), malachei kodesh (holy angels), malachei shamayim (heavenly angels), and malachei tsedek (angels of righteousness). The noun shaliakh appears only once in the Dead Sea Scrolls (in an Aramaic text designated 4Q539). The rabbis viewed shaliakh as a synonym for "prophet": "By ten names were prophets called [in Scripture], to wit: ambassador, trusted, servant, messenger [shaliakh], visionary, watchman, seer, dreamer, prophet, man of God" (Avot of Rabbi Nathan 34:7; trans. Goldin)—the verb שָׁלַח [shalakh, send] in Isa 6:8 appeared to the rabbis to be a clear reference to shaliakh. Shaliakh stands in parallel to malach in the famous rabbinic expression "not by a malach nor by a shaliakh" (not by a messenger nor by an apostle, that is, not by an intermediary), a rabbinic interpretation based on an understanding of Isa 63:9, "In all their distress, no tsir (messenger) nor malach saved them." See David Flusser, "Not by an Angel...," in Judaism of the Second Temple Period (trans. Azzan Yadin; Grand Rapids, MI, and Jerusalem: Eerdmans, Magnes Press and Jerusalem Perspective, 2007 [Vol. 1] and 2009 [Vol. 2]), 1:61-65. The expression "not (by) a shaliakh nor (by) a malach" (usually, malach is first in order) appears frequently in rabbinic literature, for example, "He sent not a shaliakh nor a malach, but rather He himself [delivered them], as it is written [Exod 12:12], 'I [and not another] will pass through the land of Egypt....'" (y. Sanhedrin, chpt. 10.1; y. Horayot, chpt. 12.1). As stated, shaliakh was used instead of the biblical malach in rabbinic Hebrew. On the scripture, "Behold I will send my messenger [malach] before me..." (Mal 3:1), the rabbis commented, "God said to Israel [after the incident of the Golden Calf]: 'Had you merited it, I Myself would have become your messenger [shaliakh], just as I was in the wilderness, as it says, "And the Lord went before them by day" [Exod 13:21], but now that you have not merited this, I am entrusting you into the hands of a messenger [shaliakh]'" (Exod. Rab. 32:2; trans. Soncino). (Note that when alluding to the malach of Mal 3:1, the rabbis used the word shaliakh.) "[Yet later on, despite His promise that He Himself would bring them into the Land], God said, 'Behold, I send an angel before thee... [to help bring thee into the place which I have prepared]' (Exod 23:20). May it be Your will, I beseech You, my Father in heaven [adds the author of this rabbinic work], that You Yourself [will always minister to us and] never put us into the hands of an emissary [shaliakh]" (Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 20:1; trans. Braude and Kapstein). In this passage, too, shaliakh is used as a synonym for the biblical text's malach. See also Midrash Psalms 18.6; 104.6. ↩
• ^[6] Luke 11:49 (RSV). Matthew's parallel—there is no parallel in Mark's Gospel—is: "Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of innocent [righteous] Abel..." (Matt. 23:34-35; RSV). Notice that, apparently, the author of Matthew substituted "wise men and scribes" for his conjectured source's "apostles," "righteous blood" for "the blood of all the prophets," and "righteous Abel" for "Abel." ↩
• ^[7] Since shaliakh does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, its Greek equivalent, the word apostolos (pl. apostoloi) does not appear in the second-century-B.C. translation of those Scriptures that is known as the Septuagint. However, the verb ἀποστεῖλαι (aposteilai), which is derived from the same root as apostolos, was the Septuagint's standard translation of the Hebrew verb from the same root as shaliakh. ↩
• ^[8] An explanation of the problematic "prophets and kings" was suggested in Edwin A. Abbott, Clue, 154-56. This work was the first part of Abbott's ten-part series entitled Diatessarica. Having surveyed the secondary literature, it appears to me that Abbott was the first to put forward this innovative suggestion. Apparently, scholars since Abbott have rejected the suggestion, or, are unaware of it. Standard commentaries in English, for example, Gundry, Matthew (1994); Hagner, Matthew (1993); Nolland, Luke (1993); Fitzmyer, Luke (1985); Marshall, Luke (1978]; Albright and Mann, Matthew (1971), do not mention it. If present in these works at all, comments about Matthew's "prophets and righteous ones" or Luke's "prophets and kings" are brief. Typical is John Nolland's comment, "Luke's 'prophets and kings' would be a natural designation for the leading figures of much of the OT text" (Nolland, Luke [1993], 576). ↩
• ^[9] Abbott noted that "'messenger' or 'angel' (מלאך [malach]) is frequently confused with 'king' (melech) and was thus confused by the Chronicler in the story of Araunah" (Clue, 156): the later, more paraphrastic 1 Chron 21:20, "Ornan [the Jebusite = Araunah] too saw the angel," is a result of the confusion by its editor of melech and malach (perhaps due to the mention of the LORD's angel immediately before). The earlier and more historical 2 Sam 24:20 reads, "Araunah [the Jebusite] looked out and saw the king" (Clue, 62-63). For other examples of the confusion of malach (messenger) and melech (king), Abbott cited (Clue, 63, note 1) David Christian Ginsburg, who wrote: "In 2 K. vii.17, we have the primitive form הַמַּלְּאָךְ = הַמָּלָךְ = המלּך 'the messenger' without Aleph, as is attested by the Septuagint and the Syriac. The passage ought accordingly to be translated 'when the messenger came down to him.' This is corroborated by the statement in the preceding chapter, viz. vi.33. Exactly the reverse is the case in 2 S. xi.1, where the Massorah itself tells us that the redactors of the text inserted Aleph into this very word, converting (ha-melachim) 'kings' into (ha-malachim) 'messengers'" (Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible [1897], 141). "The Hebrew 'messenger' [malach] is rendered [in the Septuagint] by the Greek 'king' or 'ruler' in Is. xiv.32; xlii.19; Prov. xiii.17" (Abbott, Clue , 63, note 1). ↩
• ^[10]  If indeed this confusion occurred in the conjectured Hebrew stage of the transmission of Jesus' biography, before the biography was translated to Greek, then, this story of Jesus probably existed in Hebrew in written form. If so, this would contradict my suggestion that the first written Life of Jesus was the Greek translation of an oral Hebrew tradition of the life and sayings of Jesus. See my "The Discomposure of Jesus' Biography," JP 53 (Oct.-Dec. 1997): 28-33. ↩
• ^[11] Perhaps one can assume that the biography was copied a number of times in Hebrew, but translated to Greek only once. ↩
• ^[12] Since the two words, melachim and malachim, are more distinguishable in speech than in writing. ↩
• ^[13] The Greek adjective ἁπλοῦς (haplous) originally meant "simple," but had a plethora of derived meanings, such as "open," "without ulterior motive," "pure," "upright," "innocent," "wholehearted," and "healthy" (see Otto Bauernfeind, "ἁπλοῦς," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (ed. Gerhard Kittel; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:386. ↩
• ^[14] Deut 15:9 is an excellent example of the Hebrew idiom "bad eye." The other references in the Hebrew Scriptures to "good eye/bad eye" are: Prov 22:9 (good eye); 23:6 (bad eye); 28:22 (bad eye); Deut 28:56 (she will begrudge, lit., her eye will be bad towards). For this idiom, see also Tob 4:7-10, 16; m. Avot 5:13, 19; Derekh Eretz Zuta 3:1; 6:5. ↩
• ^[15] The saying appears only twice in the Gospels (Matt. 13:16-17; Luke 10:23-24). Most New Testament scholars assume that this “Double Tradition” saying was copied independently by Matthew and Luke from their common Source Q. For a detailed discussion of this passage, see David Bivin, Blessedness of the Disciples. ↩
• ^[16] For example, “And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son and Seraiah the son of Azriel and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel to seize Baruch the secretary and Jeremiah the prophet, but the LORD hid them” (Jer. 36:26; RSV). ↩
• ^[17] The closest one comes to the doublet “prophets and kings” is Lamentations 2:9: “Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars; her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets obtain no vision from the LORD” (RSV). I. Howard Marshall (The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978], 439) suggests: “Luke’s wording may reflect Isa 52:15; 60:3, where kings look forward to the era of salvation,” but this seems to me unlikely. In a saying of Rabbi Jonathan (first half of the third century A.D.) we find an example of “kings and prophets”: “Every bride who is modest in the house of her father-in-law is rewarded by having kings and prophets among her descendants” (b. Megillah 10^b; Sotah 10^b; trans. Soncino). ↩
• ^[18] Apparently, Greek δίκαιοι (dikaioi, righteous persons) is Matthew’s editorial replacement for a word he saw in the source he was copying. According to Abbott, “Matthew—who occasionally shows a tendency to paraphrase—may have habitually paraphrased ‘messengers of God,’ as ‘righteous persons'” (Edwin A. Abbott, Clue: A Guide Through Greek to Hebrew Scripture [London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900], 156). Manson agrees: “The latter collocation [‘prophets and righteous men’] is characteristic of Mt. Cf. Mt. 10:41 (M), 23:29” (T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus [London: SCM Press, (1937) 1949], 80). Elsewhere, Manson observes, “This is a curious variant. Is it an editorial effort on the part of one of the Evangelists (presumably S[t]. Matthew; cf. Mt. 10:41), or does it presuppose a variation of translation?” (The Teaching of Jesus: Studies of Its Form and Content [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945], 32, n. 3). Hagner writes, “Matthew appears to have substituted δίκαιοι, ‘righteous persons,’ a favorite word of his, for Q’s more difficult βασιλεῖς, ‘kings’ (reflected in Luke 10:24)” (Donald A. Hagner, Matthew [WBC 33A-33B; Dallas: Word Books, 1993-1995], 376.) Nolland concurs, “Matthew’s pair ‘prophets and righteous ones’ is paralleled in Matt 10:41; 23:29, and so is likely to be Matthean” (John Nolland, Luke [WBC 35A-35C; Dallas: Word Books, 1989-1993], 576.). ↩
• ^[19] Three times: Matt. 10:41; 13:17; 23:29. Matthew also may have added Greek δίκαιος (dikaios, righteous; righteous person) or δίκαιοι (dikaioi, righteous; righteous persons) to his text, or substituted them for other words he found in the extracanonical source he copied: Matt. 1:19; 13:43; 23:28, 35; 27:19. ↩