Mt 12:38-42
Like Jonah: The scribes and Pharisees want a sign from Jesus that will authenticate his claims, his power. The “scribes and Pharisees,” of course, are the unbelievers in Matthew’s community; they want a reason to believe that Jesus, who had been put to death and raised from the dead, is the Messiah.
Like Jonah: The scribes and Pharisees want a sign from Jesus that will authenticate his claims, his power. The “scribes and Pharisees,” of course, are the unbelievers in Matthew’s community; they want a reason to believe that Jesus, who had been put to death and raised from the dead, is the Messiah.
In this passage Jesus refers to unbelievers as an “unfaithful (literally “adulterous”) generation” (12:39). Both the prophet Hosea (2:4-15) and the prophet Jeremiah (3:6-10) refer to the covenant between God and Israel as a marriage bond. When the Israelites were unfaithful, that is, when they broke the covenant through idolatrous practices, these prophets spoke of them as being adulterous. Matthew is declaring that those who do not believe in Jesus are like the idolaters of old.
The sign that Matthew chooses to give to unbelievers is that of Jonah, for two reasons.
First, by referring to Jonah’s three day and three night stay in the belly of the whale (cf Jon 2:1) Matthew is implicitly echoing the resurrection of Jesus, which at the time of the writing of this Gospel had already taken place.
Second, after getting to Nineveh, Jonah preached but one day and the whole city repented. The people of Nineveh were pagans, but they repented. The present generation has Jesus risen from the dead—the “one greater than Jonah [who] is here”—but they fail to repent. On judgment day the pagans (Gentiles), who have repented, will condemn those who should believe (for Matthew, members of his own community) and condemn them.