Casting Shadows Part 3: St. Matthew (continued)

That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." (Matt. 8:16-17)

This quote from the prophecy of Isaiah seems somewhat out of place, at least on the surface. Most people will recognize this quote as coming from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, the chapter that discusses the suffering Servant of the Lord, by whose stripes we are healed.

But here, St. Matthew applies it in such a way that it seems to be talking about literal diseases and illnesses, as opposed to spiritual diseases and illnesses.

Isaiah writes:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Is. 53:4-6)

The two words used by Isaiah ("griefs" and "sorrows") are kholee and makobe. The former means "sickness," and the latter can refer to either mental or physical pain (i.e., either sorrow or disease).

In the context of the prophecy, however, these illnesses, griefs, diseases, sorrows, etc., are metaphors for sin. This becomes clear by the fact that the Servant is said to have "borne" these things - and Jesus certainly did not literally take upon Himself bodily disease and illness.

This is precisely St. Matthew's point. The literal diseases and illnesses that Our Lord heals in the Gospel are simultaneously literal miracles and spiritual metaphors. They are a picture of what the Messiah has truly come to do: to bear our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness.

These two themes coincide in the Psalms:

"Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction." (Psalm 107:17)

It has been said, and rightly so, that God often sends physical illnesses as tangible signs of our spiritual condition. Not to say that every single individual disease represents a spiritual problem in a person's life, but rather, on a more general level the physical sickness points to something deeper.

Leprosy, for example, is a symbol of sin in the Scriptures (Jesus heals a leper earlier in this same chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel). It is interesting to note that when a person was afflicted with leprosy, that person could no longer to the temple/tabernacle to worship - sin separates us from the Body of Christ. After a person was healed of their leprosy, they had to go and see a priest for examionation and confirmation of that healing - the New Covenant realities here are unmistakeable.

What is interesting is that, throughout this chapter of the Gospel, Our Lord effects these miracles - healing a leper, healing the sick, etc. - by actually touching the afflicted person. We read that, in the case of the leper, "he stretched out his hand and touched him" (vs. 3); in the case of St. Peter's mother-in-law, we read that "he touched her hand, and the fever left her." (vs. 15)

Why the emphasis on touching? Because the Old Covenant laws prohibited physical contact with the ill. To touch a leper, to touch a menstruating woman, to touch a dead body was to make yourself "unclean." But in Our Lord's case, He touches a leper, He touches a menstruating woman, and He touches a dead body, and the reverse effect takes place: He does not become unclean by touching them, they become "clean" (healed) by His touch.

The prohibition in Israel's time was a symbol of their own weakness. God intended them to be a "city set on a hill," to be a light to all the Gentile nations, but they proved too impressionable and moldable to be of any use. That is, rather than influencing and forming the nations by their example, they themselves were formed and influenced by the nations, and began following after the gods of the Gentiles.

They could not reach out and touch the unclean nations without themselves becoming unclean; so God imposed these physical restrictions on them to drive the point home.

As St. Matthew continues to develop His theme of Jesus as the New Israel, he shows how Jesus fulfills what Israel should have been. He can reach out and touch the unclean, and rather than being affected by them, they are affected by Him.

This truth plays itself out on both the physical and spiritual levels, which makes Isaiah 53:4 an ideal text for St. Matthew to quote - assuming that the reader will know the spiritual meaning of that text, and that Isaiah was referring to spiritual illnesses and diseases.

Implicit in use of the quote by St. Matthew is also the "how" of the spiritual healings; how is it that Jesus will be the New Israel and heal the sin of the nations? The rest of Isaiah 53 goes on to speak in very explicit terms of the Passion of Christ. This is all very much part of context which St. Matthew wishes to evoke in the reader's mind.