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Matt. 1:17 - Fishers of men


17 Jesus said to them, ’Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.’


My translation
Submitted by andrew on Wed, 28/01/2004 - 18:01.

This may be an allusion to Jer.16:16:

Behold, I am sending for many fishers, says the LORD, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

The parallel between ’fishers’ and ’hunters’ in this verse would appear to mean that these ’fishers’ are an instrument of judgment (cf. Vermes, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, 2). Jeremiah warns that Israel cannot hide her iniquity from God and will inevitably be punished (Jer.16:17-18). However, the preceding paragraph (14-15) speaks of God restoring the scattered people of Israel to the land, just as before he had brought them from Egypt. It may be, therefore, that Jesus associated the ’fishers’ of Jeremiah’s prophecy with the gathering of the ’elect’ from the nations of the world (cf. Mk.13:27). Alternatively, we may suppose that when he calls the disciples to be ’fishers of men’, he has in mind the fact that the gospel of the kingdom is a message both of salvation and judgment for Israel.

If Jesus intended the allusion, the effect is to contextualize the call more clearly within the framework of the imminent eschatological transition and the restoration of Israel.

See also:

Fishers and hunters

Submitted by RobertR on Thu, 14/06/2007 - 01:21.

These fishers and hunters are evil people come to kill and imprison the Jews and not one will get away, so it can’t connect with The command of Jesus to be fishers of men. We are to love and woo people not hunt and destroy.

I think we Christians have been too quick to try and make every Old Testament image fit our Messiah, For example the suffering Messiah in Isaiah 53 is not a type of Christ unless Jesus had children that we are not aware of, nor was God wounding him. Satan wounded and murdered Christ not YHVH. What kind of father would wound his innocent child to show his love for his guilty children? What kind of guilty children would stand silently while the father beat the innocent brother and then thank the Father for his love?

Fishers and hunters

Submitted by andrew on Thu, 14/06/2007 - 09:35.

Michael, I actually now think it unlikely that Jesus intended a simple allusion to Jeremiah 16:16 here, but you may have misread Jeremiah (or I may have misread you). The hunters and fishers are used by God to round up the Jews for exile. The point of the image is that the Jews cannot hide or escape judgment: God sees their iniquity and will punish them by hurling them out of the land (cf. Jer. 16:10-13).

This narrative is not irrelevant background for the Gospels: Israel is again under judgment because of iniquity and will be punished by military invasion resulting in devastation and dispersal, but in the course of this God will also forgive and restore his people (cf. Jer. 16:14-15). But I notice that in Luke 5:10 Jesus uses the verb zōgreō for the ’catching’ of men, which strongly suggests the idea of keeping alive or sparing captives (eg. Num. 31:15; Deut. 20:16; Josh. 9:20; 2 Sam. 8:2; 2 Chron. 25:12 LXX). His point would then be that the disciples as ’fishers’ will save people from the coming destruction - their role is to call out a new community that will survive the wrath of God against Israel.

This is not about making every Old Testament image fit Jesus - I agree that the church has been over-eager in this respect. It is rather about how Jesus and the writers of the New Testament make use of the Jewish scriptures to explain what God is doing through the events of Jesus’ ministry and the emergence of a community of followers which spreads out into the pagan world.

Isaiah 53 is not a simple prediction of the suffering Messiah, agreed; the details simply don’t fit. It is a story about the role played by suffering righteous Israel during the events of exile and return - or something along those lines. Isaiah has a created a narrative in which a faithful servant (Jacob) suffers because of the sins of the nation and through that suffering becomes the means by which Israel is restored. The New Testament then retells that story in order to explain how Israel will be saved from a far more serious crisis: Jesus suffers the punishment that Israel would suffer because of its sins (for example, his execution prefigures the many crucifixions that accompanied the destruction of Jerusalem in the Jewish War) and in that way provides an ’atonement’; but as the servant Jacob and as the Son of man he includes in himself the community of the faithful (his disciples) who would likewise suffer. In effect, the Old Testament story has become a metaphor for the story of Jesus.

The idea that God would punish his innocent Son makes no sense in isolation from this fundamentally biblical story about judgment on Israel because of its iniquity and the restoration of the people to wholeness. See also ’Why the emerging church should believe in penal substitution’.

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