Matthew 10 Bible study: Sheep among wolves

Just before this chapter, "Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people" (9:35). He said to his disciples, "The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few" (9:37), and "Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest" (9:38). The next verse is this chapter's first: "He called to himself his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every sickness" (10:1). Favor's Matthew 4 notes that the words of 4:23, "every disease and every sickness", come again at 9:35 and here (10:1). He sends the twelve out: "As you go, preach, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’" (10:7), and Favor's Matthew 3 sets those words beside John's and Jesus's own, in John says it first. Here is what almost everyone misses: when he tells them to take no bag for the journey, he says, "for the laborer is worthy of his food" (10:10) (tap worthy), and in the Greek, laborer there is the word behind laborers in 9:37-38, the laborers he had told his disciples to pray for. Matthew doesn't comment on it, and these notes don't either.

Exodus 1:17→leads toMatthew 10:28

This link is an interpretation. The king ordered the midwives to kill the baby boys (1:16), but "the midwives feared God, and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them" (1:17). Sending out his disciples, who would be "brought before governors and kings" for his sake (Matthew 10:18), Jesus said, "Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Matthew 10:28; also Luke 12:4-5). Jesus doesn't mention the midwives or Exodus 1; some hear in his words the same choice the midwives made, to fear God rather than a king who orders killing; others read them as said to his disciples about persecution for his name (Matthew 10:22).

ἄξιοςaxiossay AX-ee-os

Strong's: "deserving, comparable or suitable (as if drawing praise)". Thayer lists 10:10 under the sense "of one who has merited anything, worthy". The WEB has worthy seven times in this chapter, and in the Greek every one is this word: "the laborer is worthy of his food" (10:10); "find out who in it is worthy" (10:11); "If the household is worthy … but if it isn’t worthy" (10:13); "is not worthy of me" and "isn’t worthy of me" (10:37); and "isn’t worthy of me" (10:38). Matthew's Greek has the word nine times (counted in RP2018, the Byzantine text the WEB translates), seven of them here. The other two are "fruit worthy of repentance" (3:8) and "those who were invited weren’t worthy" (22:8). The WEB's worthy at 3:11 and 8:8 is another Greek word, and at 26:66 a third.