Matthew 3:13-17

This passage occurs for the Baptism of Jesus in Revised Common Lectionary (Year A), most recently January 11, 2026.
 
Summary:
Unpacking this short passage of Jesus' Baptism is a delight.  What caught my eye this time was the word for dove, περιστερα.  This word can also mean pigeon.  Imagine...God's Holy Spirit finally taking shape...as a lowly pigeon!  I think that kind of captures the reality of Baptism...God working through pigeons like you and me!

Key Words:
βαπτιζω ("baptize"; 3:11,13,14,17):  Baptize is fairly straight-forward in Matthew's Gospel.  John does it to people; Jesus is baptized; Jesus tells people to baptize disciples in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  As I have mentioned before, it simply meant to dip in Hellenistic times. For your enjoyment, here are the Liddell-Scott Hellenistic meanings of the word. Wow!

I. trans. to dip in water
2. to dip in poison
3. to dip in dye, to dye
4. to draw water

II. intransitive the ship dipped, sank

περιστερα ("dove" or "pigeon"; 3:16).  What a difference it would make if our imagery was of an ugly speckled pigeon...but a few other key points in Scripture this little bird appears:
1)  During Noah's flood, the bird that brings him the olive branch is the dove
2)  When God makes his first covenant with Abram, Abram must offer a dove
3)  In Leviticus, the poor could offer a dove/pigeon for a sacrifice
4)  In all four Gospels, the dove descends on Jesus as he is being baptized
5)  Jesus turns out the doves (and their merchants) in the temple.

It is kind of interesting if you make out the spirit to be an ugly black pigeon that only the poor use for a sacrifice.  That is the vehicle through which the spirit works!

ευδοκεω (pleased, 3:17): Matthew also employs this verb when quoting Isaiah in chapter:

• "Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I take great delight. I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.  He will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or extinguish a smoldering wick, until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope."(12:19-21)

What is the hope of the Gentiles?  Baptism, of course, where they are connected to the promises of God!

δικαιoσυνη (righteousness, 3:15)  Discussing this word could fill a million blog posts.  The Greek word carries with it both a legal sense and a relational sense that is difficult for us to capture in one word.  It can be fairly translated into English as either "justification" and "righteousness" in Greek.  

For example, this word is employed like this in the Septuagint (the first two emphasize the relational aspect of righteousness; the latter two the judicial aspect):

• In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode. Exodus 15:13
• Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness; answer me in your righteousness.  Psalm 143:1
• It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)
• ...judge your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing their conduct on their own head, and vindicating the righteous by rewarding them according to their righteousness.  1 Kings 8:32
• the LORD, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.  Psalm 98:9

Within the context of Matthew 3, does Jesus get baptized to fulfill the law and its requirements or does Jesus get baptized to heal the broken relationships in the world? 

Of course the answer is "both" "and".  However, how one leans will determine the shape of one's ministry.  In the American context, the legal sense of righteousness -- "justification" has been combined with our individualism and even consumerism to produce a Jesus who enacts a legal transaction on the cross to pay the debt of my sins that now I must choose to accept for myself.  To play my own hand, my sense is that when Jesus talks about fulfilling all righteousness, he has a deeper sense of restoring all the broken relationships in this world.  The gift of the legal justification is for the enactment of the reconciliation between all creation.

πληρῶσαι (fulfill, 3:15)  I did some research this morning trying to figure out why this infinitive is in the aorist tense.  Long story, but it seems that the aorist infinitive construction here points toward the fulfillment occurring as a the result of the baptism.  Which is brings up two big questions for me

1)  Does the Baptism alone achieve the fulfillment of righteousness?  My sense is that Jesus understood his baptism as inextricably linked to his cross.  (Mark 10:38, Luke 12:50)  However, this sense isn't explicit in Matthew's Gospel.  

2)  Jesus adds in the phrase "for us" (ἡμῖν).  To what extent is John necessary for righteousness?  To what extent are we all necessary for the fulfillment of righteousness?  

Grammar Review:  "Articular Infinitive"

Greek has a million ways to express the intention of something.  A very intentional people if you will!  One of these such ways is through the "articular infinitive."  See verse 13:  του βαπτισθηναι.  Literally you might read this as:  "Jesus...to John of the baptizing."  However, because you have an article+ infinitive you can read this as "to John for the purpose of being baptized" or leave it as an infinite in English, "to John to be baptized."  In this particular example, the infinitive is in the passive (notice the θη suffix).  Question:  What else suggests its passive?  (Besides the overall context of the sentence?  Hint:  prepositions!)

Sentence Analysis:  3:16  βαπτισθεις δε ο Ιησους ευθυς ανεβη απο του υδατος και ιδου ηνεωχθησαν οι ουρανοι, και ειδεν το πνευμα ωσει περιστεραν ερχομενον επ αυτον

Divide and conquer!  Use the grammar markings (which I cannot easily copy) to help you here
1) βαπτισθεις δε ο Ιησους ευθυς ανεβη απο του υδατος  
2)  και ιδου ηνεωχθησαν οι ουρανοι
3)  και ειδεν το πνευμα ωσει περιστεραν ερχομενον επ αυτον

1) βαπτισθεις δε ο Ιησους ευθυς ανεβη απο του υδατος

Here we have a fairly easy sentence -- trust me.  Let's divide it up
βαπτισθεις:  Participle, but even if you don't know that, you recognize something with Baptism!
δε:  worry about later
ο Ιησους:  Subject
ευθυς:  worry about later
ανεβη:  main verb
απο του υδατος:  prepositional phrase

Get your subject and main verb:  Jesus came up/rose
Now add in the prepositional phrase:  Jesus came up out of the water.  hmm...Jesus rose from the water.

Now add in the little words (look up what they mean):  And Jesus came up immediately out of the water
Alas, what to do with the participle?  Simple...in this case just stack it onto the beginning of the sentence (but first make it an aorist passive...ie past tense passive):
"Baptized, Jesus immediatedly rose out of the water."
Do we need to smooth out the pariciple?  (Technically determine the circumstances under which it happened?)  Add any other phrases or adverbs?  We could do:
"After Jesus was baptized..." however, we cannot do "While Jesus was baptized..."  We cannot do this because the participle is aorist which means it happened before the main verb.
So, "After Jesus was baptized, he rose from the water."
2)  και ιδου ηνεωχθησαν οι ουρανοι
This is even easier.  Word for word: 
and behold opened the heavens.
The only tricky part is translating the aorist passive verb, but not really, because we have this in English:  "The heavens were opened."  (in my mind, hard translation from Greek is when we don't have something really similar...in this case we do:  Simple past passive.)  You know its aorist passive by the θησ suffix in the middle.

So, "After Jesus was baptized, he rose from the water.  And behold, the heavens were opened."

3) και ειδεν το πνευμα ωσει περιστεραν ερχομενον επ αυτον

Let's divide up here, again, as always, trying to find subject and main verb:
και: filler
ειδεν:  main verb
το πνευμα: subject
ωσει περιστεραν ερχομενον επ αυτον:  let's come back to it.

So if we put verb+subject together, we get " And the spirit saw.

Hmm...what is going wrong here?  Well, it turns out that the word Spirit looks the same in the nominative and accusative case.  So actually, the subject is Jesus and the spirit is the object.  "And he saw the Spirit."

ωσει περιστεραν ερχομενον επ αυτον:  Literally:  "like (a) pigeon/dove coming upon him."

Two things worth pointing out:  First, for your own exploration, notice how Mark and Matthew differ on prepositions here...
But more over, the participle here is not that hard to translate.  it is always worth sticking in the easy translation of the participle (for present, add "ing" to the end of verb; to aorist participles add "ed" to the verb) and see what happens.  In this case, the participle modifies the pigeon/dove so it works out nicely.

Final translation:
So, "After Jesus was baptized, he rose from the water. And behold, the heavens were opened.  Jesus saw the Spirit like a pigeon coming upon him."

(ΝRSV)  And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.

Matthew 3:1-12

This passage occurs in the Advent season of the Revised Common Lectionary (Year A), most recently Dec 7, 2025.
 
Summary: The great fun of this passage is that everything is happening all at once and then over and over again.  First, John commands the people to repent, but tells them to do this repeatedly.  Then, people are continually getting baptized while at the same time continually confessing.  The order of baptism-confession-repentance is not entirely clear.  Well, actually, it is clear:  They all happen at once.  Over and over again.  Does this mean baptism happens again and again?  I think the baptism of fire does happen again and again, even if the ritual only happens once in our lives.  

Key Words:
μετανοιετε ("repent"; 3:2).  This verb is in the present tense.  This is significant because it implies that the action ought to be on-going.  In other words, the action of repentance is not a one time event, but a life-time one.  Interestingly, this is the verb that begins the 95 thesis.  When Luther read a similar passage in Greek (Jesus himself calling the disciples to repent), he saw that the Latin translation, the common text in the Middle ages, had removed this continuous aspect of the Greek.  Jerome had translated "repent" as "do penance."  Luther felt something was lost in translation here and so he started the 95 theses, leaning into the continual aspect of the verb:  "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent" he willed that the whole life is one of repentance."  

This brings us to a preaching quandary though if one is preaching on this passage during Advent.  Advent used to focus on repentance.  The candle and vestments were purple with one pink; now they are blue.  The current focus is hope and "blue" is the color.  Yet we've kept the same lessons, which seem to focus a great deal on repentance.   Perhaps though this present a preaching opportunity:  Repentance and hope are always related.  You cannot repent if you do not believe a situation can get better.  

[Actually, as an additional historical note:  The desire to make Advent less stark precedes the 20th century.  In the middle ages, the Western church wanted to have Advent echo Lent in terms of fasting and discipline.  But the combination of people needing cheer and the particular saints days (Nicholas, Barbara and Lucia) simply didn't allow for a mood of fasting!]

βαπτισμα ("baptism"; 3:7).  Originally, this word did not have religious meaning.  It simply meant to dip.  For your enjoyment, here are the Liddell-Scott Hellenistic meanings of the word.  Wow!

I. trans. to dip in water
2. to dip in poison
3. to dip in dye, to dye
4. to draw water
II. intransitive the ship dipped, sank

Try preaching that:  Baptism as a dip in poison; as a dip in dye; as a drawing of water from God; as finally, a sinking ship!  Didn't some monk once write about Baptism as daily dying and rising?

ἐξομολογούμενοι ("confessing"; 3:7)  Latin and Greek have different roots for the word confess.  In Latin, the word has a sense of what one says when one is in "fetters", when one is captive.  In Greek, the word means "say as one", or attest to what someone else has says.  As in, we confess the Apostles Creed.  Here the people are together, saying as one, their sins.  Two preaching possibilities:

First, the verb is in the present tense as a participle, which means it is happening concurrently with the main verb, in this case, baptize.  The image Matthew presents is not that people confess and then go into the waters, but that this outpouring of the Spirit is somehow producing cleaning and confession, all at once.  How might one connect baptism, confession and repentance in an on-going manner?

Second, I find Advent (December) a strange month in that people do collectively confess their sins:  We are too consumeristic, we are too focused on the self, we eat too much, we don't share enough, etc.  Yet we go on doing it all anyway.  What is the role of the church in this season of confession and yet non-repentance?

πνευμα ("spirit"; 3:11).  The word can mean "breath" as well.  What is worth noting, especially as we begin the year of readings from Matthew's Gospel, that the Holy Spirit plays an integral role in Matthew's Gospel.  It is not fair to simply say Luke is about the Spirit...In Matthew the Spirit is there too, connected with the birth of Jesus (1:18) and the command to make disciples (20:18). 

This word also shows up in this week's Isaiah text (11:2).  The "Spirit of the Lord" is upon me.  (It is interesting to observe how the NRSV changed this from the Spirit of the lord to the Spirit of the LORD in the updated version!)

Grammar point: 
Greek and Hebrew punctuation.  Well, they're ain't much!  In fact, in the earliest biblical manuscripts there were only capital letters without spaces, even between words.  So Mark and Matthew "play" a bit with Isaiah
"A voice cries in the wilderness:  "Prepare the way of the Lord."  The Hebrew, as at least pointed by the Masoretes, more accurately reads:
"A voice cries, "In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord."  I.e., get ready to go back from exile on the road through the wilderness.  Mark and Matthew take the verse and give it new meaning!  A reminder of the freedom that the Spirit gives us to interpret the Word for our context.  Or maybe a warning too!

Verse Translation:
Matthew 3:6 και εβαπτιζοντο εν τω Ιορδανη ποταμω υπ αυτου εξομολογομενοι τας ἀμαρτιας αυτων

Sometimes, before you divide and conquer, just try reading the sentence by sticking in vocab you know and see where you get. When it comes to this verse, if you know a bit of Greek, you should be able to get: 

And baptize in the Jordan under/by/of him ?? the sins of them

Let's save that nasty participle and look at the first half of the sentence (ie, now divide)

και εβαπτιζοντο εν τω Ιορδανη ποταμω υπ αυτου

The key to translation here is to recognize that baptize is a passive voice verb.  This allows you to make sense of "υπ αυτου" which is how Greek tells you who did the action in passive voice:

"And baptized in the river Jordan by him." 

Now we nail down our verb a bit more:  imperfect, 3rd person:

"And they were continuously being baptized in the river Jordan by him."

So, now onto:  εξομολογομενοι τας ἀμαρτιας αυτων

 τας ἀμαρτιας αυτων should be clear:  Their sins or the sins of them.

However, the participle is a mess here.  It turns out it means "confess"  It is a middle present participle.  Hmm...middle means you can translate it as active.
So:  "confessing their sins."

What is the connection of this clause to the rest of the clause?  Well, the participle is a circumstantial participle...but what circumstances?  Well, the key here is the tense.  It is present tense.  That means the action is on-going.  However, the main verb is in the imperfect.  So does this mean the baptizing happened before the confessing?  No!  The present tense of the participle means that this action happens at the SAME time as the main verb.  In other words, the people did not baptize and then confess; or vice verse.  What is means is that while they were being baptized, they simultaneously were confessing.  So we get:

"And they were continuously being baptized in the river Jordan by him, while they were confessing their sins."

In the wilderness of life, our baptism and confession...and repentance are all related.

Matthew 3:1-17, Jesus Baptism, (and Mark 1:4-11)

I have done a number of blog posts in the past on the Baptism of Jesus:

http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2010/12/matthew-31-12.html

http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2012/02/mark-19-15.html

http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2011/11/mark-11-8.html

A further comment for this year, especially for those preaching on the Gospel of Matthew.

A key word in Matthew's portrayal of the Baptism is:

μετανοια (metanoia, meaning "repentance", 3:8)  It might be tempting to dismiss these harsh words: "bear fruit worthy of repentance" or "the axe is ready..." We might want to view them simply as words of John the Baptist.  This would neglect the subsequent call of Jesus to repentance (Matthew 4:17) or his praise of repentance (Matthew 11:21).  Furthermore, it would dismiss the repeated passages where Jesus promises to burn away that which does not yield fruit (καρπος): 

• Matthew 7:19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
• Matthew 13:5-6  Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.  But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.
• Matthew 13:30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.' (In Greek the wheat "grain" is actually the word for fruit).

One could argue that in Matthew's Gospel, the Gospel in a nutshell is, "For God so loved the world, that he sent his son burn all that was not good."  In short, Matthew's Gospel and the words of John the Baptist provide the antidote to Baptismal theology robbed of its roots in repentance and destruction of the old Adam.  For Lutherans we have the language of this in our catechisms - what does Baptism mean for daily living?  "It means that our sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever."

How do we preach this?  One could finesse; one could beat people down.  It is okay to start a fire this Sunday.  Just make sure you use the waters of Baptism to put out the fire and bring forth the new life.