Coming Persecutions - 10:19-20 Providence of Words

10:19-20 Providence of Words

When they deliver you up, do not be anxious about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Verse 19 connects explicitly to verse 17; the verb in the Greek for ‘deliver you up’ is the same in both (as well as in verse 21). This returns attention to the twelve in front of the Jewish officials, because this verb is not used of the twelve being brought before the Gentile officials. Had Matthew wanted it to refer to the twelve before the Gentile officials as well, he could have used the verb there as well, instead of ‘dragged’.

‘Do not be anxious’ is the same language as is used in 6:25-34. The attitude of trust the twelve have when they are delivered up is to be the same attitude of trust they have in God in relation to bodily provision.

Matthew makes his version of this speech more intimate than that of his source, the Gospel of Mark, by saying that who will speak is ‘the Spirit of your Father’ rather than ‘the Holy Spirit.’ Referring to God as Father of the listeners provides an additional connection between this passage and 6:25-34. It also reminds the twelve that their true family is not their earthly family, which they soon are to hear will deliver them up.

The outpouring of the Spirit on the disciples associates their ministry with that of Jesus, as an extension of it, because in Matthew’s gospel references to the Spirit are only in relation to his operation in Jesus’ ministry.

Davies and Allison suggest that the image of the Spirit speaking through the twelve is an eschatological marker, a marker of the end-times, because Jews expected a special outpouring of God’s Spirit in the latter days.