Matthew 14:25 Commentary and Bible Study

The narrative tells us it was the fourth watch of the night – between 3 am and 6 am – and Jesus came to them, walking on the water. Mark says that ‘he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them’ (Mark 6:48). In other words, he came right to the vessel and went as if to pass by. Why? He wasn’t going to respond to them, until they called upon him. All the time he was inviting their faith, for he had indeed come to them. They saw him; they all recognised him, even in those weather conditions. The Greek expresses it beautifully clearly. There are the waves and the wind and everything is being hurled and tossed, but he, somehow, is walking serenely in an even path, almost as though there was a stable causeway through the tops of the waves. He was untroubled by the violence of the water. But they were terrified. Their response was very unsatisfactory. ‘It is the Lord, but it cannot be’, they said. ‘It cannot be, it is a spirit,’ by which they meant a phantom, a ghost. It is not possible to walk on the water. It is the Lord, but it isn’t! They were half-believers in the power, in the divinity, of the Lord. They had a limited Lord.It is implied there that they cried out, unfortunately not in faith, but in fear. But they cried out and immediately he talked with them. What did they imagine? They saw him in the moonlight, presumably. He came very near to them. Some of them, if not all, must have seen that it was his form, that it was Christ the Lord. So what did they think? That he had died? That the mob that was surrounding him, had seized him, to make him king in Bethsaida Julias; that it had led to trouble when he dismissed them? Is it possible that they thought that he had been killed, that he had died, or was it that they thought they saw a spirit, an apparition? That is the Greek word. Our version of it in English language is ‘a phantom’, a spirit, something terrifying and frightening, which in their local superstition meant that, after seeing such a thing, they were due to die. ‘For they all saw him and were trouble.’ Matthew uses a verb which indicates that they didn’t cry, they screamed in terror. They were alarmed so much.