Sticks and Stones

In Matthew 3:7-11, John delivers a powerful speech to the Pharisees and Sadducees at Yashua's baptism. In just a few verses John addresses themes of immersion, repentance, pride, mythology, and the temple.

Let's take a minute to appreciate the thoughtfulness, intention, and skill utilized in writing this passage.

First, the context of this speech is immersion. The chiastic begins and ends by referencing immersion, it takes place while John is immersing people and right before Yashua himself is baptized.

In this context of immersion John uses the metaphor of fruit trees to warn his audience. He says “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” or “be cut down and thrown in the fire!” This connects the ideas of immersion and repentance but also implies a change of behavior is expected after we repent and are baptized.

In the middle of this warning, John admonishes the Jews to check their pride - “do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, YHWH is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

This verse contains a beautiful play on words here. The Hebrew word for stones is abanim and the word for children is banim. So the phrase would read like: banim m'abanim.

John is also setting up a very powerful contrast of trees and stones.

Trees were very important to early middle-eastern people, in fact often worshiped. In Scripture we see that even Israel was influenced by this practice. Threads of tree worship survived all throughout Jewish tradition often representing repentance and rebirth.

Stones on the other hand, were often disregarded for bricks (See the article Living Stones) but were used to mark graves. Placing stones on a grave dates back to about 1000 BC. One reason for this tradition that persists today is the belief that the stones will keep the soul in the ground.

So here we have a little twist on Jewish tradition. The trees, which according to Jewish tradition, represent repentance and rebirth will be chopped down. The stones, which prevent resurrection and rebirth, will create children!

This statement also foreshadows the fulfillment of a promise to Abraham - “I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore” (Gen 22:17). What are star and sand made of? Stone!

Throughout the rest of Scripture we see are children of stone. We are living stones (1 Pet 2:5), aligning ourselves with the chief cornerstone(Isa 28:16), coming together to create His temple (1 Pet 2:5).

Although John may not have understood the fullness of all these connections, the Holy Spirit surely did and has given us something extra to meditate on and learn from. Praise YHWH for His manifold wisdom!