Matius 8:4

8:4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you do not speak to anyone, ¹  but go, show yourself to a priest, and bring the offering ²  that Moses commanded, ³  as a testimony to them.” ⁴ 

Matius 16:20

16:20 Then he instructed his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. ⁵ 

[8:4]  ¹ sn The command for silence was probably meant to last only until the cleansing took place with the priests and sought to prevent Jesus’ healings from becoming the central focus of the people’s reaction to him. See also 9:30, 12:16, 16:20, and 17:9 for other cases where Jesus asks for silence concerning him and his ministry.

[8:4]  ² tn Grk “gift.”

[8:4]  ³ sn On the phrase bring the offering that Moses commanded see Lev 14:1-32.

[8:4]  ⁴ tn Or “as an indictment against them.” The pronoun αὐτοῖς (autoi") may be a dative of disadvantage.

[16:20]  ⁵ tc Most mss (א² C W Ï lat bo) have “Jesus, the Christ” (᾿Ιησοῦς ὁ Χριστός, Ihsou" Jo Cristo") here, while D has “Christ Jesus” (ὁ Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς). On the one hand, this is a much harder reading than the mere Χριστός, because the name Jesus was already well known for the disciples’ master – both to them and to others. Whether he was the Messiah is the real focus of the passage. But this is surely too hard a reading: There are no other texts in which the Lord tells his disciples not to disclose his personal name. Further, it is plainly a motivated reading in that scribes had the proclivity to add ᾿Ιησοῦς to Χριστός or to κύριος (kurio", “Lord”), regardless of whether such was appropriate to the context. In this instance it clearly is not, and it only reveals that scribes sometimes, if not often, did not think about the larger interpretive consequences of their alterations to the text. Further, the shorter reading is well supported by א* B L Δ Θ Ë^1,13 565 700 1424 al it sa.

[16:20]  tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”

[16:20]  sn See the note on Christ in 1:16.