καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς. Compare
Isa 28:15–19 (where the cornerstone laid in Zion will withstand the assault of
water while those who have made a covenant with Sheol and death will be swept
away) and 1QH 6.19–31 (here the speaker has journeyed to the gates of death but
finds refuge in a city founded on a rock). The notion that the underworld or
the realm of the dead was locked by gates was common in the Ancient Near East
and appears already in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Note Homer, Od. 14.156, and Diogenes Laertius 8.34–5 (quoting Aristotle).
The spectrum of opinion on these words, which
in the early church were so often used against heretics, and which later came
to serve as an apology for tradition, is unusually broad. Among the various
proposals we note the following:
(i) Harnack (v), holding ‘on this rock I will
build my church’ to be an interpolation (see n. 72), argued that the original
text had σου instead of αὐτῆς and thus took the whole line to be a promise of immortality to Peter.
In favour of this, such an interpretation makes for a good connexion with 16:28
(‘there are some standing here who will not taste death …’), and it would go
some way towards explaining why Mark or Mark’s tradition dropped 16:17–19: the
prophecy had been shown false by Peter’s death (cf. Otto (v)): There is also
the fact that Jn 21:20–3 reflects the conviction that one or more of Jesus’
disciples would live to the consummation (see the commentaries). There is,
however, no textual justification for the suggested emendation, and one does
not wish to ‘correct’ the text unless it is otherwise unintelligible.
(ii) B. P. Robinson (v), although he does not
accept Harnack’s textual reconstruction, follows Harnack in finding a promise
of immortality: αὐτῆς refers back to Peter (ταὐτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ), not the church. That the apostle was dead
when Matthew composed his gospel is no objection to this interpretation but
rather proof that Matthew thought in terms of successors to Peter. The promise,
in other words, is not spoken to Peter as such but to Peter as holder of a
particular office.
(iii) Bousset, p. 65, associated 16:18 with the
tradition of Christ’s descent into hell: ‘The company of the righteous who have
fallen asleep also belongs to the ecclesia triumphans. The gates of Hades are
opened and they no longer hinder passage to freedom’. One must agree with
Bultmann, History, p. 139, n. 2:
‘apart from the fact that the descent into Hades is nowhere hinted at in the
text, it is not possible to see any connexion between the bursting of the gates
of Hades by Christ’s descent into hell, and the phrase οὐ κατισχύσουσιν: the Church had not been imprisoned in Hades!’
(iv) McNeile, in his commentary, ad loc., cites the first passion
prediction (16:21) as well as Acts 2:24 and 31 and goes on to find an allusion
to Jesus’ resurrection: ‘The ecclesia
is built upon the Messiahship of her Master, and death, the gates of Hades,
will not prevail against her by keeping Him imprisoned’. C. Brown (v) puts
forward a similar view, stressing that Mt 16:19 is in truth a passion
prediction. We wonder, however, whether the meaning can be so far beneath the
surface of the text, which does not directly speak of Jesus himself.
(v) Schlatter, pp. 509–10, contends that the
general resurrection is in view. The gates which, in the past, let people in
and never out will, in the end, not hold those Christ has saved (cf. Ep. Apost.
28). The main difficulty with this interpretation is that it does not do
justice to κατισχύσουσιν, which most naturally connotes an
advancing force (see below).
(vi) Gero (v), following the textual tradition
of certain Syriac mss., urges that our line was originally about the ‘bars’,
that is, ‘levers’ of Hades. The verse simply promises that Peter, the rock,
will not be dislodged from his place, even by the powers of Hades. The church’s
foundation is immovable. The consensus of the Greek textual tradition, however,
is not to be disregarded unless there are truly compelling reasons. This is why
we also cannot follow Köbert (v). He accepts the Syriac evidence but equates mûklê with prison bars.
(vii) Another suggested emendation has come
from A. Pallis and Eppel (v). They believe ‘gatekeepers’ (šō˓ǎrê, πυλωροί; cf. LXX Job 38:17b; 2 En. 42:1; b. Ḥag. 15b) should be read instead of
‘gates’.
(viii) According to Gundry, Commentary, p. 335, ‘the gates of Hades’
particularly represent ‘death by martyrdom’. The promise is that the church
will not be obliterated by persecution. But the equation of ‘the gates of
Hades’ with ‘death by martyrdom’ is, pace
Gundry, hardly established by the prominence of persecution in the First
Gospel.
(ix) According to L. E. Sullivan (v), our text
pictures the church on the attack, reaching into Hades to draw up its members.
Is it, however, natural to see the church—which in this context is depicted as
a building—as the aggressor?
(x) In Allen’s words, 16:18c could mean that
‘the organised powers of evil shall not prevail against the organised society
which represents My teaching’ (Matthew
p. 176). This accords with the dominant trend in Roman Catholic interpretation
and makes for a good connexion with v. 19, which can be taken to concern
Peter’s teaching authority.
(xi) Perhaps most contemporary expositors would
concur with Schweizer, Matthew, p.
342: 16:18 simply ‘states unequivocally that death with all its power cannot
put an end to the Christian community’. The church will endure until the end of
the world (cf. SB 1, p. 736). This interpretation has in its favour the OT
equation of ‘gates of Sheol’ with ‘gates of death’ (the older expression); and
it can appeal to Prov. 1:12 and Isa 5:14, where the image of Hades swallowing
victims is an image of death: this is rather close to Mt 16:18’s depiction of
an active Hades. (Most exegetes holding this view remark that ‘gates’ is to be
understood as an example of synecdoche, the part (the gates) standing for the
whole (Hades). As to why then ‘the gates of Hades’ is used instead of ‘the
powers of Hades’ or just ‘Hades’, the answer lies in v. 19, where the mention
of ‘keys’ inevitably conjures up the image of gates or doors. In other words,
both vv. 18 and 19 have to do with doors or gates.)
(xii) In the judgement of Jeremias, TWNT 6, pp. 923–7, ‘the gates of Hades’
refers not to the realm of the dead but to the ungodly powers of the underworld
which will assail the church in the latter days. Citing passages for comparison
from Revelation (6:8; 9:1ff.; 20:3, 7–8) and IQH 5:20ff., he takes the text to
mean that church will emerge triumphant from the eschatological assaults of
evil. Compare Bultmann, History, p.
139: ‘in the end, when the powers of the underworld overcome mankind, the
Church will be saved’.
In the attempt to come to a conclusion of our
own, the following points are to be borne in mind. To begin with, we have
already stated objections to interpretations (i)–(ix). These may be eliminated.
Next, while it might be argued that the structure of vv. 17–19 requires that αὐτῆς refers to πέτρᾳ and thus Peter, this is not a decisive observation: the rules about
parallelism are nowhere carved in stone. Further, as Zahn, p. 548, noted long
ago, the nearness of αὐτῆς to ἐκκλησία favours connecting the two, as does the common sense observation that
the ‘gates of Hades’ must direct themselves against the whole church, not just
a part of it. The RSV supplies the correct translation: ‘prevail against it’
(sc. the church). In the third place, although ‘gates of Hades’ is a fixed
expression in the OT one must beware of reading the OT meaning into Matthew’s
text, for conceptions about Hades and Sheol changed over time. By the first
century there was a tendency to think of Hades or certain sections of it as an
underworld peopled not by the dead in general but by the ungodly dead, as well as by demons and evil spirits. The simple
equation of Hades with death probably does not hold for Mt 16:18. Fourthly,
nothing stands in the way of viewing ‘gates’ as an instance of synecdoche: the
‘gates’ stand for the city and its inhabitants (cf. above). Furthermore, there
are ancient texts which blur the distinction between ‘gates’ and ‘gate
keepers’.112 Lastly, πύλαι + κατισχύω is not a recognized idiom (which is another
reason for doubting that one can simply appeal to the OT usage of ‘gates of
Hades’). But in the LXX the verb is always active when followed by the
genitive.114 This means that the gates of Hades should be understood
as active: the church on the rock is
suffering an onslaught (cf. 7:24–7).
Taking everything into consideration, we do not
wish to rule out interpretations (x) and (xi). But interpretation (xii) seems
to us to be the best choice. One should probably think of the endtime scenario,
when the powers of the underworld will be unleashed from below, from the abyss,
and rage against the saints (cf. 1 En. 56:8; Rev 6:8; 11:7; 17:8). The promise
is that even the full fury of the underworld’s demonic forces will not overcome
the church. One may compare Rev 9:1–11, where the demonic hosts, under their
king Abaddon, come up from the bottomless pit to torment humanity. They prevail
against all save those with the seal of God. Also worth comparing is 1QH
6:22–9. In this the author faces the gates of death but is delivered by
entering a fortified city founded on a rock: and the whole context is the great
eschatological conflict.
If Mt 16:18 be traced back to Jesus, it may
have concerned Peter’s rôle as eschatological missionary. By adding members one
builds a community. Thus in making Peter the foundation of the emerging
community, Jesus was announcing his pre-eminence as a ‘fisher of men’.
Congruent with such a proposal is, first, the fact that Peter was, to judge
from Acts, the evangelist par excellence
in the primitive community and, secondly, the fact that Peter felt impelled to
live his life as a missionary, moving on from Jerusalem to other places. As for
the meaning of ‘and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it’ (see
above), these words harmonize with the other promises in which Jesus foresees
at least some of his disciples survivng to the end, despite eschatological
tribulation (see on 10:23 and 16:28). (W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. [International Critical
Commentary; London: T&T Clark International, 2004], 2:630–634)
