Matthew 22:13 to Wisdom 17:21
Matthew 22:13 to Wisdom 17:21
A ninth example, also from the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary, on Matthew 22:13 (and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth):
“Outer darkness” probably connotes the deepest darkness that is so distant from any source of light that not the slightest ray pierces it. Jewish literature from the intertestamental period taught that the plague of darkness that God used to judge the Egyptians foreshadowed eternal darkness that awaited them (Wis. 17:21). (p. 220).
Jesus Himself describes an aspect of the afterlife, the realm that no human can know of except by Divine inspiration, by referencing a description of the afterlife that had appeared in an Apocrypha (which declares itself to have received Divine inspiration as to all those things that man cannot, himself, see Wisdom 7:21: “And all such things as are either secret or manifest, them I know”). That would seem to be confirming that the Book he is alluding to had correctly envisioned the realm that no one in this world can know of except by Divine inspiration—which itself would seem to be endorsing the Book’s claim that the author had “seen beyond” and saw the Truth. And all this was, again, recorded in the Divinely-inspired Gospel to the Jews, without any caveats or warnings.
