The Fallible Study Bible

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Matthew17:19–21

The Power of Faith

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Matthew 17:19–21 — The Power of Faith. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

19

Afterward the disciples came to Jesus privately and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

Tote hoi mathētai proselthontes tō Iēsou kat’ idian eipon Dia ti ouk ēdynēthēmen hēmeis ekbalein auto

Word by word16 · parsed
ΤότεToteAfterwardG5119
√ τότε — the when, iAdverb
tote: then, at that time A hinge adverb, not a clock reading. It joins this scene to the two before it: the glory on the mountain and the failure at its foot.
οἱhoitheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Plural
μαθηταὶmathētaidisciplesG3101
√ μαθητής — a learner, iNounNominative Masculine Plural
προσελθόντεςproselthontescameG4334
√ προσέρχομαι — to approach, iVerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Plural
proserchomai: to approach, come near The verb of coming near to a superior with a request, used of suppliants and of worshippers approaching God. Here the nine, who had just been unable, take the suppliant's own position. Gill notes the setting from Mark: “when he was come into the house”, and Ellicott identifies these as “the disciples who had been left below when our Lord went apart with Peter, James, and John.”
τῷtōG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Masculine Singular
ἸησοῦIēsouto JesusG2424
√ Ἰησοῦς — Jesus (iNounDative Masculine Singular
κατ’kat’vvvG2596
√ κατά — (prepositionally) down (in place or time), in varied relations (according to the case (genitive, dative or accusative) with which it is joined)Preposition
ἰδίανidianprivatelyG2398
√ ἴδιος — pertaining to self, iAdjectiveAccusative Feminine Singular
idios: one's own, private With κατά, the fixed phrase for taking someone aside. Pulpit and Gill agree on the motive: shame before the crowd (Benson: “They were silent before the multitude, ashamed”), which is why the diagnosis of v. 20 is delivered in private rather than as a public rebuke.
εἶπονeipon[and] askedG2036
√ ἔπω — to speak or say (by word or writing)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
epo: to speak, say Aorist indicative: the single question that the whole scene has been building toward.
ΔιὰDiaWhyG1223
√ διά — through (in very wide applications, local, causal, or occasional)Preposition
τίtivvvG5101
√ τίς — an interrogative pronoun, who, which or what (in direct or indirect questions)Interrogative / Indefinite PronounAccusative Neuter Singular
οὐκoukvvvG3756
√ οὐ — the absolute negative (compare G3361 (μή)) adverbAdverb
ἠδυνήθημενēdynēthēmencouldn’tG1410
√ δύναμαι — to be able or possibleVerbAorist Indicative Passive1st Person Plural
dynamai: to be able, to have power The word of capacity, and therefore the exact word for what they have lost. Gill and Barnes both read their alarm as a fear about power rather than about the boy: Barnes says “they were appalled by the difficulty of the case and the obstinacy of the disease,” and adds the sober point that faith adds nothing to God's ease, “such was his will ... that he required faith in those who were the instruments.” The delegated authority of Matthew 10:1 is presupposed by the question; the nine are asking why a granted power did not operate.
ἡμεῖςhēmeisweG1473
√ ἐγώ — I, mePersonal / Possessive PronounNominative 1st Person Plural
ἐκβαλεῖνekbaleindrive it outG1544
√ ἐκβάλλω — to eject (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Infinitive Active
ekballo: to cast out, expel Aorist infinitive, the technical verb of exorcism in the Synoptics. Gill records the versional variation: “the Syriac and Persic versions render it, why could not we heal him?”, since for this boy the casting out and the cure were one act.
αὐτόauto. . .G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Neuter 3rd Person Singular
autos: he, she, it Neuter accusative: the object is the spirit, not the boy. Pulpit glosses it “it.”
20

“Because you have so little faith,” He answered. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

Dia hymōn tēn oligopistian de Ho legei autois gar amēn legō hymin ean echēte pistin hōs sinapeōs kokkon ereite toutō tō orei Metaba enthen ekei kai metabēsetai kai ouden adynatēsei hymin

Word by word31 · parsed
ΔιὰDiaBecauseG1223
√ διά — through (in very wide applications, local, causal, or occasional)Preposition
dia: because of, through The same preposition that opened their question (“because of what?”) opens His answer. The question's own grammar is turned back on the questioners.
ὑμῶνhymōnyouG4771
√ σύ — thouPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive 2nd Person Plural
τὴνtēnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
ὀλιγοπιστίανoligopistian[have] so little faithG3640
√ ὀλιγόπιστος — incredulous, iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
oligopistia: littleness of faith Matthew's signature diagnosis. The lexeme G3640 appears in only six verses, four of them in Matthew (6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8) plus Luke 12:28 and here, and in every other case it is the adjective addressed to disciples in a storm, on water, or over bread. Here alone it is the abstract noun, named as the cause of a failure rather than thrown as a reproach mid-crisis. Pulpit holds both halves of the truth: “They had, indeed, shown some faith by making even the attempt ... but they had acted in a half-hearted manner.” Gill is careful that this is not unbelief in the absolute: “they were not altogether destitute of faith, but their faith was very low, and their unbelief very great.”
δὲdeG1161
√ δέ — but, and, etcConjunction
ὉHoG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Singular
λέγειlegeiHe answeredG3004
√ λέγω — properly, to "lay" forth, iVerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
lego: to say, to lay forth Present tense in a past narrative, the historic present: the answer is set before the reader as spoken now.
αὐτοῖςautois. . .G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounDative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
γὰρgarForG1063
√ γάρ — properly, assigning a reason (used in argument, explanation or intensificationConjunction
gar: for, assigning a reason The hinge from diagnosis to promise. What follows is not a further rebuke but the ground of hope.
ἀμὴνamēntrulyG281
√ ἀμήν — properly, firm, iHebrew Word
amen: firm, truly The interlinear itself flags this as a Hebrew word carried untranslated into Greek, and untranslated again into English Bibles. It is the word by which a hearer ratifies an oath or a curse (Deuteronomy 27:15-26); on Jesus' lips it is turned around and placed at the front of His own saying, so that He ratifies His word before anyone else can. It marks the sentence as a pledge, which is what makes the absolute ending bearable.
λέγωlegōI tellG3004
√ λέγω — properly, to "lay" forth, iVerbPresent Indicative Active1st Person Singular
ὑμῖνhyminyouG4771
√ σύ — thouPersonal / Possessive PronounDative 2nd Person Plural
ἐὰνeanifG1437
√ ἐάν — a conditional particleConjunction
ἔχητεechēteyou haveG2192
√ ἔχω — to hold (used in very various applications, literally or figuratively, direct or remoteVerbPresent Subjunctive Active2nd Person Plural
echo: to have, to hold Present subjunctive with ἐάν: not “if you once get” but “if you should be holding,” a condition about present possession of something they already have in some degree.
πίστινpistinfaithG4102
√ πίστις — persuasion, iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
pistis: faith, persuasion The noun whose littleness v. 20 has just named. What is measured here is quantity, not sincerity. Benson and Gill both insist that the faith in view is the charism of miracles rather than saving faith (Benson: “the least measure of the faith of miracles”), and Poole declines to restrict it: “Whether our Saviour here speaketh of a faith of miracles, or no, I will not determine; I rather think that he speaketh here of any true faith.” We record the disagreement; the text says only πίστις.
ὡςhōsthe size ofG5613
√ ὡς — which how, iAdverb
hos: as, like how A particle of comparison, and the whole hinge of the sentence: what follows is a measure, not a species of faith. Gill presses exactly this, that the comparison “has no reference to the quality of mustard seed, being hot and acrimonious; which has led some interpreters wrong.”
σινάπεωςsinapeōsa mustardG4615
√ σίναπι — mustard (the plant)NounGenitive Neuter Singular
sinapi: mustard (the plant) Rare: five verses in the New Testament, every one of them a saying of Jesus (Matthew 13:31; Mark 4:31; Luke 13:19; Luke 17:6; here).
κόκκονkokkonseedG2848
√ κόκκος — a kernel of seedNounAccusative Masculine Singular
kokkos: a kernel of seed Seven verses only. The commentators divide over which end of the mustard seed is meant. Barnes lays both out and chooses growth: “There is a principle of vitality in the grain of seed stretching forward to great results.” Ellicott takes the other road, calling it “the proverbial type of the infinitely little,” and Pulpit keeps both (“small at first, it contains within itself power of large development”). The same noun carries the buried grain of John 12:24 and the sown body of 1 Corinthians 15:37, so the vitality reading has canonical company.
ἐρεῖτεereiteyou can sayG2046
√ ἐρέω — an alternate for G2036 (ἔπω) in certain tensesVerbFuture Indicative Active2nd Person Plural
ereo: to say, speak Future indicative, a promise rather than a permission, and the only instrument the sentence gives to faith is a spoken word: no exertion, no technique, nothing but speech, which in Scripture is the mode of God's own working (Psalm 33:9). Pulpit notes that the Lord repeated this lesson “in connection with the withered fig tree ( Matthew 21:21 ...) and elsewhere ( Luke 17:6 )”, and in both repetitions the same pairing holds, a command in the mouth and a future in the event. The word of a man with mustard-seed faith is thereby given the same grammatical standing as the mountain's obedience.
τούτῳtoutōto thisG3778
√ οὗτος — the he (she or it), iDemonstrative PronounDative Neuter Singular
τῷtōG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Neuter Singular
ὄρειoreimountainG3735
√ ὄρος — perhaps akin to G142 (αἴρω)NounDative Neuter Singular
oros: mountain The demonstrative τούτῳ (“this”) makes it a mountain in view, not a figure of speech alone. Gill: “pointing perhaps to that he was just come down from, which might be in sight of the house where he was”; Ellicott thinks the words “dramatised by a gesture pointing to the mountain from which our Lord and the three disciples had descended”; Pulpit names it, “the hill of Hermon, where the Transfiguration had taken place.” Cambridge and Benson record the rabbinic proverb behind the phrase, an “eminent teacher” being called “a rooter up of mountains.” Pulpit alone refuses the purely proverbial reading and argues the words were meant literally within the will of God.
ΜετάβαMetabaMoveG3327
√ μεταβαίνω — to change placeVerbAorist Imperative Active2nd Person Singular
metabaino: to change place Aorist imperative addressed to a mountain: the grammar of a command given to a person. In Scripture mountains do this only before God (Micah 1:4; Isaiah 64:1-3; Zechariah 4:7), which is the measure of what is being put into a disciple's mouth.
ἔνθενenthenfrom hereG1759
√ ἐνθάδε — properly, within, iAdverb
ἐκεῖekeito thereG1563
√ ἐκεῖ — thereAdverb
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
μεταβήσεταιmetabēsetaiit will moveG3327
√ μεταβαίνω — to change placeVerbFuture Indicative Middle3rd Person Singular
metabaino: to change place Future middle: the mountain removes itself. The obedience is given the same verb as the command, and the middle voice puts the motion in the mountain rather than in the speaker's arm.
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
οὐδὲνoudenNothingG3762
√ οὐδείς — not even one (man, woman or thing), iAdjectiveNominative Neuter Singular
ἀδυνατήσειadynatēseiwill be impossibleG101
√ ἀδυνατέω — to be unable, iVerbFuture Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
adynateo: to be unable, impossible Two verses in all of the New Testament: here, and Gabriel's word to Mary, “no word will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). That is the rarest lexeme in this unit and the tightest verbal link the Verifier reports. The promise Jesus makes to failing disciples is stated in the one verb the New Testament otherwise reserves for the power of God at the incarnation.
ὑμῖνhyminfor youG4771
√ σύ — thouPersonal / Possessive PronounDative 2nd Person Plural
su: thou, you Dative plural of reference. The impossibility is denied with respect to them, the nine who had just failed.
21

⚙ The critical text omits the original-language words of this verse (a textual variant); the BSB prints it. No word cards are shown — a stated gap, not invented text.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The question asked indoors — 17:19

The scene is deliberately private: κατ’ ἰδίαν, and, on Mark's detail which Barnes, Gill and Pulpit all import, inside a house. Ellicott identifies the askers precisely as “the disciples who had been left below when our Lord went apart with Peter, James, and John,” and Benson explains the delay: “They were silent before the multitude, ashamed, it seems, that they could not cast out this evil spirit.” Two commentators notice that the emphatic ἡμεῖς is the wound in the question. Pulpit prints it as emphatic and says the Lord's public rebuke in v. 17 “had passed over their heads, and not been understood as applicable to themselves,” so that the question was asked “with some bitterness.” Ellicott says the same thing in gentler words: they “did not look on themselves as belonging to the ‘faithless generation.’” Gill supplies the motive, and it is not flattering: they feared “they had lost the power which Christ had bestowed on them.” ⚙ Read from the Greek up, the sentence is a complaint about capacity (δύναμαι) that receives an answer about trust (πίστις), and the passive-shaped ἠδυνήθημεν reads, at least in its form, like the confession they did not intend to make: we were not enabled.

ii. The smallest measure and the largest promise — 17:20

The answer is a noun: ὀλιγοπιστίαν, littleness-of-faith, the fourth cousin of every other time Matthew has used this root over a storm (8:26), over water (14:31), over bread (16:8) and over clothing (6:30). Gill measures it carefully: “they were not altogether destitute of faith, but their faith was very low.” Then γὰρ turns, and the same littleness that failed is offered as sufficient. The commentators split on how the mustard seed works. Ellicott calls it “the proverbial type of the infinitely little”; Barnes argues for growth, “a principle of vitality in the grain of seed stretching forward to great results,” and calls that “probably the true meaning”; Pulpit takes both, small at first and capable of “large development.” Gill blocks a third reading, that the point is mustard's heat. On the mountain, Cambridge and Benson supply the rabbinic background (“a rooter up of mountains”; Benson: “a proverbial phrase among the Jews ... to express a thing which is very difficult”), and Ellicott and Gill both suspect a pointing gesture toward the mountain just descended, which Pulpit names as Hermon. Pulpit then stands almost alone in refusing the hyperbole: he thinks Jesus “meant his words to be received literally,” were such a removal ever “in accordance with God's will,” and notes honestly that the mediaeval instances adduced for it “would not satisfy modern criticism.” Ellicott draws the boundary from the other side: the absolute words are “ipso facto, conditional ... Nothing that comes within the range of faith in the wisdom and love of God.” ⚙ The grammar is on Ellicott's side of the limit and Pulpit's side of the seriousness: ἐρεῖτε is a plain future, not a permission, and the mountain's μεταβήσεται is middle, the mountain moving itself. Faith is nowhere given a power; it is given a word, and something else does the moving.

iii. The verse that is not printed — 17:21

In the BSB, v. 21 is blank, and Pulpit tells us why: “This verse is omitted in many good manuscripts and by the Revised Version, it being considered to have been introduced from the parallel passage of St. Mark” (Mark 9:29). Every commentator in this brief had it, and so all of them expound it. Poole, whose notes on vv. 19 and 20 simply redirect the reader here, gives the fullest reading and refuses to make prayer and fasting a technique: “There is nothing which God hath promised to give or bestow on any but faith will obtain from him, if attended by a fervent prayer, to which fasting is subservient, as preparing us to it.” Barnes makes fasting instrumental to faith, not to the demon: such faith “is produced and kept vigorous only by much prayer.” Ellicott finds in the clause “the real ground and motive for ‘fasting,’” with Acts 10:9-10, Acts 13:2 and 2 Corinthians 11:27 as apostolic instances, and observes that “the disciples, we know, did not as yet fast (Matthew 9:14-15).” Gill adds a sharp domestic guess, that while the three were on the mountain the nine “had been feasting and indulging themselves with the people,” and documents the rabbinic view that fasting could rid a man of an evil spirit. Cambridge compresses the whole to one sentence about self-denial and communion with God. Geneva labels it “The remedy against distrust.” ⚙ We will not build doctrine on a clause absent from the earliest witnesses. What can be said from the text that is printed is that v. 20 already grounds the failure in the disciples and not in the demon's rank, and that the clause, wherever it originated, teaches nothing v. 20 and Mark 9:29 do not.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ Our fallible reading, offered to be tested by Scripture. The nine ask a question about power and are answered with a question about size. That is the hinge: Jesus does not dispute that they were unable, and He does not restore a lost licence. He renames the deficiency. And then, having named it small, He does not demand that it become large. He says that a measure of faith as small as the smallest seed a farmer handles is enough to put a command in a disciple's mouth that mountains obey. Both halves must stand. Benson and Gill are right that the immediate reference is the charism of miracles, and Poole is right that the principle is wider than that charism; both are guesses about scope, and the text states only πίστις. What the text does state is where the power sits. The future ἐρεῖτε gives faith a word, and the middle μεταβήσεται gives the mountain its own motion; nothing in the sentence puts strength into the speaker. So the promise is not that a sufficiently intense believer becomes strong. It is that the smallest real trust is joined to a strength that was never his, and the one verb the New Testament uses elsewhere for that strength, ἀδυνατέω, is the verb Gabriel used of God at the incarnation (Luke 1:37). Read this way, “nothing will be impossible for you” is not a boast placed in human hands but a share, handled by faith, in a power the canon everywhere ascribes to God alone (Genesis 18:14; Jeremiah 32:17; Job 42:2). Ellicott's limit therefore is not a retreat from the text; it is the text: faith is trust in a will, and a will that is trusted cannot be commandeered. Test this against the very next paragraph, where the Son who says nothing is impossible tells the same disciples that He is about to be delivered up and killed (Matthew 17:22-23). The mountain-moving word and the road to the cross are spoken in the same breath, to the same nine, by the same Lord.

Faith is not given strength; it is given a word, and the mountain moves itself. (a machine reading, not Scripture)

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The one other “impossible”: Gabriel's word at the annunciation verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier's tightest link in this unit is also the rarest lexeme in it: ἀδυνατήσει (ἀδυνατέω, G101) occurs in exactly two verses of the New Testament, Matthew 17:20 and Luke 1:37, where Gabriel tells Mary that no word will be impossible with God. No commentator in this brief makes the connection; it is the Verifier's, and it is a matter of vocabulary, not of quotation. ⚙ The force of it is that the promise handed to failing disciples is stated in the one verb Scripture otherwise uses for the power that accomplished the incarnation. Ellicott's caution about the “ipso facto, conditional” character of the words gains its ground here: what is denied is not impossibility as such but impossibility with God, which is exactly what faith is trust in.

Luke 1:37

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G101 ἀδυνατέω (in 2 vv, that is, these two verses and no others in the New Testament). Both refs are Greek New Testament, so the lexeme comparison is valid. No quotation is claimed in either direction; the tier rests on the extreme rarity of the shared word.

The mustard seed sayings verbal / quotation: confirmed

Luke 17:6 is the same dominical saying in another setting, with a tree in place of a mountain, and the Verifier records the overlap exactly: πίστις (G4102), κόκκος (G2848) and σίναπι (G4615). Pulpit already places the three together: the lesson “which he afterwards repeated in connection with the withered fig tree (Matthew 21:21 ...) and elsewhere (Luke 17:6).” The other mustard-seed texts are the parable of the kingdom (Matthew 13:31; Mark 4:31; Luke 13:19), which Barnes, Ellicott and Pulpit all cite here, and which supply the growth reading Barnes prefers. The bare noun κόκκος reaches two verses further, the buried grain of John 12:24 and the sown body of 1 Corinthians 15:37, but a single shared noun across such different subject matter is too thin to badge as a verbal link, so those two are taken up under the reading of Christ instead. ⚙ Across the mustard sayings the seed is never valued for its size but for what is in it.

Luke 17:6 · Matthew 13:31 · Mark 4:31 · Luke 13:19

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G2848 κόκκος (in 7 vv) and G4615 σίναπι (in 5 vv), both rare, shared by all four refs, with G4102 πίστις (in 227 vv) added at Luke 17:6. All refs are Greek New Testament. Luke 17:6 is a parallel dominical saying, not a citation of Matthew. John 12:24 and 1 Corinthians 15:37 share only the single noun G2848 and are deliberately kept out of this badge, since one rare noun in a different subject matter is too thin for a verbal claim; they are handled under the reading of Christ instead.

Matthew's word for the disciples: little-faith verbal / quotation: confirmed

The noun ὀλιγοπιστίαν belongs to a lexeme (G3640) that the Verifier finds in only six verses: the storm (Matthew 8:26), the water (Matthew 14:31), the loaves (Matthew 16:8), the lilies (Matthew 6:30; Luke 12:28) and here. In the other five it is the adjective ὀλιγόπιστος spoken to disciples in the middle of a crisis; here alone it is the abstract noun, given as a cause after the crisis, in private. ⚙ The pattern is Matthew's, and it is pastoral rather than dismissive: the people rebuked for little faith are never outsiders, and Pulpit notes that these nine “were not to be classed with the unbelieving scribes.”

Matthew 6:30 · Matthew 8:26 · Matthew 14:31 · Matthew 16:8 · Luke 12:28

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G3640 (in 6 vv), rare; all refs Greek New Testament. Recorded honestly: Matthew 17:20 has the abstract noun ὀλιγοπιστία and the five parallels the adjective ὀλιγόπιστος, which the Verifier files under the same Strong's number. No quotation is claimed.

The mountain that moves before God structural / thematic: confirmed

When Scripture moves mountains, God moves them. The great mountain is levelled before Zerubbabel (Zechariah 4:7), the mountains quake and flow down at the LORD's descent (Isaiah 64:1-3), they melt like wax beneath Him (Micah 1:4), and the psalmist's confidence survives their being carried into the midst of the sea (Psalm 46:2). Benson and Cambridge record that by the first century “to remove mountains” had also become a rabbinic proverb for overcoming the impossible, and a title for a great teacher. ⚙ Both registers are live in v. 20: a proverb in the mouth of the one Person for whom it is not a proverb. This is a motif link, not a quotation; the Greek of Matthew and the Hebrew of these prophets cannot be compared by Strong's number at all, and none of these verses uses the mountain as a thing a believer commands.

Zechariah 4:7 · Isaiah 64:1 · Micah 1:4 · Psalm 46:2

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek Matthew to Hebrew prophets and psalm), so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and none is claimed; the Verifier reports no verbal basis here. The recorded basis is a shared motif, mountains removed, melted or carried away in the presence of God, with no formula quotation in the BSB text of Matthew 17:19-21.

“Is anything too hard for the LORD?” structural / thematic: confirmed

The absolute clause of v. 20 lands on ground the Old Testament has already surveyed, always as a question about God: Genesis 18:14 over Sarah's womb, Jeremiah 32:17 and 32:27 over a besieged city, Job 42:2 out of the whirlwind, Zechariah 8:6 over a restored Jerusalem. Luke 1:37, which shares Matthew's rare verb ἀδυνατέω, stands nearest to Genesis 18:14 and forms the bridge between the two Testaments' phrasings. ⚙ The unsettling thing about v. 20 is the change of address: the Old Testament asks the question of God, and Jesus answers it into the dative ὑμῖν, “for you.” Ellicott and Poole both feel the pressure and resolve it the same way, by tying the promise to the will and glory of God (Poole: “nothing which may tend to the glory of God, or to our good”). We follow them, and tier this as motif rather than citation.

Genesis 18:14 · Jeremiah 32:17 · Jeremiah 32:27 · Job 42:2 · Zechariah 8:6

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek Matthew to Hebrew Genesis, Jeremiah, Job, Zechariah): shared Strong's numbers are impossible across languages and the Verifier reports none. Basis is the shared formula of a rhetorical question about God's omnipotence; no quotation formula appears in the BSB text here. The Greek-side echo runs through Luke 1:37 (G101 ἀδυνατέω), which is treated in its own thread.

μεταβαίνω: what else changes place structural / thematic: confirmed

The verb the mountain is given (G3327, in 11 verses) is a modest one, and its other uses are worth seeing. Jesus changes place from the region of the Gadarenes and along the Sea of Galilee to a mountain (Matthew 15:29, which the Verifier also flags for ὄρος and ἐκεῖ); the believer has passed over out of death into life (John 5:24); and Jesus' hour comes to depart out of this world to the Father (John 13:1). ⚙ No commentator in this brief draws the line, and we claim nothing more than vocabulary: the word chosen for an impossible relocation is the ordinary word for a journey, including the two journeys that matter most in John.

Matthew 15:29 · John 5:24 · John 13:1

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G3327 μεταβαίνω (in 11 vv), with G3735 ὄρος and G1563 ἐκεῖ also shared at Matthew 15:29 and G281 ἀμήν at John 5:24. A real verbal contact within the Greek New Testament, but downgraded from verbal to structural because μεταβαίνω is a common motion verb and no quotation or deliberate echo is claimed.

The clause that may not belong: v. 21 and Mark 9:29 flagged: verify source

Matthew 17:21 stands empty in the BSB. Pulpit states the reason plainly, that the verse “is omitted in many good manuscripts and by the Revised Version, it being considered to have been introduced from the parallel passage of St. Mark,” where the saying about prayer is secure (Mark 9:29, itself subject to a further variant over the words “and fasting”). Ellicott, Benson, Barnes, Poole, Gill, Geneva and Cambridge all comment on the clause because their texts contained it. ⚙ We therefore flag rather than assert: the doctrine these voices draw from it may be true, and Barnes and Poole ground it elsewhere in any case, but the provenance of the clause in Matthew is disputed and a reader should know that before weighing the exposition.

Mark 9:29 · Matthew 9:14

basis: Provenance disputed. Matthew 17:21 is absent from the BSB text supplied in the brief and from the earliest manuscripts, and Pulpit reports it as a harmonizing importation from Mark 9:29; the Verifier could compute no lexeme basis because the verse has no interlinear words in our source. Matthew 9:14 is cited only because Ellicott appeals to it on the disciples' not yet fasting.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The mountain He came down from ancient/widely-held

Ellicott, Gill and Pulpit independently place a gesture behind the demonstrative τούτῳ τῷ ὄρει: the mountain in view is the one Jesus has just descended, which Pulpit names as Hermon, the mountain of the Transfiguration, and Ellicott compares the later gesture toward the Mount of Olives (Matthew 21:21). That reading is widely held among the expositors in this brief. ⚙ The composition of Matthew 17 then says something the individual verses do not. On the mountain, the Father's voice and the transfigured Son; at its foot, nine disciples unable to speak a word that works. The same chapter gives the diagnosis (littleness of faith) and the remedy in one Person: what the nine could not do, He did in a sentence (Matthew 17:18). Henry, on the whole paragraph, reads the healing itself as “an emblem of Christ's undertaking as our Redeemer,” and that is the older form of this reading.

Matthew 17:1-8 · Matthew 17:18 · Matthew 21:21

Nothing impossible: the verb that begins at the incarnation novel

⚙ This is our own reading and we mark it as such. The New Testament uses ἀδυνατέω (G101) twice. The first is Gabriel's, over a virgin: no word will be impossible with God (Luke 1:37), itself the Greek echo of “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14). The second is Jesus', over a mountain and into the dative of nine defeated men. The line runs from the impossibility God overcame in taking flesh to the impossibility He now denies to those who trust Him, and it runs through the Person who is both the answer to the first and the speaker of the second. No commentator in this brief makes the link, and it rests on vocabulary rather than on a quotation formula, so it is offered to be tested, not asserted.

Luke 1:37 · Genesis 18:14

The grain of seed that had to be buried novel

⚙ A figural reading, honestly marked as ours in its application here. Of the seven verses that use κόκκος, one is explicitly about Christ: unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone (John 12:24), where the Lord is speaking of His own hour. Paul then uses the same noun of the sown body and the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:37). That the grain of John 12:24 is Christ is the plain sense of John and the ancient reading of the Church; reading Matthew's mustard grain in its light is ours, and it is a figure, not an exegesis of v. 20. Taken so, the measure Jesus sets for faith is the measure He set for Himself: the smallest, buried, apparently negligible thing, whose power is in what God does with it and not in its size. Barnes, arguing for growth rather than smallness, is moving in the same direction from the horticulture: “a principle of vitality in the grain of seed stretching forward to great results.”

John 12:24 · 1 Corinthians 15:37 · Matthew 13:31-32

The same breath: all things possible, and the Son delivered up novel

⚙ Our reading of the immediate context. Matthew places the promise that nothing will be impossible directly before the second announcement of the passion: the Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men and killed, and on the third day raised (Matthew 17:22-23). JFB, whose note on this whole section is little more than a heading, nevertheless registers the arrangement, titling it “Healing of a Demoniac Boy, Second Explicit Announcement by Our Lord of His Approaching Death and Resurrection.” The juxtaposition is the evangelist's, not ours. What we draw from it is this: the omnipotence promised to faith is defined, three verses later, by a Lord who walks into what looks like defeat. Whatever “nothing will be impossible” means, it cannot mean the exemption from suffering that He Himself declined.

Matthew 17:22-23

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Honesty notes for this unit. (1) Matthew 17:21 has no text and no interlinear in our source: the BSB line is empty, and Pulpit explains that the verse “is omitted in many good manuscripts and by the Revised Version, it being considered to have been introduced from the parallel passage of St. Mark.” Every commentator quoted on that verse wrote from a text that contained it. Nothing in our synthesis depends on it, and the thread touching it is flagged rather than confirmed.

(2) There is a live variant inside v. 20. Our interlinear reads ὀλιγοπιστίαν (G3640, “little faith”), and our literal and notes follow it; but Gill, Benson, Poole, Geneva and Barnes expound ἀπιστίαν, “unbelief,” and the two best witnesses in this brief contradict each other about the manuscripts. Ellicott calls “little faith” a reading “found in many, but not the most authoritative MSS,” and a softening; Pulpit says the Revised Version adopts “little faith” “in accordance with the best authorities” and thinks “unbelief” the stronger original. We have not adjudicated this, and where a voice says “unbelief” we have left the word as they wrote it.

(3) Voice coverage is uneven in the source. JFB's note on this section is essentially a cross-reference to Mark 9:14-32 and supplies no exposition of these words, so it is cited only for the arrangement of the chapter and is not quoted as a voice. Poole's entries at vv. 19 and 20 read only “See Poole on Matthew 17:21,” so his substance appears under v. 21. Henry's note is written on the paragraph 17:14-21 rather than on single verses, which is flagged in the editorial note where he is quoted. Gill's entry on v. 20 is capped in our brief (401 characters of the full entry were not shown), and we have quoted and cited only what is within the portion supplied.

(4) Thread bases are lexeme-level only. The Verifier compares Strong's numbers, which means every link listed as verbal is a Greek-to-Greek word contact within the New Testament and no more than that; none of them is a quotation. The G3640 link joins an abstract noun here to an adjective elsewhere under one Strong's number, which we have stated on the badge. Cross-Testament contacts (the moving mountain, “is anything too hard for the LORD”) cannot be checked by shared Strong's numbers at all and are tiered structural for that reason, with no verbal claim made. Chapter and verse boundaries for Isaiah 64:1-3 differ between the Hebrew and English traditions; we cite Isaiah 64:1 as the BSB numbers it.

(5) Everything marked ⚙ is machine synthesis and fallible: the seed-and-cross figure, the ἀδυνατέω line from Luke 1:37, the reading of the middle voice in μεταβήσεται, and the use of Matthew 17:22-23 as a limit on the promise. None of these is claimed as the judgment of any commentator quoted here.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)