The Secret of the Middle of Matthew

Matthew 13 is a chapter about secrets. In this chapter, Jesus teaches eight parables and tells His disciples that they reveal the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. Much like Samson, who both poses riddles and is himself a riddle the reader must solve, Jesus not only speaks secrets, but Matthew has constructed the chapter itself to be a literary secret.

Matthew placed chapter 13 as the chiastically central chapter of his entire Gospel. As many commentators have noted, Matthew contains five major teaching blocks of Jesus, each concluding with the formulaic phrase, “When Jesus finished saying these things.” These five teaching discourses are chiastically arranged. Each section contains both thematic parallels and deliberate geographical settings. The scenic movement journeys from mountain, to land, to sea, and then back to land and mountain:

1. Mountain (Discourse 1: The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5–7)
2. Land (Discourse 2: The Missionary Discourse, Matthew 10)
3. Sea (Discourse 3: The Parables of the Kingdom, Matthew 13)
4. Land (Discourse 4: The Community Discourse, Matthew 18)
5. Mountain (Discourse 5: The Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24–25)

Matthew organized this geographical progression to communicate symbolically Jesus’s greatest work: His descent into watery death and His ascent into the glory of the resurrection. Matthew deliberately connects physical water with death, as seen in Jesus’s baptism in Matthew 3 and the drowning of the swine with the Gadarene demoniacs in Matthew 8. Conversely, he connects mountains with glory and exaltation, as displayed on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17. In this way, Matthew melds literary form and theological content into one unified design.

The Chiasm at the Center

These structural secrets go deeper still. Not only is Matthew’s Gospel chiastically structured around chapter 13, but this central chapter is itself internally arranged as a chiasm.

As scholars like David Wenham and Thomas Constable have observed, in the central section of this chiasm—verses 34 through 43—Jesus quotes directly from Psalm 78. Matthew writes:

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, He said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”

What is striking about this quotation is that Psalm 78 appears to be the deliberate center of the entire Book of Psalms. In 2007, Beat Weber published an article titled “Psalm 78 als Mitte des Psalters? ein Versuch” (“Psalm 78 as the Middle of the Psalter? An Attempt”). Weber outlined several lines of evidence indicating that the final compiler of the Psalter organized the collection so that Psalm 78 would stand as its central pivot:

1. The Psalter is divided into five distinct books, with the central collection—Book 3—containing Psalm 78.
2. Within Book 3, we find the core collection of the Asaph psalms (Psalms 73–83), placing Psalm 78 directly in the middle of that Asaphite group.
3. Weber points out that the Masoretes systematically noted the midpoints of biblical books, and they marked Psalm 78 as the center of the Psalter.

The Narrative Progression of the Psalter

To understand the significance of this, we have to look at Psalm 78 within the narrative progression of the Book of Psalms. Ever since Gerald Wilson’s influential dissertation, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, commentators have recognized that the Psalter is not a haphazard collection of disconnected poems, but a carefully arranged book with intentional narrative and thematic progression.

In broad strokes, the Psalter moves from lament toward praise. Along that trajectory, the collection descends to its lowest and darkest point in Book 3, exactly where Psalm 78 is located. It is in Book 3 that we encounter Psalm 88, the only lament psalm in the entire Psalter that contains no resolution or final expression of confidence.

Looking closely at what Psalm 78 actually teaches helps clarify why Matthew cites it here. The psalm opens with a call for the reader to listen, identifying itself as a parable and a dark saying, or riddle. The psalmist explains that this instruction must be passed on to recount God’s glorious deeds and wonders. It then proceeds through an extensive historical review of Israel’s unfaithfulness despite the magnificent wonders God performed on her behalf. Verse 2, which Jesus quotes in Matthew, reads:

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.

Even after reading the psalm, we might naturally ask: what is actually “dark” about this historical recital? The Hebrew term for a dark saying refers to something enigmatic, like a riddle. What, then, is the perplexing riddle and the parabolic lesson we are meant to learn?

There are at least two central enigmas presented in Psalm 78:

First, there is the enigma of human sin. Asaph catalogues the gracious acts of God: the giving of the law, the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, the guidance of the glory cloud, water flowing from the rock, and the raining down of manna from heaven. Yet right alongside these miracles, we see the opaque, persistent sin of Israel in the very presence of such wonders. This is dark because rational explanations are powerless to explain the senseless rebellion that grips the human soul in the face of extraordinary divine favor.

Second, there is the enigma of God’s persistent favor. Why does God not only remain with such a rebellious people, but continue to pour out blessings upon them? Twice in Psalm 78, God’s perplexing mercy is highlighted: once in the middle and once at the conclusion. In verse 38, after detailing Israel’s treachery, Asaph writes:

Yet He, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; He restrained His anger often and did not stir up all His wrath.

And in verses 69–72, concluding the psalm, Asaph declares:

He built His sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which He has founded forever. He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes He brought him to shepherd Jacob His people, Israel His inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.

The perplexing riddle of divine goodness is God’s atonement for a perpetually unfaithful people, alongside His sovereign choice of David to shepherd undeserving Israel.

The Interpretive Key to Matthew

With these parallels in view, we can assemble why Jesus and Matthew quote this specific psalm, given its multi-layered centrality in both Matthew and the Psalter.

Matthew records Jesus applying verse 2 to His ministry: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” On a first reading, one might assume that what has been hidden refers simply to the teachings about the kingdom that Jesus discloses in His parables. While that is true, there is a deeper layer at work for two reasons:

First, Matthew explicitly quotes Psalm 78, implying that Jesus’s ministry is organically linked to that psalm. Jesus could easily have explained His purpose in using parables without citing Psalm 78; quoting it signals that the psalm serves as an interpretive key to the parables themselves. Second, we are dealing with multiple nested layers of structurally centered texts, a literary phenomenon that demands explanation.

Jesus quotes Psalm 78:2 for several profound reasons. To begin with, both the center of the Psalter and the center of Matthew represent narrative low points. Book 3 of the Psalter contains the darkest laments, and the center of Matthew is both a geographical low point—by the sea—and the first moment in the narrative where Jesus reveals that He is actively concealing His teaching from the crowds. By quoting this psalm, Jesus presents Himself as the quintessential psalmist, embodying the full life of Israel from the depths of lament to the heights of praise.

This connects directly to two prominent themes throughout Matthew: Jesus as the new and true Israel, and Jesus as the Davidic psalmist. Commentators have catalogued the extensive parallels Matthew draws between Jesus and Israel, as Jesus retraces Israel’s historical journey. Matthew introduces Jesus as a psalmist right from the genealogy in chapter 1, where he deliberately spells King Asa’s name as Asaph, matching the author of Psalm 78, while also rendering King Amon as Amos the prophet. Matthew makes these subtle shifts to portray Jesus in His fullness: not only as the royal Son of David and the prophetic successor to Amos, but as the true Asaphic psalmist, the sweet singer of Israel who embodies her sorrows and praises, her death and life. Furthermore, Matthew’s very first designation of Jesus’s lineage is “the son of David.” While we immediately associate David with royalty, David was equally known as Israel’s chief psalmist.

Second, quoting Psalm 78 hints at hope. Just as the Psalter ultimately moves out of the laments of Book 3 toward triumphant praise, the narrative arc of Matthew will follow that exact path.

The Deepest Secret of the Kingdom

This brings us to the deepest secret hidden in Matthew 13. While the chapter focuses on Jesus imparting the secrets of the kingdom, Psalm 78’s double centrality reveals the deepest secret of all.

Israel stands in the exact same condition in Matthew as she did in Psalm 78. God has drawn near to Israel in the person of Jesus, performing astonishing miracles and wonders across nine consecutive chapters, yet Israel has largely rejected Him. Nevertheless, mirroring the two acts of grace highlighted in Psalm 78, God chooses a new David to shepherd His people and make atonement for their sins.

And just like the central depth of lament in Book 3 of the Psalter, and the geographical descent from the mountain down to the sea in Matthew, that atonement will be accomplished when this Davidic and Asaphic singer descends into the waters of death, only to rise again to the mountain of resurrection praise.

And that, my friends, is why the Bible is art.

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