This charge is the first dark answer to the two healings that close Matthew 9. Jesus gives sight to the blind and speech to a man held by a devil. The crowds marvel. The Pharisees cannot deny what happened, so they call the power behind it evil.
“But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils.” — Matthew 9:34
A small line of witnesses omits the verse. The received Greek keeps it, and so do the modern critical editions. The question is worth asking because the omission is old, but it is not a case in which the Authorized Version stands against the present critical text.
Why the shorter form attracts notice
The sentence appears again in stronger form at Matthew 12:24: “This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.” A copyist could have brought the earlier charge into chapter 9 to prepare for that later dispute. The verse also interrupts the easy movement from the crowd’s wonder in verse 33 to Jesus’ journey in verse 35. Those are real reasons to examine it.
Yet repetition is one of Matthew’s ways of building a conflict. The Pharisees first mutter the charge; later, when Jesus heals a blind and dumb demoniac before the people, they state it openly. Matthew 10:25 also looks back to the accusation: if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, his servants should expect the same abuse. The earlier charge gives that warning a near setting.
The external evidence points in the same direction. The verse stands in the broad Greek transmission and in early witnesses from more than one line. Its omission is tied chiefly to a narrow Western stream. Age gives that shorter reading a hearing, but narrowness limits what it can prove.
A smooth omission
Nothing breaks if a scribe passes from “the multitudes marvelled” to “Jesus went about all the cities and villages.” That smooth join may explain why the loss survived. A copyist who remembered the fuller Beelzebub dispute could also have suspected the shorter accusation and removed it as a duplicate. Neither event requires us to assign a theological motive.
The received verse does useful narrative work. It places two judgments side by side. The people see an act never witnessed in Israel; the Pharisees see the same act and slander its source. Matthew then turns to the plentiful harvest and the sending of the Twelve. Christ’s servants enter a field in which wonder and hatred already meet.
Matthew 9:34 belongs in the text. Its words are not needed to invent a doctrine found nowhere else, and their omission does not erase the Pharisees’ charge from Scripture. But the verse fixes the charge where Matthew first placed it and gives Christ’s warning in chapter 10 its full edge.
The verse also keeps two kinds of amazement apart. The crowd’s wonder does not yet equal saving confession, but it remains open to the sign: “It was never so seen in Israel.” The Pharisees close that opening by offering an explanation that turns mercy into demonic work. Their words are not skepticism awaiting more data; they are moral reversal.
This makes the charge a fitting threshold to the mission discourse. The Twelve will heal and cast out devils under Christ’s authority. They should not expect the works themselves to compel every observer. If the Master’s work is called Beelzebub’s, his household will bear the same slander.
The narrow Western omission may therefore make the narrative smoother while making Matthew’s conflict less gradual. The received text lets hostility gather in stages—from inward reasoning, to muttered accusation, to the open blasphemy of chapter 12.
Sources and further reading
- Matthew 9:32–10:25; 12:22–32.
- Frederick H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, note on Matthew 9:34.
- John William Burgon, The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels.
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