Hi everyone. Welcome back to Logical Bible Study. This is the Catholic podcast where we're all

about doing an exegesis of the literal sense of scripture. We go through verse by verse to help you understand

what it meant in its original context. Today we're looking at Matthew chapter 17 versus 10 to 13.

Here's today's text that you would hear at Mass. As they came down from the mountain, the disciples

put this question to Jesus.

Why do the scribes say that Elijah has to come first?

True, he replied, Elijah is to come to see that everything is once more as it should be.

However, I tell you that Elijah has come already and they did not recognize him, but treated

him as they pleased, and the son of man will suffer similarly at their hands.

The disciples understood then that he had been speaking of John the Baptist.

So that's our short text we want to break down today. It's one that people are not as

familiar with. Let's start by thinking about the context. So the Transfiguration has literally just

happened. They're up on the Transfiguration Mountain. And if you want to hear that section of text,

you can hear it a couple of times in year A, so on the

second Sunday of Lent and the feast of the Transfiguration in Year A comes just before this.

So this conversation between Jesus and the disciples that we're about to hear happens literally

as they come down the mountain straight after the Transfiguration.

Keep in mind that in the Transfiguration,

one of the people that appears to Jesus is Elijah. And so Elijah appears to them on the mountain,

and then he disappears and leaves again. So given all the Old Testament prophecies predicting

the return of Elijah to prepare the way for the Lord, so if you look at Malachi chapter 3 and 4 and Syrac chapter 48 verse 10, there's

these and other places in the Old Testament where the prophets indicate that one day

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