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MATTHEW 12:33 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Matt 12:32Matt 12:34
“Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.”
Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. The tree-and-fruit image from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:17–18) is applied to the Beelzebul controversy: the fruit of Jesus' ministry (healing the blind, mute, and demon-oppressed) is good fruit. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. The Pharisees who attribute the good fruit to a bad source (Satan) are making a logical and theological error: they must either acknowledge the tree is good or deny that the fruit is good.

Church Fathers on Matthew 12:33

After his former answers He here again refutes them in another manner. This He does not in order to do away their charges against Himself, but desiring to amend them, saying, 'Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt.'

Chrysostom · 4th century · Hom. xlii

Thus He holds them in a syllogism which the Greeks call 'Aphycton,' the unavoidable; which shuts in the person questioned on both sides, and presses him with either horn. If, He saith, the Devil be evil, he cannot do good works; so that if the works you see be good, it follows that the Devil was not the agent thereof. For it cannot be that good should come of evil, or evil of good.

Jerome · 4th century

Thus did He at that present refute the Jews, who seeing Christ’s works to be of power more than human, would notwithstanding not allow the hand of God. And at the same time He convicts all future errors of the faith, such as that of those who taking away from the Lord His divinity, and communion of the Father’s substance, have fallen into divers heresies; having their habitation neither uncover the plea of ignorance as the Gentiles, nor yet within the knowledge of the truth.…

Hilary of Poitiers · 4th century
Read all 9 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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