Yesterday’s post covered the first three verses of the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Year A, July 30, 2023): Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.

You can find the full Gospel reading there and links to my other exegeses on the many parables about the Kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13.

Jesus was explaining the situation of the kingdom of heaven as it was and as it will remain until His Second Coming in glory. God gave the Old Testament prophets that knowledge but He did not give them insight into this long interregnum where Jesus rules in absentia. He called this period ‘the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven’.

It is unfortunate that the Lectionary compilers left out two important verses from Matthew 13 that explain what He was saying. The KJV expresses verses 10 and 11 better than the NIV:

¹⁰ And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

¹¹ He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

This post continues with verses 44 through 46.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven can be compared to Treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid, then in his joy goes to sell all that he has to buy that field (verse 44).

The previous two parables — that of the mustard seed and of the leaven — were about tiny things that grew to be great. The mustard seed can produce a large tree and a small amount of leaven can raise a large amount of flour for bread.

Jesus then shifted His emphasis to great things with value beyond compare.

Matthew Henry explains how great a treasure Christianity is in its various components (emphases mine):

1. Jesus Christ is the true Treasure; in him there is an abundance of all that which is rich and useful, and will be a portion for us: all fulness (Col 1 19; John 1 16): treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2 3), of righteousness, grace, and peace; these are laid up for us in Christ; and, if we have an interest in him, it is all our own.

2. The gospel is the field in which this treasure is hid: it is hid in the word of the gospel, both the Old-Testament and the New-Testament gospel. In gospel ordinances it is hid as the milk in the breast, the marrow in the bone, the manna in the dew, the water in the well (Isa 12 3), the honey in the honey-comb. It is hid, not in a garden enclosed, or a spring shut up, but in a field, an open field; whoever will, let him come, and search the scriptures; let him dig in this field (Prov 2 4); and whatever royal mines we find, they are all our own, if we take the right course.

3. It is a great thing to discover the treasure hid in this field, and the unspeakable value of it. The reason why so many slight the gospel, and will not be at the expense, and run the hazard, of entertaining it, is because they look only upon the surface of the field, and judge by that, and so see no excellency in the Christian institutes above those of the philosophers; nay, the richest mines are often in grounds that appear most barren; and therefore they will not so much as bid for the field, much less come up to the price. What is thy beloved more than another beloved? What is the Bible more than other good books? The gospel of Christ more than Plato’s philosophy, or Confucius’s morals: but those who have searched the scriptures, so as in them to find Christ and eternal life (John 5 39), have discovered such a treasure in this field as makes it infinitely more valuable.

4. Those who discern this treasure in the field, and value it aright, will never be easy till they have made it their own upon any terms. He that has found this treasure, hides it, which denotes a holy jealousy, lest we come short (Heb 4 1), looking diligently (Heb 12 15), lest Satan come between us and it. He rejoices in it, though as yet the bargain be not made; he is glad there is such a bargain to be had, and that he is in a fair way to have an interest in Christ; that the matter is in treaty: their hearts may rejoice, who are yet but seeking the Lord, Ps 105 3. He resolves to buy this field: they who embrace gospel offers, upon gospel terms, buy this field; they make it their own, for the sake of the unseen treasure in it. It is Christ in the gospel that we are to have an eye to; we need not go up to heaven, but Christ in the word is nigh us. And so intent he is upon it, that he sells all to buy this field: they who would have saving benefit by Christ, must be willing to part with all, that they may make it sure to themselves; must count every thing but loss, that they may win Christ, and be found in him.

John MacArthur explains the history behind burying treasure, something that people frequently did because there were no banks to cater to them:

Now this is very common parlance to the people in our Lord’s time and not so common to us.  We put our money in the savings and loan, or we put our money in the bank, or we put our money in stocks and bonds or securities or…or real estate or whatever, whatever.  That is if we have any money to put anywhere. 

But in those days there…they had no banks as such for common people, and banks weren’t necessarily good places to put all of your resources.  And so it was usual that men took whatever they considered of great value and they buried it in the earth.  Particularly was this the case in Palestine because Palestine was a place of war.  It was a battleground.  Its history is literally filled with the record of one battle after another, one war after another. 

And there were inevitably conquering peoples and those who came in to steal and to loot and to plunder.  And so very often when a battle was on the horizon, the people would take the valuable things out of their home, take them out into the field and in a marked place where they could recover them again, they would bury them in the earth.  Very commonly done.  The earth was a veritable storage house …

Josephus said…the historian in that time…“The gold and the silver and the rest of that most precious furniture which the Jews had and which the owners treasured up underground was done to withstand the fortunes of war.”  And so, this was a very, very common thing to do.  And there would be people plowing in the field, or there would be people digging in the field for other purposes.  And they would inadvertently come across this treasure from time to time. 

MacArthur takes us to the parable and answers questions about the man and the circumstances:

And so here is a man who is in the field.  And we don’t know but that he works in the field or that he is, for some reason or another, in that field which belongs to another man, perhaps employed by the man who owns the field.  And as he is working in that field, maybe he’s plowing or maybe he’s tilling the ground, or whatever, he comes across a treasure buried in the ground.  And immediately he puts it back where he found it and sells every single thing he possesses in the world, liquidates all that he has and buys that field in order that he may gain that treasure …

Now at this juncture the parable introduces an ethical situation.  People have said, “Look, this guy didn’t do right.  How can you have Jesus telling a story in which there’s an unethical activity?  How can you have Jesus telling a story in which a man does something that is wrong?  I mean, the guy uncovers a treasure, and then he hides it without telling the man who owns the field, and he goes to buy the field.  What he should have done in discovering the treasure was pick it up and take it and say, ‘Here’s a treasure I found in your field.’ ”  And so some people have been struck by what appears to be unethical.

Well, let me help you with that, although that isn’t the main point.  If we don’t get past that some people kind of choke on that and don’t get the rest of the message.  First of all, Jewish Rabbinic law said, “If a man finds scattered fruit or money, it belongs to the finder.”  Now that is what the law said.  If you find lost fruit or money, it belongs to the finder.  So the man is within the permission of the Jewish Rabbinic law.  So the Jews listening to Jesus would not have perceived this man as unethical.

Secondly, that which was hidden in the field did not belong to the man who owned the field.  If it was his, he wouldn’t be selling his field without digging it up.  He didn’t know it was there.  He had not gone to the effort to uncover it and dig it out.  No doubt it belonged to a previous owner of that same field who had buried it there, died in battle, or died by accident, unable to recover it and so it was no more the number one’s owner than it was the number two’s owner.  So he had no prior right to it.  And the man who had uncover it…uncovered it by Jewish law did have the claim on it.  The other man had not done that.

Now, thirdly, this man was very equitable; this man was very fair.  If this man was not an honest man when he found the treasure what would he have done?  I mean, he would have split.  He would have packed up his treasure and been long gone, and put it in his own field.  Why go to all the trouble of buying the entire field when you’ve got the treasure in your hand?  You say, “Well, maybe his conscience bothered him.  Or maybe it was his father-in-law or some relative” …

He knew he had more or at least equal right to it with the man who owned the land.  He put it right back in the ground, never even used any of it for the purchase, liquidated every single thing he had on the face of the earth in his possession and went and bought the entire field just so that he could do what was right to get that treasure.  No lack of ethics here.  No one was defrauded.

Now, having said that, none of that is the point of the parable.  That’s just free for nothing.  The point of the parable is here is a man who found something so valuable that he sold everything that he had to get it.  That’s the point of the parable.  He was so overjoyed, he was so ecstatic that he was willing to do anything to get that treasure.

I hope that Henry’s and MacArthur’s explanations clarify the parable for us.

Jesus gave the disciples another parable, of the merchant in search of fine pearls (verse 45) who found one of great value and sold everything he had in order to buy it (verse 46).

Pearls were that era’s diamonds. Today, women prefer gemstones, diamonds in particular, but back then pearls were the ne plus ultra of jewels.

Henry provides this analysis:

… the pearl of price (v. 45, 46), which is to the same purport with the former, of the treasure. The dream is thus doubled, for the thing is certain.

Note, 1. All the children of men are busy, seeking goodly pearls: one would be rich, another would be honourable, another would be learned; but the most are imposed upon, and take up with counterfeits for pearls.

2. Jesus Christ is a Pearl of great price, a Jewel of inestimable value, which will make those who have it rich, truly rich, rich toward God; in having him, we have enough to make us happy here and for ever.

3. A true Christian is a spiritual merchant, that seeks and finds this pearl of price; that does not take up with any thing short of an interest in Christ, and, as one that is resolved to be spiritually rich, trades high: He went and bought that pearl; did not only bid for it, but purchased it. What will it avail us to know Christ, if we do not know him as ours, made to us wisdom? 1 Cor 1 30.

4. Those who would have a saving interest in Christ, must be willing to part with all for him, leave all to follow him. Whatever stands in opposition to Christ, or in competition with him for our love and service, we must cheerfully quit it, though ever so dear to us. A man may buy gold too dear, but not this pearl of price.

MacArthur gives us the historical context:

“The kingdom of heaven is also like a merchant man,” and that is a wholesale merchant, emporos in the Greek, has to do with a wholesale man who would go around and buy things on a wholesale basis and then sell them to somebody who’d retail them.  So this wholesaler’s scouring around, seeking fine pearls.  This is very common in those days for a man to do who was a sort of entrepreneur. 

Allow me to digress for a moment. When I was growing up, I used to visit an aunt and uncle who lived in the San Francisco Bay area. (No, they weren’t flaky.) My aunt loved shopping at the now-defunct The Emporium, a department store chain widely advertised on the airwaves. I can still remember the jingle but couldn’t understand why the founder gave it such a peculiar name. I was too young to understand that ’emporium’ means market place or a store that sells a variety of goods. Thank you. That is all.

Now back to MacArthur, who describes the danger in pearl diving at the time:

He would be in the pearl wholesaling business and he would find that there would be a diligent search on his part to gain the pearls that he was desiring to gain.  Many people, in diversifying their investments, put their investments in pearls.  Pearls would be the equivalent of diamonds today.  Pearls were the most valuable gem available at that time in the world.  And if you had pearls, you had a fortune. 

It was incredible the extent to which people went in those days in pearl hunting.  They would search in…particularly, in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.  And there were pearls to be found there but they were to be found at great price and many people died gaining them.  They actually were unable to use any what…what we would know as modern paraphernalia to do the pearl diving. 

Basically, what they did was tie rocks to their body and then jump off the side of the little boat and go to the bottom amidst all the monsters of the deep that they would know little about, and the sharks and whatever else, and they would scour the bottom in the mud trying to come up with those oysters, holding one long deep-drawn breath, and fearing lest they go too deep and burst and die.  And they would come up with these treasures. 

And when once discovered, a pearl that was of perfection and beauty would be worth literally an unnamed price, incredibly valuable.  So valuable are they that the Talmud says, “Pearls are beyond price.”  So valuable were they that the Egyptians actually worshiped the pearl and this came over into Roman life.  So valuable were they that when women wanted to show their wealth, according to I Timothy 2:9, they put pearls on their head. 

And it was said of one lady by the name of Lollia Paulina, the wife of the emperor Caligula, that at one event, she had $36 million worth of pearls all over her.  In fact, the historian says she had pearls on her head, she had pearls on her hair, she had pearls on her ears, she had pearls on her neck and she had pearls on her fingers.  She could have stood in for one of the gates of heaven.

But this was how pearls were perceived in those days.  Pliny, the historian says that Cleopatra had two pearls, each worth a half a million dollars and that was in a day when money was 20 times greater in its buying power than it is today.  And when the Roman emperors wanted to demonstrate their incredible wealth and show how filthy rich they were, they dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them in their wine.  So pearls were very valuable.

Our Lord in Matthew 7:6 says, “Don’t cast your – ” what? – “pearls before swine.”  Because He is trying to compare the worst with the most priceless.  You don’t give the most valuable thing to a pig.  That’s foolish.  And so pearls were really perceived like we perceive diamonds today, very, very, very valuable.  In fact, even going into the book of Revelation, we find that when God begins to describe heaven, it is as pearls in its beauty.

MacArthur explains the meaning of this parable and has more on the one of the buried treasure. He says much the same as Henry:

And so, here is a man who went around seeking fine pearls.  And he would market them because they were good investment, they went up in value and you could diversify, you could put some of your money in the ground, some of your money in pearls, some of your money in property and whatever else and that’s the way people ran their businesses.  The one thing you didn’t do, I understand if you’re a smart investor and still don’t, is to put everything into one investment.

But isn’t it interesting that in both cases that’s exactly what these two did.  The first man sold everything and bought the one field, the second man sold everything and bought the one pearl.  Now, what are the principles from the two parables?  You understand them now.  What are the principles?  I’m going to give you six principles.  Listen carefully.

Number one, the kingdom is priceless in value.  The kingdom is priceless in value.  Both parables are designed to teach us the incomparable value of the kingdom of the Lord.  And when we talk about the kingdom of the Lord, we’re talking about salvation; we’re talking about Christ Himself and the gift of salvation that He gives.  The knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, the preciousness of what it is to be in His kingdom, the preciousness of fellowshipping with the King, the preciousness of being a subject of the sovereign. 

The blessedness of the kingdom is so valuable that it is the most valuable commodity that can ever be found, and only a fool is not willing to sell everything he has to gain it.  Nothing comes close in value.  In Christ and in His kingdom there is a treasure.  There is a treasure that is rich beyond comparison.  There is a treasure that is rich beyond conception.  There is a treasure that is incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, eternal. 

There is a heavenly treasure lying in the field of this poverty-stricken, bankrupt, accursed world, a treasure sufficient to eternally enrich everyone of earth’s poor, miserable, blind and naked inhabitants.  Salvation and forgiveness and love and joy and peace and virtue and goodness and glory and heaven and eternal life, all are in that treasure.  And the treasure is that salvation and the pearl is that salvation that is equivalent to being in the kingdom … 

Secondly, this lesson, the kingdom is not superficially visible.  The treasure was hidden, right?  And the pearl had to be sought.  It isn’t just lying around on the surface.  The treasure is not obvious to men.  The value and the preciousness of the kingdom of heaven, the value and the preciousness of salvation is not viewed by men, they don’t see it although it stands there and looks them in the eye. 

The world looks at us and they don’t understand why we’re all about this business of worshiping God.  They don’t understand why we want to give our lives to Jesus Christ.  They don’t understand why we want to live and obey a code of ethics and rules that goes against the grain of our deepest lusts and drives.  They don’t understand why we price this so highly when it means so little to them.  No, the kingdom is not superficially visible.

It says in 1 Corinthians 2, “The natural man understandeth not the things of God, they are foolishness to him.”  And in II Corinthians 4, it says, “That the god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ should shine unto them.”  So, it isn’t that apparent.  Even though the message is here and the Word is here, they don’t see it …

And there have been multitudinous times that I and you, as well, have gone and given the description of the treasure and the pearl to people who have turned their backs and walked away.  And they do not care.  They do not want that.  They do not understand its inestimable value.  It is not superficially perceived.  That is why it says in Matthew 7:14, “That narrow is the way and few there be that find it.”  And that is why it says in Matthew 11 that the kingdom is taken by the violent who take it by force.  In other words, it must be pursued …

… That’s why it says in Luke 13:24, “Strive to enter in at the narrow gate for many I say will seek to enter in and shall not be able.”

Even the pearl gives this same idea.  The pearl, while it is not hidden in the sense that the man doesn’t have to dig it out of someplace, it still, originally, had to be gained at the most incredible kind of circumstance, where the person dives into the sea, digs it out of the bottom, opens the shell, finds it there.  And now the man pursues it all over the world till he finds it. 

Third thought.  The kingdom is personally appropriated, and this is the crux of the parables.  The kingdom is personally appropriated.  Now the previous two parables give us the idea that the kingdom is just influential, or it’s just large.  It doesn’t say anything about the personal appropriation.  And that’s why our Lord gives us these two.  You have a man in verse 44.  You have another man in verse 45.  Now we’re dealing with individuals.  And each of them finds something specifically for himself and appropriates it unto himself.  Very important.

Now listen.  This is to show us that you can be sort of in the kingdom, under the dominion of God and not be a member of the kingdom … 

The wide world is under the rule of Jesus Christ, but not a part of His true kingdom … 

It is not enough to be under the influence of the kingdom.  It is not enough to just be under the influence of the church, or the influence of Christianity.  It is not enough to just, as it were, lodge in the branches or be touched by its permeating influence.  There must be personal appropriation.  And at some point in time, in order to do that, men and women must come to the point where they realize the value of it.

You know, people spend their time looking for what is not valuable.  I mean, it’s incredible.  Now if you just boil it back down, it was pearls in those days, but today its diamonds … 

And I picked up an article that came out of the Los Angeles Times [in 1982, the year of this sermon], describing how Consolidated Diamond Mines finds diamonds.  And this, of course, is done on the seacoast of Southwest Africa and is an unceasing night and day hunt for diamonds.  The article says, “Diamonds are found embedded in what are called marine terraces, ancient Atlantic beaches of wave-rounded boulders, stones, gravel and sand congeal into a concrete like substance called conglomerate …

“The sweepers may themselves find up to two thousand diamonds a week.  And after it is scraped and dug and brushed and dynamited from bed rock, the conglomerate is hauled to a processing plant where its boulders, gravel, sand are pounded, milled washed, bounced crushed and grated away.  And the remaining 15 percent concentrate is sluiced into a pharasilicone solution with a 3.0 specific gravity.”  As if anyone cared.  “And then anything with a 3.5 specific gravity sinks to the bottom and they separate it.”

Now, they go through what they call a spot-fluorescent operation, to find the diamonds and it goes into a bin and is sifted and sorted and cut and all of this and the end of it all, the managing director says, “We treat 180 million parts of material to get one part diamond” …

You know, basically, when you have a diamond, you know what you have?  You have a diamond.  That’s what you have.  And it can’t do anything for you.  Can’t make you feel better.  Can’t give you peace.  Can’t solve your problems.  You just have a diamond …

And the things that people go through.  And then in Job 28, after all of that, he says in verse 12, “Now that you’ve been looking for all that stuff, let me tell you this.  What’s really valuable you never bother to look for, and that’s wisdom.”  If you want to know the real value of things in life you’re not going to find them in those places.  “You’re going to find them in the revelation of God,” the chapter goes on to say.  You see, God offers men what is really valuable.  And it’s incredible the extremes they go to to find what’s worthless.

As Henry says, ‘counterfeit’.

This ties in beautifully with the alternative First Reading for this Eighth Sunday after Trinity in 2023, 1 Kings 3:5-12, when God asked what Solomon wanted as king, excerpted:

3:6 And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today.

3:9 Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

3:10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.

3:11 God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right,

3:12 I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.

MacArthur gives us the final three lessons of these parables:

… fourthly, the kingdom is the source of joy.  If you’ll look at verse 44, it was for the joy that the man had when he found the treasure that he sold everything to buy it.  It was joy.  Now that is a very, very insightful addition to this Parable.  It doesn’t have to say that in there.  But it does and it’s very, very important.  Because the Lord is acknowledging something that I have believed to be true all my life.  And it’s confirmed here. 

The basic desire of all human beings on the face of the earth is to be happy.  That’s it.  You say, “Well, I know some people who love misery.”  Yes, they are happy being miserable, but it is happiness that they’re after.  I don’t understand that approach, but if misery makes them happy, it still proves the point.  The world is seeking for happiness, for joy.  People want to feel good.  The Lord knows that.  Joy …

The Lord wants us to rejoice.  The Bible says, “Rejoice always and again I say, Rejoice.”  We should be the most rejoicing of all people, for we have found the treasure.

There’s a fifth principle, and this is a very, very helpful one.  The kingdom may be entered from different circumstances.  The kingdom may be entered from different circumstances.  Now, there are some similarities.  In both cases you have a man, both cases they find something of great value, both cases they understand its value, and in both cases they are willing to pay any price for it.  So they’re very similar, aren’t they? 

But there’s one big difference.  In case number one, the man just comes across the treasure.  In case number two, the man knows exactly what he’s looking for.  Now even if number one was a treasure hunter, he didn’t know what he was looking for.  Number two did. 

Now, what does this tell us?  Well, the man in the field, most likely, was not looking for treasure.  He was going through whatever routine he went through, working, or plowing a field, or building something, or preparing some of the soil for whatever.  And he was in the field and he was going along seeking sustenance for his life, doing what he did and he stumbled across a fortune.

Now, there are people who enter the kingdom like that aren’t there?  Sure there are.  The apostle Paul, was he seeking to enter the kingdom?  Not on your life.  He thought he was in it.  He was on his way to Damascus to kill Christians.  The next thing he knew, God blasted him out of heaven, he landed in the dirt, and he was redeemed.  He was just doing his thing.  He was just plowing his field and he stumbled into a fortune.

Well, how about the Samaritan woman?  She was thirsty.  She came down to a well to get a drink of water, went home redeemed.  And then there was the man born blind, and all he really wanted out of life was to be able to see and he went away redeemed also.  And, you know, there are some people who come to church to mock the preacher.  And then they get saved.  So you better be careful.  There are people who aren’t particularly seeking that but they stumble into the treasure …

Now the last point.  Now you get this one because this is so important.  The kingdom is made personal by a transaction.  The kingdom is made personal by a transaction.  In both of these cases, the word buying or bought is involved.  Now some people just really get nervous here and they say, “Wait a minute.  You’re not telling us you buy your salvation.  You’re not telling us they bought their salvation.” 

Listen carefully.  In a sense, the Bible says they did, but you have to understand in what sense.  Now certainly, the story itself is a…a real treasure bought with money, a real pearl bought with money.  But that’s only the story.  The kingdom of God is bought, but you don’t take the money out of the parable into the kingdom.  So whatever the exchange is here, it wouldn’t be money. 

In fact, the Bible says you can’t buy your salvation with money.  A rich man can no more buy his way into the kingdom than you can shove a camel through the eye of a needle.  That isn’t the point.  And the Bible tells us that salvation is God’s free gift, Romans 3.  And it is not of works lest any man should boast.  We don’t purchase it on our own with our own goods.  But it is bought nonetheless …

… The transaction is this.  You give up all you have for all He has.  Did you get that?  That is the essence of the transaction of salvation.  I give up all I have and God gives me all He has.

Remember the accounts of the three men who asked Jesus if they could be His disciples. Jesus turned down each of them. One man did not want to give up his personal comforts. Another wanted to first ‘bury his father’ — wait for his inheritance. The third said he wanted to go home and say goodbye to his family.

MacArthur tells us why Jesus turned each of them down:

If you are not willing to give up, if it needs to be given up, your family, then you’re not going to enter the kingdom.  “He that taketh not His cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me.”  And here it comes, “He that findeth his life shall – ” what? – “lose it, and he that loseth his life, for My sake, shall find it.”  There’s the transaction.  You give up all you are and you receive all He is.  That’s salvation.  In Matthew chapter 16…and I could go on forever with scriptures on this.  But 16:24, Jesus said unto His disciples, “If any man desires to come after Me – ” here is the transaction – “let him deny – ” whom? – “himself” …

We exchange ourselves, our sin, our will, our control of our lives for Christ’s leadership.  Now, I don’t think that people who are saved, at the moment they’re saved understand all the ramifications of that.  I don’t think they understand all the elements of that.  But I believe true salvation is marked by a willingness to do that as that understanding unfolds. 

Paul, a proud Pharisee as Saul, experienced that after his Damascene conversion:

An illustration of this is in Philippians chapter 3, and I want you to listen carefully to it.  Here’s Paul.  It says that he’s going to tell you what he had in his flesh.  This was what he had that he would consider his riches.  This would be his all that he possesses.  This was his stuff.  He says, “I was circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel.  I was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law, a Pharisee.”

In other words, the stuff that was in his account was his Jewishness, his belonging to the tribe of Benjamin.  And that was important because Benjamin was one of the good tribes, historically.  And so he was identified as a true Jew, as a Pharisee.  “He had zeal.  He was righteous, according to the law, and he was blameless.”