Give for Alms What Is Within
Give for Alms What Is Within
`But give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean for you' (Luke 11:41)
This is a hard saying in the sense that it is not easily understood. Other sayings about giving alms are hard in the sense that, while their meaning is all too plain, it goes against the grain to put them into action. `Sell your possessions, and give alms' (Luke 12:33) is one of these; not even the assurance that this is a way of laying up treasure in heaven makes it altogether easy to comply with it. But what are the `things which are within' that are to be given for alms?
This saying comes in a context where Jesus rebukes some religious people for insisting on the external forms of religious practice while overlooking the inward and essential realities. No amount of ritual washing of the hands or other parts of the body will be of any avail if the heart is not pure. Only a foolish person would be careful to wash the outside of a cup or dish after use and pay no attention to the inside; the inside generally requires more careful washing than the outside. It is even more foolish to pay meticulous heed to external observances when inwardly one is `full of extortion and wickedness'. What, then, is the point of the immediately following exhortation, `But give the things inside for alms'? How will that make `everything ... clean for you'?
If one looks at the Greek text, the first clause of Luke 11:41 could be translated differently: `But give for alms those things that are within your control (or at your disposal)'. Could this go well with the next clause: `and behold, everything is clean for you'? It might: this would not be the only text in the Bible to imply that almsgiving is a means of ethical purification. Daniel, impressing on King Nebuchadnezzar the urgent necessity of mending his ways, advised him: `break off your sins by practising righteousness [which may well mean almsgiving], and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed' (Dan. 4:27).
But could the rendering `give for alms those things that are within your control' go well with what precedes? It might be argued that, since Jesus had just mentioned extortion as one of the things which pollute a person's inner life, almsgiving, which is the opposite of extortion, would have a cleansing instead of a polluting effect. Even so, the flow of thought is not smooth.
Luke's form of the saying, however, cannot be considered in isolation from the parallel text in Matthew 23:26. There too the words come in the course of criticism of those Pharisees who, as Jesus says, `cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside... are full of extortion and rapacity'. Then comes his direction: `first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean'. First things first, in other words. But the difficulty raised by Luke's form of the saying has disappeared: `first cleanse the inside' is much more intelligible than `give what is inside for alms'.
Has Matthew eased a difficult construction which Luke left unchanged, as he found it? That is possible. But another possibility is pointed out by some scholars. Whereas Matthew and Luke seem at times to use the same Greek translation of the Q sayings, there are other times when they use different translations of one Aramaic original. Here `cleanse' and `give alms' could be translations of two quite similar Aramaic verbs; they could even be alternative translations of one and the same Aramaic verb, in two different senses. This could be the explanation of the difference between the versions of Matthew and Luke, but since the original Aramaic wording of the saying has not survived, the explanation must remain speculative.