The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)

The sermon’s message. Given the great variety of views on the sermon’s message (more than thirty-six discrete views exist, depending on how one counts them), one might well be tempted to follow commentaries as notable as Davies and Allison in omitting a survey of views. Although I will interact briefly with some views below, I repeat here one recent summary of the most critical (Blomberg 1992a: 94-95): (1) The predominant medieval view, reserving a higher ethic for clergy, especially in monastic orders; (2) Luther’s view that the sermon represents an impossible demand like the law; (3) the Anabaptist view, which applies the teachings literally for the civil sphere; (4) the traditional liberal social gospel position; (5) existentialist interpreters’ application of the sermon’s specific moral demands as a more general challenge to decision; (6) Schweitzer’s view that the sermon embodies an interim ethic rooted in the mistaken expectation of imminent eschatology; (7) the traditional dispensational application to a future millennial kingdom; and (8) Blomberg’s and others’ view of an “inaugurated eschatology,” “in which the sermon’s ethic remains the ideal or goal … but which will never be fully realized until the consummation of the kingdom.…” Elements of different views listed above may be combined in different ways to produce further variations.

Matthew’s longest discourse sections are his first (Mt 5–7, on the ethics of the kingdom) and his last (Mt 23–25, on the consummation of the kingdom). Having summarized Jesus’ message as repentance in view of the coming kingdom (4:17; cf. Is 56:1; Joel 1:13-15), Matthew now collects Jesus’ teachings that explain how a repentant person ready for God’s rule should live. The discourse suggests that only those submitted to God’s reign in the present era are truly prepared for the time when Jesus will judge the world and reign there unchallenged (5:3, 10, 20; 7:24-27). This is not to say that Jesus’ ethics represent only a brief “interim ethic” (pace Schweitzer) until the imminent end of the age, unsatisfactory for a longer period. Although these ethics cover the interim period,

Some modern Protestant interpreters, conditioned by their heritage to contrast naked ethical demands with grace, have stressed aspects of the sermon’s theology that are peripheral to its thrust. Thus some emphasize that all fall short of its demands and require God’s mercy (Hunter 1966: 86-88; cf. 6:12-15; 18:10-35). Those who take this approach to the extreme (reading Jesus in light of Paul rather than the reverse) characterize Jesus’ sermon as an impossible ideal meant only to drive disciples to grace, not to instruct their behavior (Jeremias 1963: 8-9 summarizes and opposes this position). Others have applied its salvific demands primarily to God’s offer of the kingdom to Israel, regarding applications of the ethics to Christians as secondary (Pentecost 1958).

Yet by contrast Matthew declares that Jesus addressed disciples (5:1-2), and Jesus’ own statements suggest that he addressed those persecuted for his name (5:10-12; cf. 7:14-23; see Fuller 1980: 156-57). Although Jesus’ teaching techniques here are specifically Jewish (Kennedy 1980: 126; cf. Songer 1992; Stevens 1992), it is helpful to recognize that even Greco-Roman rhetoricians would have classified the sermon as “deliberative” rhetoric — that is, instruction on how to behave (Kennedy 1984: 39-72, especially 66). The earliest Christians, whose interpretations appear in New Testament epistles and documents like the Didache and the writings of church fathers, demand obedience to Jesus’ teachings recorded in this sermon (Grant 1978). Jesus himself apparently expected full compliance with his teaching, not in the legalistic or ascetic ways he himself condemns, “but as signs of God’s Kingdom” (Dibelius 1949: 122; cf. Soares Prabhu 1980; Hauerwas 1988), expressions of submission to God’s reign over the lives of his followers.

To capture the offensiveness of his message in his milieu, modern interpreters must let Jesus’ radical demands confront us with all the unnerving ferocity with which they would have struck their first hearers. At the same time, the rest of the Gospel narrative,

Some interpreters have sought to preserve the sermon’s ethics, which they regard as central, while rejecting its claims for Jesus’ identity (Klausner 1979b: 414). But a central point of the sermon is Jesus’ unique authority as the supreme expositor of the law’s message, a new Moses (cf. Davies 1966b: 14-93). Both Jesus’ climactic claim to unique authority by which he concludes the sermon (7:21-27) and the crowd’s response (7:28-29) demonstrate that Matthew’s discourse sections, like his narratives, stress Christology as well as ethics (see Guelich 1982); indeed, the ethics flow from the former, dependent on Jesus’ authority. These teachings do not represent an ethical outline for humanity or nation-states, but for Jesus’ disciples alone, for citizens of the future kingdom (cf. France 1985: 106).

The sermon’s structure. Luke and Matthew are both aware of a sermon at this point in their source, and Matthew employs the occasion to gather a variety of Jesus’ teachings on related topics, albeit gathered around many of the topics already present in the source (France 1985: 105-6; pace Carson 1984b: 122-25). As noted in the Introduction, ancient writers exercised the freedom to rearrange sayings, often topically. Writers who collected such sayings summarizing the thrust of a famous teacher’s message (such as Epictetus’s Encheiridion, Menander’s epitome, or the Qumran Temple Scroll) called their collections “epitomes”; Matthew has exercised an analogous literary liberty,

Interpreters have proposed various structures for the sermon. Patte suggests a chiasmus (Patte 1987: 65), but the asymmetry of its proportions would likely have hopelessly obscured this proposed structure to its first readers. An inclusio framing the sermon with blessings and warnings (Trites 1992) is more persuasive, although had this been Matthew’s purpose one wonders why he does not conclude with some “woes” used in Matthew 23.

Kingdom Blessings for the Repentant (5:1-12)

Cf. Mk 3:13; Lk 6:17, 20-23.

The setting of Jesus’ sermon (5:1-2). Various features of the setting contribute to Matthew’s portrait of Jesus. First, Matthew’s “mountain” (15:29; 28:16; probably not 4:8) is usually significant (see Kingsbury 1975: 56); this is especially the case in 5:1 and 17:1. Luke, by contrast, is content to depict this sermon’s setting as a “level place.” Level places and mountains were not geographically incompatible — the region is so mountainous that one might translate “mountain” as “hill country,” as in the popular Aramaic idiom of Galilee (cf. Guelich 1982: 51-52; Carson 1984b: 129), and Luke’s “plain” often meant “a plateau in mountainous regions” (Carson 1984a: 43). Matthew may elsewhere apply the term to “hill country” (14:23; 15:29), and a plateau on a hillside overlooking the lake both fits the traditional site and provides good acoustics (Blomberg 1992a: 97).

But since Luke had no reason to play down the mountain (pace Mánek 1967) and since Matthew elsewhere adds mountains to Markan material, we may suspect that Matthew chose to emphasize the presence of a mountain, and probably not for matters of purely topographic interest. Many scholars think that Matthew here recalls Moses’ revelation on Mount Sinai (Ex 19:3; 24:13, 18).

Second, Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’ teaching is appropriate. That Jesus sat to teach (5:1; cf. 13:1-2; 23:2; 26:55) fits expected patterns of Jewish instruction. Teachers normally stood to read (Lk 4:16; Dalman 1929: 45) and sat to teach (Lk 4:20; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 18:5);

Jesus’ sayings here make good sense in a Palestinian Jewish milieu. For instance, “God is merciful to the merciful” was an accepted principle in Judaism (Test. Zeb. 8:1; Dalman 1929: 226). The same saying translated back into Aramaic reflects a three-beat rhythm (Jeremias 1971: 24). Some of the verbal differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s beatitudes also reflect different ways of translating Aramaic expressions into Greek (see Jeremias 1963: 15-16). Sayings like 5:14 and 6:27, 24 resemble the traditional Israelite mashal, or proverb (Bultmann 1968: 81; see our comments on 5:32).

Finally, Jesus’ stated audience also invites the attention of Matthew’s audience. The crowds (4:25–5:1) following Jesus function as at least potential disciples (Patte 1987: 62), so far neither fully disciples nor committed enemies (see Guelich 1982: 420-21). The positive characteristics of the disciples in the Gospel function paradigmatically for subsequent generations of Jesus’ disciples (Guelich 1982: 53), though the implied audience is superior to the narrative’s disciples (Howell 1990: 248). Matthew explicitly indicates that Jesus taught his disciples (5:1-2), but also that the crowds were present (5:1; 7:28-29), implying that he wanted both to hear, calling both to decision (cf. 7:24-27; cf. Guelich 1982: 60).

The reward of the Kingdom (5:3-12). The beatitudes indicate that one who truly repents in light of the coming kingdom will treat one’s neighbors rightly. No one who has humbled himself or herself before God, depending on the just judge to vindicate them in his coming day of judgment, can act with wanton self-interest in relationships.

Jesus employs a standard Old Testament (e.g., Ps 1:1), subsequent Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Greek literary form to express this point, a beatitude: “It will go well with the one who … for that one shall receive.…”

The blessings of the beatitudes are for a people ready for the kingdom’s coming. The inclusio in 5:3 and 5:10 frames the bulk of this section with “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (also Patte 1987: 66; 5:11-12 continue the thought of 5:10, modifying “theirs is” to “yours is”).

The ultimate mercy of the God whose character is mercy (Mic 7:18; Sir 5:1-7; cf. Mt 9:27; 18:33; 20:31) would be revealed on the day of judgment (1 Enoch 5:5; 12:6; 92:4; Ps. Sol. 16:15).

These blessings come only by God’s intervention. The “divine passives” in each of these blessings suggest that God will provide these rewards directly: he will comfort them, bestow the earth, satisfy his people, show mercy, reveal himself, and call the righteous his children (see Jeremias 1971: 10; cf. Guelich 1982: 92). Affirming God’s justice, most Jewish teachers stressed rewards for righteousness (e.g., Wis 5:15; m. ʾAbot 2:2; Sifra A.M. par. 8.193.1.11; Sifra Behuq. pq. 2.262.1.9; b. Qidd. 39b; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 2:1; Deut. Rab. 7:9; see Smith 1951: 163-84), although advising that one do good for its own sake and not for reward (Sifre Deut. 48.6-7; see Brocke 1967). Likewise, Jesus emphasizes rewards for righteousness (e.g., 5:11, 46; 6:1; 10:41-42) reserved in heaven (cf. 6:19-21; 19:21). When Jewish people thought of the meek “inheriting the earth,” they went beyond the minimal interpretation of Psalm 37:9, 11, 29 (where those who hope in God alone will “inherit the land”; cf. 25:13) and thought of inheriting the entire world (Rom 4:13; Jub. 32:19; 4QPs 37; 2 Bar. 51:3).

The prerequisites for the Kingdom (5:3-12). This passage articulates what kingdom-ready people should be like. First, they are not those who try to force God’s will on a world unprepared for it. Social conditions in first-century Palestine inclined many people to suppose that revolutionary violence was the appropriate response to the violence of oppression they experienced. Because most Jews expected a final war against the Gentiles to culminate this age and inaugurate their redemption, many would have thought of the kingdom as belonging to the justly violent, what some call social bandits (cf. 11:12). Although the Essenes probably did not participate in revolts (pace Simon 1967: 62-65), even they clearly anticipated a final war in which they would participate (1QM). But Jesus promises the kingdom not to those who try to force God’s hand in their time, but to those who patiently and humbly wait for it, people of peace (cf. Is 25:6-9; 26:8; 30:15, 18; 40:30-31; 49:23; 50:10-11; 57:13; 64:4; Lam 3:22-26; Mic 7:7; Jas 5:7-9).

Second, God favors the humble, who trust in him rather than in their own strength (5:3-9). a. These are people not easily provoked to anger. These are the “poor in spirit,” “the meek” (5:3, 5; both terms possibly reflecting the same Semitic term ʿanāwim),

The expression “poor in spirit” (5:5) refers not to those with a deficit of moral righteousness (see 5:20), but reflects Matthew’s explanation of the sense of Q’s “poor” (Lk 6:20; see further Gundry 1982: 67).

The “merciful” (5:7; Jas 3:17) again are those who would not harm others but would show compassion toward their need (cf., e.g., Test. Jud. 18:3-4; Epict. Disc. 1.18.4); this fits Matthew’s love ethic (Mohrlang 1984: 94-96; contrast the rarer use by some philosophers, who regarded such compassion as weakness, Epict. Disc. 2.21.3; 4.6.1). The active expression of this virtue may include not only abstaining from hurt but also helping the needy (see Hagner 1993: 93; Test. Benj. 4:4); “almsgiving” (6:2) is a cognate term that probably called the concept to mind. The kingdom also belonged to the “peacemakers” (5:9; Jas 3:17-18), a virtue that other Jewish people urging peace with Rome also highly extolled (e.g., ARN 4A; 6, §19B).

b. These humble people are also those who yearn for God above all else (cf. Zeph 2:3). Matthew emphasizes the moral side of another Q saying in 5:6, so that those who hunger physically (Lk 6:21, fitting Luke’s expected emphasis, and probably in Q) yearn for God’s righteousness more than for food and drink. In this context, hungering for righteousness probably includes yearning for God’s justice, for his vindication of the oppressed (see Gundry 1982: 70); this context also implies that it includes yearning to do God’s will (5:20; 6:33; 21:32; 23:29; Przybylski 1980: 98; cf. b. Sanh. 100a). (The term “righteousness” had a fairly broad range of meaning; in the various Dead Sea Scrolls, see Przybylski 1980: 13-38.) Hungering for God might imply fasting as well (6:16-18; cf. Fenton 1977: 81), which the Old Testament sometimes conjoined with mourning, including the mourning of repentance (e.g., Joel 1:14; 2:15; Jonah 3:5; cf. Test. Reub. 1:10). This passage reflects biblical images of passion for God, longing for him more than for daily food or drink (Job 23:12; Ps 42:1-2; 63:1, 5; Jer 15:16; cf. Mt 4:4). In biblical piety, God and his word should constitute the ultimate object of true disciples’ longing (Ps 119:40, 47, 70, 92, 97, 103).

“Mourners” here (5:4) may thus refer especially to the repentant (Joel 1:13; cf. Jas 4:9-10; Lev 23:29; 26:41), those who grieve over their people’s sin (Tob 13:14; Pesiq. R. 28:3). Given the promise of comfort, however, the term probably also applies more broadly to all those who are broken, who suffer or have sustained personal grief and responded humbly (cf. Fenton 1977: 368; France 1985: 109; Gen. Rab. 100:13). God is near the brokenhearted (Ps 51:17) and will comfort those who mourn (Is 61:1-3);

c. This lifestyle of meekness Jesus teaches not only addresses Jewish revolutionaries, but challenges disciples in their daily lives. If disciples are to walk in love toward their enemies (5:43), how much more toward those closest them? If even sinners and outright pagans love their families and those who love them (5:46-47), disciples must strive to reconcile all conflicts as humbly and lovingly as possible. For Jesus’ whole depiction of the meek lifestyle of the kingdom here is summarized in what he called the greatest commandments of the law: love of God and others (22:36-40). In general, Christians in “developing nations” have grasped and illustrated these biblical principles far better than Christians in the affluent West.

Third, Jesus addresses those who endure persecution for the gospel (5:10-12; cf. 10:23; 13:21; 23:34). Lists of beatitudes sometimes closed with a formally different conclusion (Daube 1973: 196-98). Whereas the rest of Jesus’ blessings in this section could apply to almost any Jewish audience in first-century Palestine, Jesus’ conclusion in 5:10-12 specifically addresses his disciples. They were to submit to unjust suffering in hope of future vindication (cf. 2 Sam 16:12; Is 51:7-8; 1 Pet 4:14; 5:6, 10). Jesus’ contemporaries also spoke of persecution for righteousness’ sake (5:10; 4 Macc 9:29; 18:3; 2 Bar. 52:6; cf. 2 Macc 7:9; 14:38; Sen. Dial. 1.3.10), but here “for the sake of righteousness” (what Jesus preaches, 5:6, 20; 6:33) parallels persecution “on account of me” (5:11; cf. 10:18, 39; 16:25; 19:29; 24:9; cf. Jn 15:21; Acts 5:41; 1 Pet 4:14). Jesus’ words demand far more than those of his contemporaries.

Here also Jesus takes his ethic of nonretaliation (5:38-47) to its furthest possible length: a disciple not only refuses to strike back, but rejoices when persecuted. The persecution itself confirms one’s trust in God’s promise of reward, because the prophets suffered likewise (13:57; 23:37; 26:68; Jer 26:11, 23; 1 Kings 18:4; 19:10; 2 Chron 36:15-16; Neh 9:26), as Jewish tradition also acknowledged.

In Matthew’s wording (perhaps as opposed to Q’s wording in Lk 6:23),

But Matthew is summoning his community to an honor far higher than merely filling the role of Old Testament prophets; he summons them to bear the name — the honor — of Jesus, who is greater than those prophets (16:14-17; cf. 13:57). To suffer for righteousness’ sake is to suffer for Jesus’ name (5:10-11), because the characteristics Jesus lists as belonging to the people of the kingdom are also those Jesus himself exemplifies as the leading servant of the kingdom and son par excellence of the Father (11:27; 20:28). The Gospel portrays Jesus as meek and lowly in heart (11:29), as mourning over the unrepentant cities of the land (11:20-24), as showing mercy (9:13, 27; 12:7; 20:30), as being a peacemaker (5:43-45; 26:52), and as being ridiculed as a false prophet (26:68). If Jesus the supreme teacher is meek and lowly, how much more must be his disciples who are to imitate his ways (10:24-25; 23:8-12) — in contrast to worldly paradigms for religious celebrities (23:5-7). By living this lifestyle of humble nonresistance and trust in God (5:38-44), disciples show themselves to be children of the Father (5:45).

Worthless Disciples (5:13-16)

Cf. Mk 4:21; 9:50; Lk 14:34-35; 8:16. Having described the appropriate lifestyle of disciples, Jesus now explains that a “disciple” who does not live this lifestyle of the kingdom is worth about as much as tasteless salt or invisible light — nothing. Nominal disciples who do not live a life of discipleship will be “thrown out and trampled underfoot” (5:13; the phrase is intentionally graphic — cf. 1 Enoch 99:2; 108:10).

Jesus refers here to more than good deeds; he refers to a good character (7:17-20; 12:33-37; elsewhere he indicates that this demand depends on embracing God’s kingship as a gift, e.g., 10:40; 18:4, 12-14, 27). The images of salt and light evoke consideration less of what one does than of what one is (cf. Aalen 1957/58). Moreover, the sphere in which disciples’ lives must testify of God’s kingship represents all humanity (“earth,” world” — Schweizer 1975: 100; does Col 4:6 reflect this tradition?) If only true disciples count before God (5:13-16) and true discipleship means treating both friends and enemies kindly (5:3-12), the salt-and-light paragraph becomes a resounding warning to heed Jesus’ teaching on meekness in the preceding pericope.

A disciple who rejects the values exemplified in the beatitudes is like tasteless salt: worthless (5:13). Commentators attribute to salt a variety of uses: preservative (Diog. Laert. 8.1.3; cf. a similar Pythagorean akousma in Thom 1994: 110); flavoring agent; a substance to treat wineskins (Aristophanes Clouds 1237); and an agent to retard fermentation in manure, which was used as fertilizer (cf. the last-resort function in Lk 14:34-35; see A. B. Bruce 1979: 101; Danker 1972: 168; Gundry 1982: 76).

In any case, the point is: what is to be done with salt that no longer functions as salt should?

A later Jewish story illustrates how first-century hearers would have grasped Jesus’ point. An inquirer reportedly asked a late-first-century rabbi what to salt tasteless salt with; he responded, “The afterbirth of a mule” (b. Bek. 8b).

A disciple whose life reveals none of the Father’s works is like invisible light for vision: useless (5:14-16). In this passage, Jesus reinforces his point with various images. A disciple should be as obvious as a city set on a hill (as most cities were), and a light in a home should be no easier to hide than a torchlit city at night (5:14-15; most homes had only one room). The light of this passage may even represent that of the brightness of a typically elevated ancient city at night (cf. Grant 1959: 97; possibly Ahiqar 159, §68), perhaps Jerusalem.

That the light material is longer than the salt material would not strike ancient hearers as asymmetrical and hence incongruous; rhetoricians typically “amplified,” dwelling on a particular point to emphasize it (Kennedy 1984: 53). One commentator ingeniously suggests that Jesus’ lamp in 5:15 is a Hanukkah lamp: Jewish custom forbade extinguishing the lamp during Hanukkah, but one could conceal its light (Derrett 1966; idem 1970: 191-92); a more obvious suggestion would be the weekly Sabbath lamp (e.g., m. Shab. 2).

Jesus depicts his disciples’ mission in stark biblical terms traditionally used for the mission of Israel. Ancient texts used light in a variety of symbolic fashions. Jewish texts often portray good and evil as light and darkness respectively (e.g., 1QS 3.3, 19-22; 1QM 13.5-6, 14-15; Test. Job 43:6/4; Sib. Or. fr. 1.26-27; cf. Enz 1976). Later Jewish teachers applied the image to the primeval light before or from the creation (2 Enoch 24:4; Gen. Rab. 3:6; Urbach 1979: 208-10) and suggested the restoration of this light in the end time (e.g., b. Ḥag. 12a; Gen. Rab. 11:2; 42:3); other texts likewise connect it with biblical images of future glory such as the righteous in the end time (e.g., Mt 13:43; Rev 22:5; Wis 3:7-8; 1 Enoch 1:8; 5:7; 108:11-14; 1QM 17.6-7; 4 Ezra 7:97; Sifre Deut. 47.2.1-2; ARN 37, §95B). Sages and philosophers often opined that light derived from true knowledge (Sir 31:17; Sen. Ep. Lucil. 48.8; Plut. Lectures 17, Mor. 47C). Jewish literature further portrays both Wisdom (e.g., Prov 6:23; Wis 6:12; 7:26, 29-30; 1QS 2.3; 11.5-6; 1QM 1.8; 4 Ezra 14:20-21; cf. Jn 1:4; 8:12) and Torah (Ps 119:105; Bar 4:2; CIJ 1:409, §554; Ps-Philo 9:8; 11:1-2; 15:6; 19:4, 6; 23:10; 33:3; 51:3; 2 Bar. 17:4; 18:1-2; 59:2; Sifre Num. 41.1.2) as light.

More to the point here, the Old Testament already speaks of God’s people as lights to the the nations (e.g., Is 42:6; 49:6), that is, the whole “world” (cf. Mt 18:7). Jewish teachers applied the image to especially pious sages (e.g., Sir 50:6-7; Ps-Philo 51:4; ARN 25A; 13, §32B; cf. Jn 5:35), as well as to heroes such as Adam (ARN 9, §25 B), Abraham (Test. Abr. 7B; Gen. Rab. 2:3; 30:10), Moses (Sifre Num. 93.1.3; b. Soṭa 12a; 13a), the Messiah (1 Enoch 48:4; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 6:5; Gen. Rab. 1:6; 85:1), and ultimately God himself (1QH 7.24-25; 4 Bar. 9:3; Philo Som. 1.75; Ps-Philo 12:9; Life of Adam 28:2; Sifre Num. 41.1.1; see Ps 27:1). But they also applied this image more generally to Israel (Sir 17:19; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 5:1), Jerusalem (Pesiq. Rab Kah. 21:4; Gen. Rab. 59:5), and the temple (Pesiq. Rab Kah. 21:5, bar.; Gen. Rab. 2:5; 3:4).

But Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 may well be Jesus’ primary source for his saying: he himself would fulfill the servant’s mission (Mt 12:17-21), but expected his disciples to assume the same responsibility (20:26-28). If Jesus is the prophesied light (4:16; Is 9:2; cf. Mt 17:2), so are his representatives (Mt 10:40-42). As Jewish teachers believed that it was Israel’s mission to reach the nations (cf. Jeremias 1958: 12-13; De Ridder 1971ab), so the disciples are to shine to all peoples. It should come as no surprise that the light image becomes prominent in early Christian literature (Minear 1960: 128; Eph 5:8), some texts possibly reflecting knowledge of this saying of Jesus (Phil 2:15; cf. Rom 2:19 with Mt 15:14). Disciples are light because their destiny (13:43) rather than their past or environment must define them.

But disciples cannot be content to remain the world’s light in a merely theoretical sense; they must “be what they are,” letting their light shine for their Father’s honor (5:16). While Jesus is opposed to doing good works publicly for one’s own honor (6:1, “to be seen” by people), he exhorts his disciples to do those good works publicly for God’s honor (5:16; cf. 6:9).

Disciples Must Obey God’s Law (5:17-20)

Cf. Lk 16:16-17. As if his words in 5:3-16 were not strong enough, Matthew’s Jesus presents even more stringent demands of the kingdom in these verses. Matthew uses Jesus’ words here as a thesis statement for the whole of 5:21-48 that follows.

Jesus demands wholehearted commitment to himself and his teachings. Like other Jewish teachers, Jesus demanded total obedience to the Scriptures (5:18-19);

Jesus confronted the charge of antinomianism (12:2) and could conceivably have responded in terms such as those depicted in 5:17-20. Matthew may have needed to stress this point to counter antinomian teaching in the church (e.g., Charles 1992) or, more likely, continued accusations of immorality from his opponents (cf. Stanton 1993: 49).

In affirming Scripture’s authority, Jesus used but did not simply accommodate the rhetoric of his culture. In sharing his contemporaries’ generally high view of Scripture, Jesus affirms it for his followers rather than simply employing it in public or polemical situations.

Second, Jesus illustrates the eternality of God’s law with a popular story line from contemporary Jewish teachers (5:18). Although the prophets had already affirmed the immutability of God’s word (Is 40:8; Zech 1:5-6), Jesus here underlines this point in a graphic, hyperbolic manner (5:18; cf. 24:34-35). Jesus’ “letter” (NRSV), “smallest letter” (NIV) or “jot” (KJV) undoubtedly refers to the Hebrew letter yodh (Manson 1979: 154; Vermes 1993: 19-20n.11), which Jewish teachers said would not pass from the law. They said that when Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah, the yodh removed from her name cried out from one generation to another, protesting its removal from Scripture, until finally, when Moses changed Oshea’s name to Joshua, the yodh was returned to Scripture. “So you see,” the teachers would say, “not even this smallest letter can pass from the Bible” (b. Sanh. 107ab; p. Sanh. 2:6, §2; Gen. Rab. 47:1; Lev. Rab. 19:2; Num. Rab. 18:21; Song Rab. 5:11, §§3-4). Likewise, sages declared that when Solomon threatened to uproot a yodh from the law, God responded that he would uproot a thousand Solomons rather than a word of his law (p. Sanh. 2:6, §2; cf. Ex. Rab. 6:1).

Matthew declares that nothing will pass from the law “until all is accomplished” (5:18), meaning until the consummation of the kingdom, when heaven and earth pass away (24:34-35; cf. Jer 31:35-37; Ps-Philo 11:5; Sib. Or. 3:570-72). The idea that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the “goal of the world,” thus allowing the law to be set aside as fulfilled,

Third, Jesus declares that people will be judged by their response to God’s Word, thus providing another graphic example of its authority (5:19). He claims that one who keeps, and leads others to keep,

Noting that both the “greatest” commandment about honoring parents (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16) and the “least” commandment about the bird’s nest (Deut 22:6-7) bore the same promise, “Do this and you will live,” some later rabbis decided that “live” meant “in the world to come,” and said that God would reward equally for any commandment. One who kept the law regulating the bird’s nest merited eternal life, whereas one who broke it merited damnation (e.g., Urbach 1979: 1:350; Keener 1991a: 116; see Johnston 1982). In Hebrew parlance, to “break” one of the commandments meant to “relax” it, to tone it down “either by allowing what it forbids or by exempting men from some of its positive requirements” (Manson 1979: 154; cf. Sandmel 1978b: 356n.18); the opposite was “confirming Scripture by teaching so as to uphold it (e.g., Mek. Pisḥa 1.124; Gerhardsson 1961: 287). Jesus at first sight appears more merciful than the rabbis: one who breaks the commandment is least in the kingdom rather than excluded from it altogether (5:19); yet his following words show that those who merely honored the highest standards of their religion fell short of entering the kingdom at all (5:20; for “entering” the kingdom, cf. 7:21; 18:3; 19:23; 23:13; cf. 7:13; 25:10; Jn 3:5).

Fourth, Jesus’ point in 5:19 is the same as that of other Bible teachers in his day: one cannot pick and choose among the commandments but must obey them all. As some teachers put it, one should be as “careful with regard to a light commandment as you would be with a heavy one, since you do not know the allotment of the reward” (m. ʾAbot 2:1; cf. Sifre Deut. 96.3.2; 115.1.2; ARN 2 A). Likewise one who keeps a single commandment keeps his life, but one who neglects such a commandment neglects his life (ARN 35, §77 B; Sifre Deut. 48.1.3; cf. m. Qidd. 1:10; ARN 28 A). The sages were not suggesting that they never broke commandments (see Moore 1971: 1:467-68), but rather felt that one who cast off any commandment or principle of the law was discarding the authority of the law as a whole (m. Hor. 1:3; Sifre Deut. 54.3.2; ARN 27 A; 1, §8 B; cf. Jas 2:10; Test. Asher 2.2-8). Likewise, accepting some commandments implied recognizing the validity of them all (Sifra Qed. pq. 8.205.2.6; Behuq. par. 5.255.1.10; more fully, Keener 1991a: 115-17). Jesus concurs: God does not allow his servants to embrace his prohibition against murder while rejecting his teaching about adultery or fornication. To refuse his right to rule any of one’s ethics or behavior is to deny God’s lordship.

God will punish teachers who undermine students’ obedience to any portion of the Bible (5:19). This text addresses not only obedience to the commandments, but how one teaches others (“and teaches others to do the same,” 5:19; cf. Jas 3:1; b. Rosh Hash. 17a). This accords with the Jewish teaching that God rewards or judges the teacher for the deeds of his pupils (ARN 24, 40 A; cf. b. Yoma 87a; contrast t. Sanh. 14:12) and that a court is responsible for ruling in error (m. Hor. 1:1-2).

Despite their commitment to Scripture, religious people without transformed hearts will have no place in the kingdom (5:20). Like John the Baptist in 3:7-12, Jesus savages the false security of the religious establishment (Edwards 1985: 23); in reality, they are “lawless” (23:28). By comparing the disciples with the religious establishment, Matthew employs a standard rhetorical technique (Stanton 1993: 81), but not for epideictic purposes (as in some texts, e.g., 3:14; 11:11; 12:6, 41-42). His purposes here are entirely deliberative, to exhort his disciples to a higher, more inward standard.

Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, “scribes” were executors of legal documents, those most knowledgeable in writing and the law; in Jewish Palestine scribes also taught children, and the most advanced of them were rabbis with adult disciples (Keener 1991a: 23; see the excursus on Mt 23). A contemporary equivalent might be religious educators, whereas one might compare the Pharisees with the most pious, Bible-believing laypeople in mainstream society (cf. Jeremias 1963: 22; many may have also been aristocratic — see the excursus on Mt 23). Pharisaic ethics emphasized “inwardness” as much as Jesus did,

Jesus Applies the Principles of God’s Law (5:21-48)

This section contains much material that is indisputably authentic (the substance of the divorce saying, for instance, is attested not only in Mark and Q but also in Paul; that the early Christians had to adjust the teaching to live with it also suggests that it did not originate with them — Sanders 1993: 200). The structure of the passage, however, may be Matthew’s own way of underlining and rendering more cohesive the point he finds in the material. Although we lack firm evidence for a pre-Matthean structure of “You have heard it said … but I say,” the partial antithesis in the parallel section in Luke 6:27 supports the likelihood that Matthew did not create them from nothing (Dunn 1975: 42).

Once Jesus has made it clear that he is not opposing the law but interpreting it, he shows how the customary practice of the law in his day is inadequate (cf. Westerholm 1982). Various first-century Jewish groups competed to win their contemporaries to their interpretations of the right way to observe the law; specific ways one should observe the law constituted a public, political issue, but one on which there was no absolute consensus (Saldarini 1994: 124-25). The passage challenges human hearts (cf. Mk 7:21), however, not traditional ethics. Although expositors of Jewish law naturally focused on legal questions, they also discussed ethical concerns (Sanders 1977: 69-84). Jesus’ interpretations and later Jewish tradition share substantial points of contact (e.g., Sanders 1985: 55; Manns 1978). This is significant for modern Christian readers because it means that they cannot dismiss Jesus’ critique as relevant only for a first-century Jewish sect, but must acknowledge that it remains relevant for anyone who shares Jesus’ ethics (23:3).

In 5:21-48, Jesus explains six legal texts from the Old Testament, interpreting as a good Jewish scholar of his day would (e.g., Flusser 1988: 494; cf. Sanders 1985: 9-10, 56-57).

Some read “Amen, I say to you” as more radical than the prophetic “Thus says the LORD.”

At the same time, Jesus does not speak with merely scribal authority (7:28-29); there is no academic debate or citation of other teachers, but instead solemn pronouncements (Daube 1973: 58-59). Jesus upholds the law (5:17-19) but is the decisive arbiter of its meaning, not one scholar among many (Daube 1973: 59-60; cf. Guelich 1976: 455; idem 1982: 185). Matthew 5:21-48 provide concrete examples of the “greater righteousness” of 5:20 (Guelich 1973: 52).

Angry Enough to Kill (5:21-26)

Cf. Lk 12:57-59. This text addresses not just how one acts but who one is, that is, one’s character. Earthly courts generally could not judge such offenses as displays of anger (except in tightly controlled communities like Qumran — 1QS 7.5; CD 9.3-6; cf. Davies 1966b: 82; France 1985: 120; Roman law also penalized defamatory words — Gaius Inst. 3.220).

Jesus begins by citing the crime of murder in Exodus 20:13, for which biblical law required a Jewish court to execute the sentence of death (Gen 9:5-6; Deut 21:1-9; Jewish traditions naturally applied to it the punishment of Gehenna — Gen. Rab. 97 NV; 2 Enoch 60:1).

The heavenly court will judge all offenses of intention. Although many scholars suggest that the offenses and punishments of 5:22 (Filson 1960: 85), or at least its offenses (Jeremias 1971: 149), are in ascending order of severity, Jesus probably simply repeated the same concept in three different ways: anger and calling someone a fool or an “emptyhead” are roughly equivalent (e.g., Köhler 1919: 91-95).

Jesus’ prohibition of acting in anger is a general principle. As in each of his six examples, Jesus graphically portrays a general principle, although some of these principles (like anger and divorce) must be qualified in specific circumstances. Most hearers understood that such general principles expressed in proverbs and similar sayings needed to be qualified in specific situations (see Du Plessis 1967: 17; Keener 1991a: 22-28); most legal interpreters also recognized that even biblical laws had to be qualified under some circumstances (1 Macc 2:34-41; t. Sheb. 8:7-10; Sifre Deut. 175.1.3; 221.1.1; cf. Borg 1984: 76-77; Greene 1976), and Jesus takes this form of interpretation farther than most of his contemporaries (e.g., 12:3-8). Although condemning anger and insults, Jesus himself expressed grieved indignation and called people “fools” under appropriate circumstances (21:12; 23:17; cf. 23:13-33).

A disciple’s relationship with God is partly contingent on how the disciple treats others. God will not accept one’s gift at the altar until one reconciles (cf. 18:15) with one’s neighbor (cf. similarly m. Yoma 8:9).

Jesus’ following crisis parable (cf. Caird 1965; Jeremias 1972: 96; cf. the graphic parable in Sifre Deut. 309.1.1) shows how urgent the situation is (5:25-26). Given the prejudice against the poor in lawsuits in the Empire (Petron. Sat. 14; Gaius Inst. 4.183; Stambaugh and Balch 1986: 113; contrast Pub. Syr. 98; ARN 33, §73), the parable would appeal to the fears of Jesus’ hearers. Imprisonment was generally a temporary holding place until punishment (or, if one lacked bail and the case were serious, until trial — Lewis 1983: 187-88); here, however, a longer penalty is envisaged. “The last quadrans” refers to the second-smallest Roman coin,

Do Not Covet Others Sexually (5:27-30)

Cf. Mk 9:43-48.

Jesus’ warning against lust would have challenged some ancient hearers’ values. Although some philosophers, especially Stoics, opposed lust because it meant that pleasure rather than virtue dominated one’s thoughts (e.g., Epict. Disc. 2.18.15-18; 3.2.8; 4.9.3; Marc. Aur. 2.10; 3.2.2; 9.40; cf. Nock 1964a: 19),

Jewish writers, however, viewed lust far more harshly (e.g., Job 31:1, 9; Sir 9:8; 23:5; 41:21; Sus 8; 1QS 1.6-7; 4.10; CD 2.16; 11QSTemple 59.14; 1QpHab 5.7).

But Jesus is offering an implicit argument from Scripture, not just a cultural critique. Although the seventh of the ten commandments declared, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex 20:14), the tenth commandment declared, “You shall not covet,” that is, desire, anything that belongs to your neighbor (Ex 20:17). In the popular Greek version of his day, the tenth commandment began, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” and used the same word for “covet” that Jesus uses here for “lust” (cf. also, e.g., Guelich 1982: 193; Carson 1984b: 151). In other words, Jesus reads the humanly unenforceable tenth commandment as if it matters as much as the other, more humanly enforceable commandments. In Matthean ethics, if one does not break the letter of the other commandments, but one wants to do so, one is guilty.

Jesus does, however, go beyond his contemporaries’ customary views on lust. Jewish men expected married Jewish women to wear head coverings to prevent lust (single women were exempt, since they needed to find a husband).

Although Matthew retains the Markan context of causing others to stumble (Mk 9:42-48; Mt 18:7-9), he here uses Jesus’ hyperbolic sayings about sacrificing limbs to underline the urgency of rejecting sin. (Cf. similarly a writer like Sen. Ep. Lucil. 51.13, who advises that if one cannot rid one’s heart of vice in any other manner, one should rip out one’s heart. One should not think of the Jesus tradition and Seneca anywhere following a common source, but they might employ common rhetorical conventions. Cf. also Philo Som. 2.68-69; Sen. Dial. 1.3.2; Gen. Rab. 55:4. Jesus says that it is better to suffer corporal punishment in the present — amputating one’s lustful eye or other offending appendages — than to spend eternity in hell after the resurrection of the damned (5:29-30; 18:8-9).

Jesus is saying that lust, as a form of adultery, merits a capital sentence before the heavenly court: eternal damnation.

Herod Antipas, controlled by lust (14:6), ended up murdering a prophet (14:10; cf. 5:11-12), illustrating the principle of both this paragraph and the preceding one (5:21-30), as well as the prohibition of oaths (5:33-37; 14:7). A primary difference between Herod and most readers of Matthew was that Antipas had the power over others to carry out what was in his heart; but for Matthew, desiring that power is bad enough. How different the model of Joseph and Mary (1:25) and virtuous single persons like John the Baptist and Jesus, who suffered persecution for righteousness!

Jesus teaches in a graphic manner the value that God places on marital and premarital fidelity (cf. 1:19). By saying “adultery” Jesus technically addresses only lust for married women (Gundry 1982: 88; Guelich 1982: 193);

Jesus does not, of course, refer here to passing attraction, “but the deliberate harboring of desire for an illicit relationship” (France 1985: 121; cf. Blomberg 1992a: 109; Is 33:15). The Greek present tense often bears a continuous sense, and probably does so here: Jesus refers not to noticing a person’s beauty, but to imbibing it, meditating on it, seeking to possess it. Paul and most of his Jewish contemporaries prescribed marriage as a helpful antidote to this sin (Keener 1991a: 72-74, 79-82).

Do Not Betray Your Spouse by Divorce (5:31-32)

Cf. Lk 16:18; see more detailed comment under Mt 19:1-9. In Matthew’s ethics, adultery is unfaithfulness to one’s spouse or accommodating another person’s unfaithfulness to that person’s spouse. Lust is one form of such unfaithfulness; divorce is another. In Jesus’ teaching, the man

In principle, remarriage is adulterous because God rejects the validity of divorce. Employing the same teaching technique of rhetorical overstatement that pervades the context (e.g., 5:18-19, 29-30; 6:3),

Matthew specifically states an exception. When Jesus offered a proverbial saying stating a general principle (Mk 10:11; Lk 16:18), ancient hearers understood that such sayings needed to be qualified for specific situations (Keener 1991a: 22-25; cf. Tannehill 1975: 95-98; Stein 1978: 11).

To put the matter differently, Jesus “probably intended [this saying] to be more haggadic than halakhic; that is, its purpose was not to lay down the law but to reassert an ideal and make divorce a sin, thereby disturbing then current complacency” (Davies and Allison 1988: 532).

Paul’s and Matthew’s exceptions (Mt 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15, 27-28) constitute two-thirds of the extant first-century Christian references to divorce, and both point to the same kind of exception: the person whose marriage is ended against his or her will.

Jesus used hyperbole to underline graphically a controversial point. Palestinian Jewish husbands could divorce for virtually any reason (Jos. Ant. 4.253), explicitly including their wives’ disobedience (Sir 25:26; ARN 1A; Jos. Life 426, the latter apparently including something beyond her control) or for burning the bread (m. Giṭ. 9:10; Sifre Deut. 269.1.1). By removing the right of divorce, Jesus is probably protecting a wife from being betrayed by her husband (Kysar 1978: 43; Davies 1993: 54).

Although the thrust of this passage is faithfulness to one’s marriage, Matthew’s exception clause does not allow his readers to apply his rhetorical overstatement legalistically. Indeed, to read the Sermon on the Mount “legalistically as a set of rules is to miss the point; it represents a demand more radical than any legislator could conceive” (France 1985: 106), still less enforce. Jesus’ central point, which the hyperbolic image is meant to evoke, is the sanctity of marriage (cf. 19:4-6; Efird 1985: 57-59). Addressing the hardness of legal interpreters’ hearts (19:8), Jesus opposed divorce to protect marriage and family, thereby seeking to prevent the betrayal of innocent spouses.

Oaths are a Poor Substitute for Integrity (5:33-37)

Cf. Jas 5:12. When Jesus cites his Bible as prohibiting false vows and other oaths (Deut 23:23),

Although Jesus’ position on oaths is not wholly unique, it was rare enough to be distinctive. Following the line of reasoning in Ecclesiastes 5:4 (cf. also Sir 23:9-13), some Jewish teachers warned against customary oath taking, but others disagreed (Sifre Deut. 265.1.1; ARN 26A; 32, §72B), and nearly all accepted oath taking as valid (though limited in its application, e.g., Jos. Ant. 15.370; 17.42; Sanders 1990: 53); in daily life, the practice was surely common in the marketplace (Malina and Rohrbaugh 1992: 55), among other places. While a priest of Jupiter, one was not permitted to swear oaths (Livy 31.49.7). Some groups of Essenes may have also avoided oaths altogether (Jos. War 2.135; Ant. 15.370-71), except their initiatory oath for joining the sect (Jos. War 2.139-42; cf. 1QS 5.8; Black 1961: 94, 120).

Jesus and the Essenes probably intended the same as Pythagoras: let one’s word carry such conviction that one need not call deities to witness (Diog. Laert. 8.1.22; cf. Diod. Sic. 10.9.2). The Jewish philosopher Philo declared that an honorable man’s word should be as truthful as any oath (Philo Spec. 2.2). Because oath taking in a deity’s name was so serious, others also discouraged it except under the most extreme circumstances (Isoc. Demon. 23, Or. 1). One should so consistently tell the truth that hearers would value one’s word more highly than other people’s oaths (Isoc. Nic. 22, Or. 2; cf. Kollmann 1996 for other parallels).

The point of this passage is integrity. Letting one’s “yes” function as a “yes” and “no” as a “no” seems to employ ancient Jewish figures of speech simply to demand that one be as good as one’s word, that one keep one’s word.

Jesus addresses a popular abuse of oaths in his day. To protect the sanctity of the divine name against inadvertent oath-breaking, common Jewish practice introduced kinnuyim, surrogate objects by which to swear (Vermes 1993: 34-35). Some people apparently thought it harmless to deceive if they swore oaths by something like their right hand (t. Ned. 1:1; cf. its use in agreements, e.g., Jos. War 2.451). Others took all oaths more seriously, but specifically warned against using God’s name lest if one break the oath one profane God’s name (Philo Spec. 2.4-5; cf. 1 Enoch 69:13-16; Pesiq. R. 22:6); sometimes vows could not be fulfilled (m. Ned. 3:1). Jewish teachers had to arbitrate which oaths were actually binding as allusions to God’s name (m. Shebu. 4:13; cf. CD 15.1-5; Smith 1951: 136). The further removed the oath was from the actual name of God, the less danger they faced for violating it (Schiffman 1983: 137-38; Sanders 1990: 53-54). Some later teachers had to insist that all roundabout substitutes for vows were equivalent to vows (m. Ned. 1:1; Nazir 1:1). Sages undoubtedly had to evaluate vows’ validity frequently because they had acquired the role of canceling bad vows (e.g., t. Pisha 2:16), extending an Old Testament privilege accorded male guardians of unattached women (Num 30:3-15).

Thus people swore by heaven and earth (many cite Philo Spec. 2.5; m. Shebu. 4:13), Jerusalem (many cite m. Ned. 1:3; others in Lachs 1987: 102), one’s head (m. Sanh. 3:2), God’s throne (Apoc. Mos. 19.2) and the temple service (Sifre Deut. 1.3.2). Jesus teaches that all oaths invoke God’s witness equally. Just as heaven, earth (Is 66:1-2), and Jerusalem (Ps 48:2; Mt 4:5; 27:53) belong to God (5:34-35), so do the hairs on one’s head (5:36; cf. 10:30); one has no genuine control over their aging (cf. 6:27; Pub. Syr. 215). (The assumption would have been that hair was black and turned white with age — Soph. Antig. 1092-93; Phaedrus 2.2.9-10; Babrius 22.2-3. Only deities and magicians could change colors — cf. Ovid Metam. 11.314.) All oaths implicitly call God to witness because everything that exists was made by him. This implies that for Jesus God was actively involved in all aspects of life; no part of life except sin was purely secular.

Avoiding oaths is thus inadequate; the issue is telling the truth because God witnesses every word one speaks. Human cultures developed oaths because people could not trust their neighbors without calling an avenging deity to witness; but those who recognize that God witnesses every word must speak and act from integrity of heart that transcends such formalities. Herod Antipas trapped himself by a foolish oath (14:7), people cheat their parents by wrongful vows of dedication (15:5), and Peter betrayed Jesus with false oaths (26:72, 74). Jesus, however, avoided formal oaths. Even when he made a vow of abstinence (26:29) — vows were normally confirmed with an appeal to the deity — he swore only by affirming, “I tell you.” When the high priest “adjured” him, that is, put him under oath, he responded, “You said it” (26:64; see Gundry 1982: 93; Brant 1996: 19). Although his followers continued to call on God to witness the truth of some of their statements, apparently taking his words as rhetorical overstatement (e.g., Rom 1:9; 9:1; Gal 1:20), they seem to have refrained from more overt oaths (2 Cor 1:17, whose “yes, yes … no, no” probably reflects this Jesus tradition; Jas 5:12, also reflecting this Jesus tradition). Oaths that invite penalties on oneself for violating them (cf. today’s “Cross my heart and hope to die”) are not necessary for people of truth.

Avoid Retribution and Resistance (5:38-42)

Cf. Lk 6:29-30; Rom 12:14, 17-21; 1 Pet 2:23. Jesus here warns against legal retribution (5:38-39) and goes so far as to undercut legal resistance altogether with a verse that, if followed literally, would leave most disciples stark naked (5:40). He also advocates not only compliance but cooperation with a member of the occupying army who might be borrowing a worker from his livelihood (5:41), as well as helping the beggar or others who seek the disciple’s help (5:42). To deny that Jesus here literally advocates nudity (an offense to Jewish culture that would surely have called for comment in the other sources!) and living on the street — that is, to affirm that Jesus is speaking the language of rhetorical overstatement (5:18-19, 29-32; 6:3) — is not to tone down the seriousness of his demand. Jesus produced hyperbole precisely to challenge his hearers, to force them to think about what they valued. Jesus’ words in this case strike at the very core of human selfishness, summoning his disciples to value others above themselves in concrete and consistent ways. They have no honor or property worth defending compared with the opportunity to show how much they love God and everyone else. Nonretaliation appears unrealistic and may invite further aggression, but Jesus’ way scorns the world’s honor. It is the lifestyle of those who expect his coming kingdom (4:17).

Jesus’ first illustration challenges the desire for personal vindication — that is, revenge (5:38). “An eye for an eye” never meant that a person could exact vengeance directly for his or her own eye; it meant that one should take the offender to court where the sentence could be executed legally. Modern readers sometimes cite this example as a case of Jesus disagreeing with the Old Testament.

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Ex 21:23-25; Deut 19:21) was standard ancient Near Eastern law (e.g., Hammurabi 196-97, 200; Diod. Sic. 12.17.4), except that most legal collections besides the Old Testament varied the punishments according to one’s social class (e.g., Hammurabi 196-223). This “eye for eye” form of law, called lex talionis, provides the foundation for legal ethics by making the punishment commensurate with the offense (Jeremias 1963: 28; Meier 1979: 261; Guelich 1982: 224). In the classless Old Testament version these laws made a just point: each person must recognize that another person’s life and members were worth no less than one’s own. But whereas some Israelite laws could serve as deterrents (cf. Deut 19:20; 21:21) or provide benefit for the person injured (Ex 21:19, 26-27), the lex talionis regulations primarily avenged the person’s honor, vindicating the person by punishing the assailant. Contemporary Jewish law sought to remedy this weakness by providing monetary restitution as an alternative to maiming the offender: Jos. Ant. 4.280; cf. Cohen 1966: 1:18; Belkin 1940: 97-103; Vermes 1993: 36; cf. b. Ketub. 32ab.

A society could, however, recognize the justice of “eye for eye” while its sages warned against bringing oneself down to one’s oppressors’ moral level by fighting evil with evil (Akkadian wisdom in ANET 426; cf. Phaedrus 1.29.10-11). Plato portrays Socrates as warning against returning evil for evil since one should never do evil at all (Crito 49B), and some Greek and Roman philosophers opposed vengeance, for example, because the body mattered little or for the sake of societal harmony (Sen. Dial. 3.6.5; 4.32.1; Fitzgerald 1988: 103-4).

Turning the other cheek summons disciples to neglect their honor and let God vindicate them when he wills (5:39). As in much of Jesus’ (and Matthew’s) teaching, pressing the illustration the wrong way may obscure the point, reading Scripture the very way he elsewhere warned against (12:2-5; 19:7-8): if someone strikes a disciple in the nose (rather than on the cheek), or has already struck both cheeks, is a disciple free to hit back? But Jesus provides a radical example to teach the principle of nonretaliation, not so disciples will explore the limits of his example (cf. Tannehill 1975: 73).

A backhanded blow to the right cheek did not imply shattered teeth (“tooth for tooth” was a separate statement); it was an insult, the severest public affront to a person’s dignity (Job 16:10; Lam 3:30; m. B. Qam. 8:6; Plut. Platonic Questions 9.4, Mor. 1010F).

In the case of an offense to one’s personal dignity, Jesus not only warns the offended disciple not to retaliate, but suggests that the disciple indulge the offender further. By freely offering one’s other cheek, one demonstrates that one does not value human honor. In a sense, this could constitute a form of resistance by showing contempt for the value of the insulter’s (and perhaps the onlookers’) opinions (Sall. Invective against Marcus Tullius 1; Diog. Laert. 6.2.58; Diogenes Ep. 20). Thus philosophers sometimes declared that the best vengeance on one’s opponents was to avoid behaving foolishly as they did (Marc. Aur. 6.6). Even in a society obsessed with honor and shame (e.g., Sir 1:30), a disciple must be so secure in his or her status before God that he or she can dispense with human honor. Such a person need not avenge lost honor because this person seeks God’s honor rather than his or her own (5:16; 6:1-18). If their lives are forfeit when they begin to follow Jesus (16:24-27), they have no honor of their own to lose.

Jesus takes this image of legal nonresistance farther by saying that rather than trying to get one’s inner garment back by legal recourse, one should relinquish the outer one, too (5:40). This practice would lead to nudity (see also Stein 1978: 10), an intolerable dishonor in Palestinian Jewish society (e.g., Gen 3:7, 10-11; 9:22; Jub. 3:21-22, 30-31; 7:8-10, 20; 1QS 7.12; Sifre Deut. 320.5.2). Many peasants (at least in poorer areas like Egypt) had only one outer cloak (e.g., Hom. Od. 14.513-14; Babrius 131.10-11) and pursued whatever legal recourse necessary to get it back if it were seized (CPJ 1:239-40, §129.5); without the cloak a person would be naked and cold (e.g., Babrius 131.14). Because the outer cloak doubled as a poor man’s bedding, biblical law permitted no one to take it even as a pledge overnight (Ex 22:26-27; Deut 24:12-13); Jesus demands that one surrender the one possession the law explicitly protects from legal seizure (Guelich 1982: 222).

This passage is a graphic image, but if pressed literally, it implies that disciples should never take anyone to court. This may be hyperbole, but again it challenges disciples to value the kingdom above anything the world can take from them.

The principle challenges any prior loyalties, not only to possessions but to one’s people. In the context of recent violent resistance against Rome, the message of 5:38-42 probably also had “pacifistic implications” (Davies and Allison 1988: 542, though their wording may be a bit strong for the 30s of the first century).

Jesus commands disciples to love even their oppressors (5:41). Because tax revenues did not cover all the Roman army’s needs, soldiers could requisition what they required (Lewis 1985: 172-73; Dig. 50.4.18.4; 50.5.10.2-3; 50.5.11; Cod. Theod. 8 passim in Rapske 1994: 14; Sall. Jug. 75.4) and legally demand local inhabitants to provide forced labor (27:32).

Jesus and Paul responded firmly to unjust blows in the face (Jn 18:22-23; Acts 23:2-5) and in other circumstances (Jn 8:40-44; Acts 16:37; 22:25; 25:11; 26:25) without retaliating in their own interests; the text need not rule out all forms of resistance (cf. Clavier 1957; France 1985: 126; Vermes 1993: 36). Certainly Matthew would affirm, however, that those experiencing persecution for their faith should not retaliate (some think that this is the primary focus of the passage: Jeremias 1963: 28-29; idem 1971: 239; Danker 1972: 84-85). Jesus himself lashed out against the spiritual oppressors of his day (Mt 23), perhaps out of compassion for those the religious leaders oppressed (Mt 12:7; 23:4-13), taking a prophetic stance against shepherds unconcerned for God’s wounded and broken sheep (Ezek 34:2-6; cf. Manson 1979: 52-53). But in any case, the purpose for resistance against injustice on behalf of others or speaking for justice on one’s own behalf is not the defense of one’s honor; and Jesus requires those who work for justice to do so without the weapon of hate (cf. Thurman 1981: 88).

Some rightly observe that Jesus’ warnings against resistance address personal resistance rather than nations at war (Neil 1976: 160-62; for other views, see Luz 1989: 457-59); it is unlikely that Jesus or Matthew envisioned nations adjusting to the notion of Christian self-sacrifice. Yet prohibiting personal involvement in violence hardly seems irrelevant to disciples’ active participation in national wars (cf. Sider 1979). Even just wars such as international police actions do invariably kill unwilling participants unjustly; to what extent would Matthew, had he anticipated the question, felt disciples could participate in such wars and to what extent would it be appropriate to wait for God to raise up others, like the Babylonians or Assyrians of old, to do the job? Some Christian interpreters respond that God’s kingdom is no longer tied with the nation-state as in the Old Testament (Craigie 1978: 102, 110-11), and Christians going to war for one country or tribe now may kill Christians warring for another country or tribe. The text was not designed to answer such questions; the early Christians apparently saw themselves as a persecuted minority sect until their Lord’s imminent return and left little direct counsel for a world in which Christians could feel at home without compromise.

Social conditions differ from one place and era to another, and even the nature of protest differs today from a situation envisioned by the early Christians. In first-century Palestine, few “safe” vehicles existed for nonviolent social protest against the Romans; the Romans viewed most public protest as linked with revolution, and punished it accordingly. In a society like ours where Christian egalitarianism has helped shape conceptions of justice, nonviolent protest stands a much better chance of working. How far did Jesus and Matthew expect disciples to carry nonviolence? In Matthew, Jesus himself exemplifies the meekness he prescribes (11:29). When the time appointed by his Father arrived, Jesus allowed people to crucify him, trusting his Father’s coming vindication to raise him from the dead (17:11; 20:18-19; 26:52-53). He was too meek to cry out or bruise a reed until the time would come to bring “justice to victory” (12:19-20). Yet he would proclaim justice (12:18), openly denounced the unjust (23:13-36), and actively, even violently (but nonlethally), protested unrighteousness although he knew what it would cost him (21:12-13). He called his disciples to be both harmless as doves and wise as serpents (10:16) — in short, to be ruled by the law of love (22:39). Love of neighbor not only does no harm to one’s neighbor, but bids disciples place themselves in harm’s way to protect their neighbors. Jesus modeled a prophetic activism inseparable from martyrdom.

One must surrender one’s possessions to whoever requests them (5:42). Judaism recognized giving to beggars who requested alms as a moral though not legal obligation (Guelich 1982: 223). It stressed both charity and a high work ethic; most beggars genuinely had no alternative means of income.

Some Jewish teachers also urged lending to those who wished to borrow (Moore 1971: 2:168; Bonsirven 1964: 152-53) or reproved those who would too quickly demand repayment (Sir 20:15); others, however, warned of the danger of losses (Sir 19:4; Syr. Men. Sent. 181-88). Likewise, although some sages considered usury the severest of sins (e.g., Tannaim in b. B. Meṣ. 71a; cf. Jos. Apion 2.208; Ant. 4.266; Ex. Rab. 31:13), businessmen found ways to get around biblical laws against usury (Gamoran 1976), and Gentile creditors (who naturally expected repayment, e.g., Mart. Epig. 2.3; 3.40) were more than ready to seize property to recover outstanding debts (P. Cairo Zen. 59001.39-43; P. Amh. 50; P. Oxy. 269).

Again Jesus invites his hearers to grapple with his point, to which he will return with far greater force in 6:19-34. If nonresistance means disdaining one’s right to one’s own honor (5:38-39), one’s most basic possessions (5:40), and one’s labor and time (5:41) when others seek them by force, one must also disdain these things in view of the needs of the poor (5:42). When the kingdom comes, one’s deeds rather than one’s wealth will matter (6:19-21; cf. 25:34-46); in the meantime those who disdain everything else for the kingdom (13:44-45) must do with these other possessions what Jesus wills: give them to those who need them more (19:21). One’s “vested interests” must be in heaven, not on earth (6:19-21); if one cannot value the kingdom that much, one has no place in it (19:29-30).

Love Your Enemies (5:43-48)

Cf. Lk 6:27-28, 32-36; Rom 12:20-21. Jesus not only demands nonresistance toward evil people assaulting one’s honor or possessions (5:38-42; cf. Jas 5:6), but that one go so far as actively to love one’s enemies.

Jesus probably addresses all kinds of enemies. When Jesus explains his final quotation from the Torah, “Love your neighbors,” he adds to the quotation an implication some of his contemporaries found there: “Hate your enemies.” Perhaps because public greetings were so important (see on 23:7), some teachers defined as a personal enemy a person who had not spoken to you for a month (Abrahams 1924: 213). Jesus could certainly have addressed personal enmity in the setting of Galilean villages (Horsley 1986a; Freyne 1988: 154).

Jesus’ contemporaries might, however, perhaps have thought less of Scripture advocating hatred toward a personal enemy than toward a corporate threat to Israel or the moral fabric of the community (cf. Borg 1987: 139), such as “outsiders” to Israel (Vermes 1993: 157). Whereas the biblical command to love neighbors (Lev 19:18) included foreigners in the land (Lev 19:33-34; cf. Lk 10:27-37) and implied doing right even to one’s personal enemy (Ex 23:4-5), other texts revered a passionate devotion to God’s cause that bred hatred of those who opposed it (Ps 139:21-22; cf. 137:7-9).

Jesus argues his case by appealing to a positive and negative example. Examples, both positive and negative, were a standard part of ancient argumentation. First Jesus provides the ultimate moral example: God. Jesus chooses a line of argument that would not have been controversial among ancient hearers. Jewish teachers generally recognized, like Jesus, that God was gracious to all humanity, including the morally undeserving (Sifre Deut. 43.3.6; Bonsirven 1964: 13-14; cf. Test. Jud. 21:6; Tit 3:4); some Greek sages declared the same (Epict. Disc. 1.6.42; Marc. Aur. 7.70; cf. Petron. Sat. 100). Jewish sages saw rain as one of God’s universal signs of beneficence.

After adducing the ultimate moral example, Jesus offers an example from the opposite end of his hearers’ moral spectrum: even those they considered the most immoral met the standard of righteousness practiced by Jesus’ most pious hearers. Jesus thus provokes his hearers to shame by comparing their ability to obey the love commandment with that of tax gatherers and non-Jews (the latter were generally idolaters), the epitome of moral reprobates (Mt 6:7; 18:17; 20:25; cf., e.g., Sifre Deut. 43.16.1; Gen. Rab. 60:5; some other teachers also shamed hearers by such examples; see, e.g., b. Qidd. 31a). Most people would have agreed that everyone, including sinners, loved those who loved them (cf. Sifre Deut. 24.3.1). Indeed, both Jewish (Ps-Phocyl. 152; Test. Benj. 4:2; Flusser 1988: 506; Sanders 1992: 234-35) and Greek (Diog. Laert. 1.78; 6.1.12; cf. Plut. Profit by Enemies, Mor. 86B-92F; Pub. Syr. 188) sages sometimes admonished against hating one’s enemies, although the more common sentiment in practice — then as today — was to make sure you did your enemies more harm than they did to you (Isoc. Demon. 26, Or. 1). One whose righteousness would surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees (5:20) must exemplify a higher standard of righteousness than loving those friendly to one’s own interests.

Jesus builds a fence around the law of love (22:39), amplifying it to its ultimate conclusion (cf. Ex 23:4-5). In so doing, he makes demands more stringent than the law itself. One may similarly compare Jesus’ command to pray for those who persecute one (5:44); he hardly has in mind the sort of prayer for vengeance characteristic of earlier biblical tradition (2 Chron 24:22; Jer 15:15; cf. Syr. Men. Sent. 126-32)!

Jesus demands that disciples be perfect like God (5:48). What Jesus illustrated by graphic, concrete examples earlier in the sermon (5:21-47) he now epitomizes in a summary statement that forces his hearers to go beyond mere examples. For example, loving one’s enemy is an example of a principle of perfect love for all people (Davies and Allison 1988: 561-63). For Matthew, one can appeal to no law to prove that one is now righteous enough — that would be legalism. Instead, one must desire God’s will so much that one seeks to please him in every area of one’s life — that is holiness. Matthew wants disciples to follow God’s law, but teaches that God’s law was never about mere rules; instead God desires complete righteousness of the heart, total devotion to God’s purposes in this world.

Matthew 5:48 (“be perfect”; cf. 19:21) and Luke 6:36 (“be merciful”) probably represent two ways to translate a single Aramaic term that Jesus used meaning “whole” or “complete” (Robinson 1977: 32). As the Qumran sectarians measured perfection in terms of the law as their community interpreted it (cf. 1QS 1.8-9, 13; 2.1-2; 4.22-23; 8.9-10; Carson 1984b: 161), in the context of 5:17-47 “perfection” means full allegiance to God’s will in the Mosaic law as Jesus has interpreted it (Hagner 1993: 135).

Showing Only God One’s Righteousness (6:1-18)

Matthew begins this section of Jesus’ teaching with a thesis statement summarizing his point: Do your righteousness for God to see you, not others (6:1).

First, disciples must impress God alone. In all three examples, Jesus warns his followers not to be like the “hypocrites” (6:2, 5, 16; 7:5; 15:7; 22:18; 23:13-29; 24:51). This term originally designated actors in the theater (e.g., Arist. Poetics 18.19, 1456a; Diod. Sic. 37.12.1; Herodian 3.8.9),

Jesus’ warning does not, of course, preclude public acts of righteousness — even with the knowledge that such acts will draw attention — as long as the disciple seeks to be seen for God’s glory rather than his or her own (5:16). One does righteousness “in secret” here lest one be praised, but for God’s glory “a city set on a hill cannot be concealed” (5:14, using a cognate expression). This text warns disciples, however, how easy it is to justify one’s own desire to impress others as merely “being a light.”

Second, Jesus demands more than assent to ethical propositions. On many ethical points in this section Jesus and his leading contemporaries agreed. Although as far as we can tell (sometimes perhaps due to the limitations of our extant data) few sages seem to have provided such a thoroughgoing and frequent critique of human pride, many expressed sentiments quite like Jesus’. A late second-century teacher warned that one should let one’s secret behavior be like one’s public behavior because people pass on secrets (ARN 28A). Other Jewish teachers emphasized that the proper motivation was to obey God’s commandments because he had commanded it, whereas doing them to be called a scholar was wickedness (ARN 46, §129B; m. ʾAbot 2:8; p. Ḥag. 2:1, §12). One should not do good deeds to earn others’ praise; God will reward only those whose motives are pure (ARN 40A; cf. Sen. Ep. Lucil. 5.1-2).

Third, Jesus’ three examples are random; he intends secrecy to apply to all acts of righteousness. Although Jesus may have taken his three examples from a list in Tobit 12:8 (in which “righteousness” appears as a fourth; cf. Sir 7:10; 2 Clem. 16), such lists were never more than random examples; Judaism viewed each of these examples as extremely important but did not usually list the three as standard examples together (Wimmer 1982: 54-56; though cf. later Qoh. Rab. 5:6, §1). Another early teacher lists the three basic deeds as Torah observance, temple service, and charity (m. ʾAbot 1:2; cf. ARN 31, §67B); still another, judgment, truth, and peace (m. ʾAbot 1:18); later teachers would list prayer, charity, and repentance (p. Taʿan. 2:1, §9; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 28:2; Qoh. Rab. 7:14, §1), but even these later teachers did not explicitly define repentance only as fasting. Lists of three (m. ʾAbot 2:1; 3:1; ARN 4, §17; 31, §68B; cf. Goulder 1974: 26) and sets of three admonitions (e.g., m. ʾAbot 1:1, 4-8, 10, 15-17; 2:10) were common for other issues as well. For instance, some teachers considered works such as visiting the sick, hospitality, and comforting the bereaved more meritorious than charity because they required personal involvement (Van Unnik 1954: 96-97). Matthew thus intended his audience to apply Jesus’ principle (6:1) not only to the specific cases by which he illustrates it (6:2-18) but to all acts of righteousness.

Fourth, Jesus promises eternal reward for those who seek to please God rather than humans. Jesus concludes each of his warnings with another graphic image: businessmen regularly wrote the phrase “received their reward in full” (6:2, 5, 16) on receipts to indicate that no further payment was required (Deissmann 1923: 229; idem 1978: 110; Ladd 1967: 90).

Doing Charity Secretly (6:2-4)

Jesus again employs hyperbole in his descriptions (cf. 5:19, 29-30), adding graphic force to his warnings. Perhaps alluding figuratively to the trumpet-shaped charity boxes in the temple and provinces (m. Sheqal. 2:1; 6:1, 5; cf. McEleney 1985; Lachs 1987: 112-13) or hyperbolically to trumpets calling assemblies for prayer or Sabbath worship (CD 11.21-22), Jesus condemns those who sound trumpets when they give alms. Though some scholars have argued that people actually blew trumpets during giving in the synagogues (Friedrich 1971: 86), Jesus probably uses this image simply to reinforce his point, as when picturing the Pharisees who swallow a camel whole but strain out a mere gnat (23:24; cf. Num 10:10; Gundry 1982: 102).

Jesus adds to this stark image still another: one should be so secretive in giving that one should not let one’s left hand know what one’s right hand is doing (6:3). Everyone would recognize the hyperbole — since both hands belonged to the same person the image is patently impossible in the literal sense — but it impresses on the hearer just how private one’s giving should be. Others used such images (“do not let your own ear hear you” — Marc. Aur. 8.9) to reinforce their point graphically.

Jesus emphasizes future reward for those who forgo present honor (6:1, 2, 4, end). Jesus undoubtedly meant the promise of divine reward literally, as did most of his contemporaries. Jewish teachers often felt that charity delivers the giver from death and stores up treasure in heaven (Tob 4:10; 12:8; 14:10; t. Peʾa 4:21; Pesiq. R. 25:2).

The phrase “when you give to the needy” (6:2) implies the expectation, standard in Judaism, that one would care for the needs of the poor (Tob 4:7), just as the phrase “when you pray” (6:5) takes for granted that the hearer would pray (m. ʾAbot 2:10).

Yet they would have agreed with him not only that charity was one of the primary obligations of God’s people, but that one must give charity from the right kind of heart (m. ʾAbot 5:13; Bonsirven 1964: 67; cf. Eth. Apoc. Peter 11). Indeed, some Jewish teachers also praised secret charity and objected to ostentation in charity (Test. Job 9:7-8; m. Sheqal. 5:6; t. Peʾa 4:19-21; Sheqal. 2:16; b. B. Bat. 9b; Pesaḥ. 113a).

Praying Secretly (6:5-8, 14-15)

Three times in this section Jesus repeats the phrase “when you pray” (6:5, 6, 7; cf. Mk 11:25), creating the following four-part structure:

A When you pray, do not …

v. 5

B When you pray, (do) …

v. 6

A′ When you pray, do not …

v. 7

B′ Pray like this

v. 9

Jesus emphasizes that one should not pray “like the hypocrites,” to be seen by others (6:5); instead one should pray privately (6:6). He also emphasizes that one should not pray “like the pagans,” that is, Gentiles, expecting to manipulate an answer from their deities (6:7); instead, one should pray a simple prayer to one’s Father (6:8-13). Technically the “Lord’s Prayer” (6:9-13) is a digression in Matthew’s passage on secret prayer;

Jesus stresses that one must also pray in secret. He seizes the hearers’ attention with forceful language, warning against seeking to pray in the synagogues (where prayers were customarily offered throughout the Mediterranean — e.g., Jos. Life 277; CPJ 1:239-40, 247-49, 476, 495; 2:367-71, 375-76; Juv. Sat. 3.296) and in the most visible location, the streets (Tannehill 1975: 82; cf. 12:19).

Jewish people did not normally pray in the street, but Jesus again reduces the questionable behavior to the absurd by graphically depicting a worst-case scenario: a person who craves notice so much that he arranges to find himself in the street during the regular daily prayer times (cf. Jeremias 1971: 187; France 1985: 132). Yet some Jewish laborers might actually have no choice at times, and Jesus’ demand for privacy would make prayer difficult (Tannehill 1975: 82). This illustration, like Jesus’ preceding one (6:2-3), involves a humorous hyperbole; none of our reports of Jesus’ private prayer takes place in a storeroom (14:23; 26:36-44). This text precludes not public prayer (18:19-20; 21:13; cf. 1 Tim 2:8) but prayer to be seen and glorified by others.

We should note, however, that whereas the text’s language is hyperbolic, it conveys a point that is quite literal. Some other noted pious men in Jewish tradition sought solitary places for prayer (Vermes 1993: 195-96n.11; cf. t. Ber. 3:5). When Jesus prayed privately, he normally sought a place more secluded than a storeroom, going into the Galilean hills (14:23). Because people arose at daybreak for work, Jesus had to arise before dawn if he wished to retreat to a private place for prayer (Mk 1:35; many Jewish people would have recited the Shema and other prayers upon rising). Because Galilean homes were often crowded (Mk 2:2),

The issue is not supposed impiety in the Jewish prayer tradition. Contemporary Judaism emphasized regular, efficacious prayer far more than modern Western Christians do (see Sir 7:14; Montefiore and Loewe 1974: 342-81; Jeremias 1971: 170n.4). Those who conveniently assume that Jesus’ target is specifically Jewish ethnically rather than a temptation also available to Jesus’ disciples miss his point; for example, do not pray like the “hypocrites,” but pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day (Did. 8.2).

Some interpreters imply that Jesus opposes the formalism of Jewish ritual prayers. It is possible that Jesus implies preference for prayer in the vernacular language (Aramaic) rather than in the synagogue’s traditional Hebrew.

Jesus’ point of contention with his Jewish contemporaries was not the form of their prayers (which his own prayer in 6:9-13 closely matches) but their motivation. Again, such words strike not at a practice limited to Jesus’ contemporaries, but at the very heart of outward piety in general, a temptation the reality of which most religious people can attest. Jesus rejected lengthy prayers designed to impress others (see also Mk 12:38-40; Lk 20:46-47). Nor should one suppose that the longevity of one’s prayer earns a response (as in, e.g., Life of Adam 6/Apoc. Mos. 29; Life of Adam 41:1);

But Jesus not only warns against the “hypocrites’” prayers that invite human rather than divine attention; he criticizes pagan prayers designed to manipulate their deities. Pagans piled up as many names of the deity they were entreating as possible (e.g., Hom. Il. 1.37-38, 451-52; 2.412; PGM 4.2916-27; Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; more restrained, ILS 190),

To compare Jewish hearers’ behavior with that of pagans would have shamed them deeply (6:7; pace Meier 1980: 59). Matthew (5:47; 6:32; 18:17; 20:25), his Bible (Lev 18:3, 24-25; 20:23; Deut 18:9; Jer 10:2), and other early Jewish sources (Jub. 21:21; Test. Dan 5:5) contain warnings not to be like the pagans. One should pray not because one thinks that one’s prayers or formulas earn God’s favor, but as an expression of trust in a Father who already knows one’s need and merely waits for his children to express their dependence on him (6:8, 32).

In 6:14-15, Jesus concludes his words on prayer by returning to the warning implicit in 6:12: those who do not forgive will not be forgiven (cf. Mk 11:25). Jesus again accords with one stream of Jewish wisdom tradition (Sir 28:1-8), albeit one that not all Jews necessarily accepted (Syr. Men. Sent. 345-46; p. B. Qam. 8:7, §1). Some other sages also praised forgiveness in more moderate language (Cato the Elder in Plut. Sayings of Romans, Mor. 198E; p. Qidd. 4:1, §2). From the similar parable of 18:21-35 we learn that grace preceded this demand; but a forgiven person who could not forgive would lose the status of being forgiven (Jeremias 1963: 26; cf. Ezek 18:24). Other early Christians also recognized that poor relationships with others hindered one’s relationship with God, hence his accessibility in prayer (1 Pet 3:7, 12).

The Kingdom Prayer (6:9-13)

Cf. Lk 11:2-4. Versions of this prayer appear in both Matthew (6:9-13) and Luke (11:2-4). Matthew’s structure for the prayer is clearer than Luke’s, and probably reflects Matthew’s penchant for systematic arrangement. Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer may contain two equal sets of petitions containing three petitions each (or the second stanza may contain an extra line, reflecting an asymmetric balance as in some psalms): three “Thou-petitions” addressing God’s honor and three or four “we-petitions” addressing the suppliant’s needs. Some commentators have compared here the two sections of the Decalogue and the two great commandments (Plummer 1910: 96).

Some writers suggest that Jesus offered variant forms of the same prayer twice (Botha 1967: 46). Although this suggestion is plausible, Luke and Matthew regularly rework their narratives (e.g., the centurion’s servant in Mt 8:5-13//Lk 7:1-10), and Matthew has almost certainly constructed the structure of the context in which his form of the prayer appears. If Jesus did not offer the prayer twice, Luke’s basic form of the prayer is probably generally older (Dibelius 1949: 120; Bandstra 1981: 36).

Most scholars accept the prayer in its pre-Synoptic form as authentic (Witherington 1990: 204). A minority of scholars, like Crossan, deny the authenticity of the Prayer, suggesting that if Jesus taught this prayer to his followers it should show up in more than two Gospels and in “a more uniform version” (Crossan 1991a: 294).

The Lord’s Prayer is thoroughly Jewish in its content, form, and language (cf. Lapide 1991). Early Christians sometimes adapted Jewish prayers; the eucharistic thanksgiving in the Didache, for instance, borrows language from the Jewish Kiddush blessing (Did. 9:2-4). The Lord’s Prayer itself came to be prayed three times daily, like the Amida (Did. 8:3). Most scholars recognize that Jesus here probably adapts an early form of what became a basic synagogue prayer, the Kaddish.

Exalted and hallowed be his great name

in the world which he created according to his will.

May he let his kingdom rule

in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime

of the whole house of Israel, speedily and soon.

And to this, say: amen.

The parallel between the Kaddish and the first stanza of Jesus’ model prayer was so obvious that an eighth-century translation of the Lord’s Prayer from Latin into Hebrew borrows some of its wording directly from the Kaddish (Lapide 1984:8).

Although Jesus’ ministry sets the elements of the prayer in a new context — the future kingdom is present in a hidden way in the future King, Jesus of Nazareth (8:29; 13:31-33) — the disciples must have heard in Jesus’ words an exhortation to seek God’s coming kingdom (4:17; 6:33) by praying for it to come.

Various features of this prayer are significant. First, Jesus predicates it on the basis of an intimate relationship with God: “Father.” This is a relationship that denotes both respectful dependence and affectionate intimacy as well as obedience. One must understand what God’s “fatherhood” would have meant to most of Jesus’ hearers. In first-century Jewish Palestine, children were powerless social dependents and fathers were viewed as strong providers and examples on whom their children could depend (in contrast to many homes in contemporary Western society; cf. 7:7-11; Heb 12:5-11). Jesus summons his disciples to pray not like the pagans (6:7), but with a dependence on God as their Father (6:8-9) who watches over them (Deut 8:3-5, in Mt 4:4).

Perhaps more significantly, the context (6:7-8) indicates that intimate communion is implicit in “our Father”; effective prayer is not a complex ritual but a simple cry of faith predicated on an assured relationship (7:7-11). The earnest brevity and simplicity of this prayer contradict human pride (6:7); this is the prayer of those who know they must depend on God for their daily provision, who need their debts forgiven, who need his protection from the testing all around them.

One cannot assert, as some have, that “father” was a solely Jewish or Christian title for God; Greek references to the chief deity as “father” are abundant (e.g., Hom. Il. 3.276, 320, 350, 365; 10.154; 11.56, 80, 182, 201, 544; 16.253; 17.46; Od. 14.440; 15.341; 16.260; 24.518; Hesiod W.D. 169; Eurip. Medea 1352; Aristophanes Clouds 1468-69). More specifically, from the earliest written period Greek religion and from an early period Roman religion recognized Zeus or Jupiter as “father of gods and men” (Hom. Il. 1.544; 4.68; 5.426; 8.49, 132; 12.445; 15.12, 47; 16.458; 20.56; 22.167; Od. 1.28; Hesiod Theog. 457, 468, 542; Shield of Heracles 27; W.D. 59; Phaedrus 3.17.10; Ovid Metam. 2.848; 14.807), “father of gods and king of men” (Virg. Aen. 1.65; 2.648; 10.2); “father of gods” (Hom. Il. 1.503, 534, 578-79; Virg. Aen. 9.495; Ovid Metam. 9.245; Phaedrus 1.2.13), “father” of the rest of creation (Babrius 142.3), “omnipotent father” (Virg. Aen. 1.60; 3.251; 4.25; 6.592; 7.141, 770; 8.398; 10.100; 12.178; Ovid Metam. 1.154; 2.304, 401; 3.336; 9.271), or simply “the father” or “Zeus father” (Hom. Il. 8.69, 245, 397; 14.352; 15.637; 16.250; 22.60, 209; Od. 12.63; 13.51; Virg. Aen. 2.691; Georg. 1.121, 283, 328, 353; 2.325).

Thus both the Olympian deities (Hom. Il. 8.31; 22.178; 24.473; Od. 1.45, 81; 5.7; 8.306; 12.377; Aristoph. Wasps 652; even those not descended from him like his siblings — Hom. Il. 5.757, 762; 19.121; Od. 13.128) and mortals (Hom. Il. 2.371; 7.179, 202, 446; 8.236; 12.164; 13.631; 15.372; 17.19, 645; 19.270; 21.273; 24.461; Od. 12.371; Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; Soph. Oed. Rex 202; Aristoph. Acharn. 223-25; Ap. Rhod. 4.1673; Plut. R.Q. 40, Mor. 274B; Longinus Sublime 9.10) frequently addressed him as “father.” In these images, the chief deity is the supreme patriarch and ruler of the cosmos, the same way the emperor could be hailed as “father” of the Roman state (Herodian 2.2.9; 2.6.2).

By Jesus’ day, however, a nearer context for a Galilean teacher was certainly early Judaism, and whatever the measure of Greek influence on its preference for the language, its most direct source was the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible recognized God as Israel’s father by adoption in redemption (Jeremias 1964b: 12), and Jewish literature in general continued this tradition (e.g., Wis 2:16; 3 Macc 5:7; 7:6), also in prayer, though in a relatively restrained manner (3 Macc 6:8; Jeremias 1964b: 15-16; idem 1965: 14).

Jesus’ recognition of God as his own Father goes beyond the usual synagogue usage, however (cf. Klausner 1979b: 378); even Jewish texts not intended for corporate use only rarely designate God as personally “my Father” (Sir 23:1, 4; Wis 2:16; cf. Jeremias 1964b: 26, homiletically overstating the case), whereas Jesus nearly always did (Jeremias 1965: 17; cf. idem 1964b: 29-31; see comment on Mt 26:39). When Jewish people called God by the Old Testament title “Father,” they used a title of intimacy as well as respect and dependence; Jesus summons his disciples to appropriate this intimacy still more deeply (cf. Mk 14:36; Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6).

Second, the prayer seeks first God’s glory, not the petitioner’s own needs (cf. Sifre Deut. 343.1.1-2). The “Thou-petitions,” for God’s kingdom and glory, precede the “we-petitions” for the community’s own needs. That each of the first three petitions in Greek concludes with “your” in the emphatic, final position leaves no doubt that the prayer emphasizes seeking God’s kingdom first (6:33).

What did it mean in a first-century Jewish context for God’s name to be hallowed in the future? Although many profaned God’s name — his honor — in this age (acting as if it were unholy, Ex 20:7; Jer 34:16; Ezek 29:14), God would see to it that his name would be hallowed in the coming time of the kingdom (Is 5:16; 29:23; Ezek 38:23; 39:7, 27; 1QM 11.15; cf. Zech 14:9 with Deut 6:4), just as God had sanctified his name when he had acted in the past (e.g., 1QM 17.2). A benediction in one standard Jewish prayer acknowledged the holiness of God’s name in the present (the Amida — m. Rosh Hash. 4:5; Sifra Emor par. 11.234.2.3; cf. Bowman 1977: 328), but Jesus’ prayer, like the Kaddish (cited above; cf. Sanders 1985: 7-8; Deut. Rab. 7:6), yearns for the day when God’s name alone will be hallowed, that is, sanctified or shown holy, special above every other name. (On the sanctity of God’s honor, see also comment on 5:33-37.)

Yet Jesus’ Jewish hearers would have understood the implications of the prayer for present existence as well, for one could ask with integrity for the future hallowing of God’s name only if one lived in the present as if one valued it. Hallowing God’s name (kiddush ha-Shem) was “the most characteristic feature of Jewish ethics,” along with its opposite, profaning the name (Moore 1971: 2:101; Urbach 1980/82: 1:357-60, 507, 2:283-84; cf., e.g., Sifre Deut. 221.6.1; b. Shab. 89b; p. Sanh. 3:5, §2); everything is forgiveable, said some teachers, except profaning the Name (Sifre Deut. 328.1.5), an offense that required not only the Day of Atonement and repentance but also the offender’s death (ARN 29A). Scripture already warned against profaning God’s name by evil behavior (Lev 22:32; Jer 34:16; Ezek 13:19; 20:9, 14, 22, 27, 39; 22:16; 36:20; 39:7). Jewish teachers believed that one’s motivation in doing good should be “for the name of heaven,” that is, for God’s honor (m. ʾAbot 2:2, 12; cf. Num. Rab. 8:4; 15:12). Acts of charity or otherwise seeing to it that God’s will is carried out in the world sanctifies God’s name; disobeying God’s will or misrepresenting it through false teaching profanes it (e.g., m. ʾAbot 1:11; Num. Rab. 7:5; 8:4; Pesiq. R. 22:2; Moore 1971: 2:104-5). Later rabbis said, for instance, that a Bible teacher who does not pay his bills on time profanes God’s name (Montefiore and Loewe 1974: 397). One might have to “sanctify” or show holy God’s name by kindness to unbelievers (Pes. Rab Kah. 22:1; p. B. Meṣ. 2:5, §2; cf. 2 Bar. 1:4; Urbach 1981: 283-84), by suffering for the name (b. Pesaḥ. 53b; Num. Rab. 4:6; Song Rab. 2:7, §1; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 11:14; Montefiore 1979: 63), or by other forms of obedience (e.g., Num. Rab. 12:21); one must never profane God’s name before Gentiles (CD 12.6-8; t. B. Meṣ. 5:18; p. Sanh. 3:5, §2; Gen. Rab. 39:7). Some went so far as to say that if a Jew must sin, he ought to go somewhere where no one knows him and pretend to be a Gentile, lest he bring reproach on God’s name (b. Ḥag. 16a; Qidd. 40a). Scandals among God’s people that bring dishonor on the name of the God they purport to represent are reprehensible (cf. Rom 2:24; Test. Levi 14:1; 16:1; b. Yoma 86b; Ruth Rab. 7:1); one might need to expose or excommunicate hypocrites to prevent God’s name from being profaned (b. Yoma 86b; p. Taʿan. 3:10, §1).

Third, disciples long for the coming of God’s kingdom and the doing of his will (6:9-10). The hallowing of God’s name, the consummation of his reign, and the doing of his will are all variant versions of the same end-time promise: everything will be set right someday. Not only the Kaddish but other Jewish prayers like the Amida as well expressed yearning for the time of the future kingdom (cf. Bultmann 1958: 42; Guelich 1982: 285; Wilson 1978: 16). Jewish tradition did not normally speak of the kingdom “coming”; the prayer probably combines the eschatological reign of God with God’s eschatological “coming” (Davies and Allison 1988: 604, citing, e.g., Zech 14:5; 1 Enoch 1:3-9; 25:3; Jub. 1:22-28; Targ. Zech. 2:14-15).

Jesus’ prayer here is not just a prayer of submission to God’s will in this age, as in 8:2 and 26:39 (cf. also 1 Macc 3:59-60), although it also implies that. The Kaddish mentions God’s will in the original creation, but Jesus’ kingdom prayer even more explicitly reminds us that God in the kingdom will restore the perfect purpose for which he formed the world in the beginning (cf. Moore 1971: 2:309; Goppelt 1981/82: 1:70).

The Lord’s Prayer concludes with three “Thou-petitions” (strictly four petitions, the last two of which are synonymous). The fourth petition expresses dependence on God for daily sustenance (6:11). While in this context the text clearly indicates trust in God for sustenance (see 6:25-34; cf. “bread” in 4:3; 7:9; 12:4; 14:19; 15:26, 36; 16:5), scholars still debate some points, particularly the meaning of the phrase “daily bread.” The most common proposed meanings are “daily rations,” “essential for survival,” and (most commonly) “bread for tomorrow.”

The single alleged occurrence of the rare term for “daily” as “daily rations” (F. F. Bruce 1963: 69) is rightly disputed (Metzger 1957: 53-54). A few scholars object that the phrase simply means “sufficient” bread (ten Kate 1978; cf. Patte 1987: 104). More scholars marshal substantial evidence that the expression probably means “tomorrow’s bread,” possibly meaning the bread of the coming age.

Whether one asks for “today’s” bread or “tomorrow’s,” the prayer stresses that the requester needs it “today” (in Greek, “today” appears in an emphatic position), and all ancient Mediterranean peoples acknowledged their need for daily bread (Yamauchi 1966: 148-53).

The most obvious source for the “daily bread” image is manna (e.g., Grelot 1979).

The fifth petition entreats God to release the community’s debts before him (6:12). This line of Jesus’ prayer, too, would remind his hearers of a standard Jewish prayer: the sixth of the Eighteen Benedictions entreated God’s forgiveness (though without, as Davies and Allison 1988: 610 note, the condition). Yet one who has truly embraced the principle of grace in God’s forgiveness must also extend it to one’s fellow servants who are of equal worth in his sight (18:35; Pol. Phil. 2, 6). Many Jewish teachers also acknowledged that God will only forgive the debts of those who forgive the debts of others (see especially Sir 28:1-8; cf. Derrett 1970: 46; Montefiore 1968: 2:103); human forgiveness is modeled after God’s (Abrahams 1917: 150-67).

The image of debts was a graphic one to most of Jesus’ contemporaries. Human debts usually involve money; farmers often needed to borrow to sow crops, and many Jewish merchants would also extend credit to regular customers (Goodman 1983: 55). Thus some have suggested that this petition is directed against the practice of debt-enslavement (Fensham 1960) or, more likely in first-century Palestine, repudiating the prosbul, the Pharisaic way around the periodic release of all debts prescribed in the Bible (Deut 15:1-3; Lev 25; see Lachs 1975a).

While debts include money, however, most of Jesus’ hearers would have been borrowers rather than lenders, so Jesus probably includes more than merely economic debts. It is clear that “debts” before God represent “sins,” as they normally did both in Jewish teaching (e.g., Gen. Rab. 85:2; 92:9; Ex. Rab. 25:6; 31:1; Pesiq. R. 11:23; 51:8; McNamara 1972: 120) and in the Aramaic term used for both concepts (hoba, Black 1967: 140; Jeremias 1971: 6n.15, 196), and as Luke or his source interprets the tradition (Lk 11:4). Some Jewish writers recognized that human life was itself but a loan from God (Ps-Phocyl. 106; Jos. War 3.374; m. ʾAbot 3:16). The analogy with God’s forgiveness and the parable in 18:21-35 indicates that one must forgive anyone any way they have hurt one (cf. similarly among other Jewish teachers, Sir 28:1-8; Montefiore 1968: 2:103).

The final petitions plead for God’s protection in testing (6:13). “Temptation” here means “testing,” as in trials of suffering; the English word “temptation,” which includes the connotation that the tester seeks the person’s fall through the trials, is too narrow unless the context warrants it (as in Jas 1:13-18; Sir 2:1-6; cf. Best 1965: 59). In this context the person is praying precisely that the testing will not lead to falling: testing with a view to bringing people to succumb was the business of the “evil one” (6:13b), a characteristic Matthean title for the devil.

Those inclined to see all the petitions as addressing the end time usually see the “temptation” or “test” here as the final period of testing Jewish people anticipated before the kingdom.

Jesus probably does not refer exclusively to a specific future period of testing, however; the very lack of distinction between present and future testing means that an eschatological community would regard whatever remains of the present era as the time of tribulation (cf. perhaps CD 20.14-15). While the omission of the Greek definite article may not constitute a decisive argument against interpretation in terms of the future,

Most other Jewish prayers that requested protection from temptation referred to testing in the present time (Montefiore 1968: 2:103; cf. Abrahams 1924: 101; Jeremias 1964b: 105; b. Ber. 60b; Sanh. 64a; God could deliver people over to their sins, e.g., Jub. 21:22). Further, the future cast of the first petitions need not support the future cast for this “test”; the first petitions refer to the coming kingdom, not to the tribulation that precedes it. “Watching” to be ready for testing (26:41) might even prefigure watching for the ultimate test: not the tribulation, but the judgment at the Son of Man’s coming (24:42–25:13).

In either case Jesus is calling his disciples to pray for deliverance from and protection in testing, not proposing that his disciples can avoid tests of their faith. A prayer suggesting that one could avoid tests of faith would contradict God’s dealings with his people in ancient Israel (Gen 22:1; Deut 13:3) and the model of Jesus (4:1). The Aramaic might have had a permissive sense, “Do not let me succumb to the test” or “fall prey to” it (Jeremias 1971: 202; cf. Willis 1975; but contrast Moule 1974: 72-73). A more substantial argument may be that the disciples would have heard the prayer as something like the kind of prayer later standardized in daily Jewish liturgies (b. Ber. 60b in Jeremias 1964b: 105; idem 1971: 202):

Lead my foot not into the power of sin,

And bring me not into the power of iniquity,

And not into the power of temptation,

And not into the power of anything shameful.

Testing itself was inevitable, but petitioners sought protection in testing (cf. 1 Cor 10:13); sages in Jesus’ day continued the Old Testament wisdom tradition that testing was good for a person, provided they endured it and so passed the test (Sir 4:17; 21:1-6). But if Matthew’s first readers wondered at all whether or not “lead us not into temptation” meant “let us not succumb to testing,” Matthew 26:41 would have settled the matter (cf. also the connection in Pol. Phil. 7); this is a closer parallel than 26:39 (pace Moule 1974: 74-75). Jesus warns them to watch and pray lest they “fall [literally, enter] into temptation,” but in the context testing is already inevitably on the way (26:45). The issue is not whether testing will come, but whether it will find the disciples unprepared (it did). Scholars thus generally concur that this is a prayer that God bring one safely through testing (cf., e.g., Ps 141:3-4; Is 63:17; 64:7 NRSV; Rev 3:10; Jub. 11:17; 21:22; 22:23), rather than deliver one from experiencing it (e.g., Dahms 1974; though contrast Garland 1993: 81).

The familiar doxology closing the modern version of the Lord’s Prayer appears in a textual note in many translations because the earliest manuscripts of Matthew do not include it (most scholars, e.g., Bandstra 1981: 18-25). But the early Christians adopted many Jewish worship practices, and Jewish prayers typically closed with words of praise (Bonsirven 1964: 134); Jewish worshipers often closed regular prayers with spontaneous doxologies (Jeremias 1964b: 106). Some parallel this doxology quite closely (cf. 1QM 18.13; Smith 1951: 137). The earliest Christians added a doxology like this one when praying the Lord’s Prayer in public (Did. 8, 10), and naturally later added this liturgical feature (perhaps from the Didache) to the text of Matthew. Although its content, like that of most Jewish prayers, comported well with the Hebrew Bible, it is not part of the original text of Matthew.

Finally, we should note that the kingdom prayer is a communal prayer. The plural pronouns (“give us,” etc.; especially prominent in Matthew’s version: “Our Father”) remind Jesus’ hearers that those who approach God as their Father must remember God’s other children. Although scholars currently dispute how common communal prayers were in first-century Palestine,

Christians Should Fast in Secret (6:16-18)

In this case (contrast 6:2) the “hypocrites” who “disfigure their faces” may well evoke the original sense of “hypocrites” as actors in the theater (see above); actors typically wore large theatrical masks over their faces. The term for “disfigure” is also quite strong (“ruin”) and is the opposite of the term the NRSV and NIV translate “to show,” suggesting hyperbole for the sake of rhetorical effect (Tannehill 1975: 82-83). Fasting accompanied grief (e.g., Judg 20:26; 2 Sam 3:35; Esth 4:3; 9:31; Ps 35:13-14; 2 Macc 18:12; Test. Zeb. 4:1-3; Hom. Il. 19.156, 206-14; Dion. Hal. 3.22.1; Arrian Alex. 4.9.4; 7.14.8; Apul. Metam. 2.24), and Jewish piety sometimes conjoined fasting with the sorrow of penitence or judgment (Neh 1:4-7; 9:1-2; Zech 7:5; Sir 31:26; Jdt 4:9-13; Bar 1:5; 2 Bar. 5:7; 9:2; 12:5; Test. Reub. 1:10; Test. Jud. 15:4; Did. 7.4), but as Schweizer notes, humans are so perverse that they “can take pleasure in the pain of their own penance” (Schweizer 1975: 146). Yet as Joel put it, the true penitent must rend one’s heart and not one’s garments (2:13); Isaiah declared that the true fast was to act for justice (Is 58:6-10; cf. the inadequate fast in Jer 36:9). Some Jewish traditions also emphasize fasting in secret (cf. Test. Jos. 3:4-5); one later rabbi told of a woman hanged by her breasts in hell because she told people about her fast (p. Ḥag. 2:2, §5). A Greek philosopher also had to warn against trying to impress people by one’s simple diet of water (Epict. Disc. 3.14.4-6).

In biblical and Jewish tradition, fasting was a time of drawing close to God by demonstrating one’s commitment to him; most fasts ran from sundown to sundown (p. Ned. 8:1, §6). Other Mediterranean religions observed some fast days as well (Hor. Sat. 2.3.280-81; Aristoph. Thesmophoriazusae 984; Mylonas 1961: 241, 258), as in various religions today (cf., e.g., Eliade 1958: 67; Fox 1964: 181). Normally coupled with prayer in the New Testament (Acts 9:9; 13:2-3; 14:23; cf. 1 Cor 7:5 MSS; Mk 9:29 MSS) and some other sources (e.g., Ezra 8:23; Neh 1:4; Jos. Life 290-95; Bar 1:5; 2 Macc 13:12; Test. Benj. 1:4-5; Did. 1.3), such fasting is not asceticism for asceticism’s sake (cf. Col 2:18-23; Lohse 1971: 115; Francis 1973: 168-69).

Under normal circumstances people trimmed beards or changed clothes before appearing in public (cf. Gen 41:14); one would also wash one’s face (e.g., b. Shab. 31a; 39b) if one had been weeping (Gen 43:30-31), as would be the case with mourning, including penitence. They also anointed themselves as a matter of regular course along with washing (Hom. Od. 4.49, 252; 6.219-20, 227; 8.364-65, 454; 10.364, 450; 17.88; 18.179; 19.320, 505; 23.154; b. Shab. 61a), especially if they intended to present themselves publicly (Qoh. Rab. 9:8, §1). One rabbi went so far as to say that a person who bathes without anointing has wasted the bath (b. Shab. 41a). Because many Westerners of northern European descent do not anoint their dry skin with oil (most try to wash excess grease from their skin or hair) the practice of anointing may invite some explanation. Greeks regularly oiled their bodies before exercises, afterward scraping “the dirt and sweat off with the oil by means of a curved metal instrument called a strigil” (Ferguson 1987: 76; cf. Virg. Aen. 3.281; Crates 20, to Metrocles; Diogenes 35, to Sopolis; Epict. Disc. 3.22.88); some inhabitants of Palestine seem to have used the practice (see Reich 1991). Probably more to the point, Palestinian Jews used oil to clean and anoint their skin, especially on their heads (t. Sheb. 6:9; ARN 3A; b. Sanh. 101a; Yoma 35b; Safrai 1974/76b: 743; cf. Ruth 3:3; 2 Sam 12:20; Ps 23:5; 141:5; Eccl 9:8; Ezek 16:9; Lk 7:46), probably to lubricate dry scalps.

Because penitent fasting included “afflicting oneself” (Lev 23:32), for most Jewish people the most extreme fasts included not only abstention from food but other forms of self-abasement like not shaving, washing one’s clothes, anointing, or having intercourse (m. Taʿan. 1:6; 4:7; Yoma 8:1; p. Rosh Hash. 1:3, §27; Taʿan. 1.6, §5; Sanders 1990: 83; idem 1992: 141); they could even involve social isolation (4 Ezra 5:19-20; 2 Bar. 20:5). (More dangerous for one’s health, fasts typically meant avoidance of water as well — e.g., m. Yoma 8:1; 2 Bar. 20:5.) (Those in mourning, such as a husband longing for his wife, might likewise forgo anointing and bathing; see, e.g., P. Oxy. 528.9-11; cf. also Jdt 10:3; Lucan C.W. 2.375-76.) Jesus thus prohibits some practices that normally accompanied religious fasting in his day. Jesus is thus so concerned with keeping one’s righteousness private that he contravenes customary features of what his contemporaries considered a strict fast (Tannehill 1975: 83).

Do Not Value Possessions (6:19-34)

Cf. Lk 11:34-36; 12:22-34; 16:13.

Do Not Value Possessions Enough to Seek Them (6:19-24)

So prominent in Jesus’ parables and wisdom sayings are his emphasis on utter faith in God and relinquishment of possessions that Vermes 1993: 148 considers “detachment from possessions, unquestioning trust in God and absolute submission to him” as the central thrust of Jesus’ teaching. Paul S. Minear declared that it was no wonder that those with vested economic and political interests hated Jesus; “So insidious was [his] attack upon earthly treasures that he became, according to Kierkegaard, a ‘far more terrible robber’ than those who assault travelers along a highway. Jesus assaulted the whole human race at the point where that race is most sensitive: its desire for security and superiority” (Minear 1954: 133).

Excursus: Some Contemporary Views on Wealth

Greek and Roman sages often claimed that wealth could be used positively (Plato Laws 9.870AB; Diog. Laert. 6.6.95; Sen. De Benef. 6.3.1-2), but many praised the moral blessing of poverty (Diod. Sic. 10.7.1; Sen. Ep. Lucil. 4; 17:4-5; Dial. 2.13.3; 5.2.1; 12.10.10–11.2; Diog. Laert. 6.9.104; Aul. Gel. 9.8),

Jewish views on wealth varied similarly, usually depending on how people used wealth: some could regard wealth positively, as a sign of blessing (Sib. Or. 3.783; Ep. Arist. 204-5; m. ʾAbot 4:9; Qidd. 4:14; cf. Sifre Deut. 352.1.1); yet many also acknowledged the spiritual dangers of wealth (1 Enoch 63:10; 94:8; 96:4; 97:8; 1QS 10.18-19; 11.2; CD 4.17; 8.7; Sir 31:8-11; Ep. Arist. 211; Jos. War 2.250; Ant. 4.190; m. ʾAbot 2:7; Sifre Deut. 43.3.1-2, 5; 318.1.1-4) and “love of gain” (Sib. Or. 3.189, 234-36, 640-42; Ps-Phocyl. 42-47; 1 Enoch 108:8; Test. Levi 17.11; Jud. 17.1; 18.2; 19.1; Sir 31:5-8; Philo Spec. 1.281), a vice also found in Greek tradition (Isoc. Demon. 9, 27-28, Or. 1; Plato Hipparchus, 225A-32C; Plut. Bravery of Women: Chiomara, Mor. 258E; Diog. Laert. 4.48; 6.2.50; Theon Progymn. 3.91-92). Sometimes Jewish writers even oppose the uselessness of worldly wealth with the true treasure of the world to come: 1 Enoch 100:6; m. ʾAbot 4:1; 6:9; b. B. Meṣ. 114b; Gen. Rab. 67:5; cf. Herm. 1.1.1. True wealth could thus include contentment (m. ʾAbot 4:1; Finkelstein 1970: 187).

Views on wealth varied among thinkers in the Greco-Roman world, but most people then like most people today pursued whatever material advancement was available. For the wealthy, that meant greater wealth; for most of the Empire, it meant continued subsistence. Those who would associate Jesus’ views strictly with those of Cynic philosophers miss the diversity in both Greek and Jewish thought on wealth. A number of ancient writers expressed the worthlessness of wealth, although some such critics (like Seneca and Philo) apparently ignored their own possession of it.

If disciples really trust God, they will live as if treasure in heaven is what matters (6:19-21; cf. 13:52; 19:21; 1 Tim 6:8-10). Although only the more radical sages of antiquity shared Jesus’ view that earthly possessions were essentially worthless, his illustrations of the point may not have surprised his hearers as starkly original. In 6:19-20 Jesus’ illustration follows a rhythmic pattern that reinforces his point (Tannehill 1975: 48; cf. Kennedy 1984: 60 on the “gnomic effect” of the repetitive “treasuring treasure”). Because people often kept all their monetary savings in strongboxes in their own homes or buried beneath their floor, the danger of thieves and corruption was quite real (Stambaugh and Balch 1986: 73; cf. 24:43).

Jesus’ contemporaries often stressed that obedience on earth led to treasure in heaven (4 Ezra 7:77; 2 Bar. 14:12; 24:1; 44:14).

One first-century Jewish teacher insisted that one should value one’s neighbor’s property as highly as one’s own (m. ʾAbot 2:12; cf. Ex 22:6; 23:4-5; Deut 22:1-4). But nearly all Jesus’ extant statements on wealth go beyond the rabbinic model; some scholars thus suggest that “closer to Qumran, Jesus disdains all earthly wealth” (Meier 1980: 65; cf. Flusser 1988: 194-95). Qumran, however, practiced a rigid communalism (1QS 6.22-23; Jos. Ant. 18.20; War 2.122; Philo Prob. 85-86; Hypothetica 11.4-5; Mealand 1975), whereas the early Christians shared possessions voluntarily as the needs arose (Acts 2:45; 4:32-35; see Fitzmyer 1966: 243).

Some other countercultural sages in antiquity also advocated lack of attachment to material possessions. One sage remarked that you can lose only what you have, so if you had had more, you would have lost more; had you had less to lose, you would have complained about not having much (Epict. Disc. 1.18.15-16). Unlike some philosophers, however, Jesus is not against possessions because he supposes them evil (cf. Lucretius Nat. 5.1105-42; Sen. Dial. 5.33.1); the issue is not that possessions themselves are bad, but that a higher priority demands people’s resources. If they value what God values rather than what most societies value, they must value the basic needs of others without adequate resources above the accumulation of possessions beyond basic needs (19:21; cf. Lk 3:11; 12:33-34).

The person whose perspectives are distorted by materialism is blind to God’s truth (6:22-23).

Jesus’ illustration about the “single” (NRSV: “healthy”; NIV: “good”) eye and the evil eye would immediately make sense to his hearers: a “good” eye was literally a healthy eye, but figuratively also an eye that looked on others generously (Sir 32:8).

One must love either God or money; the professed lover of both is an idolater (6:24). One must serve someone, but a person whose service is divided will love one master and hate the other. Jewish law addressed possibly theoretical cases of persons who were half-slave and half-free or jointly owned by two persons (m. ʿEd. 1:13; Giṭ. 4:5; Pesaḥ. 8:1; t. Ker. 1:17; b. ʿArak. 2b; B. Qam. 90a; Giṭ. 43a; Ḥag. 2a; Qidd. 90a; Yebam. 66a); divisions of estates at inheritances could encourage such situations (cf. P. Grenf. 1.21). This seems to have been an uncommon situation (cf. Acts 16:16), but Jesus’ observation seems to have obtained accurately: the slave naturally preferred one master to the other (Groenewald 1967; Beare 1981: 183).

“Mammon” here was a common Aramaic term for money or property,

For those interested in how the text’s radical demands might sound in our culture, I pause here to repeat the lament of North American scholar Craig Blomberg 1992a: 124: “Many perceptive observers have sensed that the greatest danger to Western Christianity is not, as is sometimes alleged, prevailing ideologies such as Marxism, Islam, the New Age movement or humanism but rather the all-pervasive materialism of our affluent culture.” Pointing out that the New Testament also summons churches in one part of the world to look out for the needs of churches elsewhere (2 Cor 8:13-15), Blomberg further reminds readers that because “over 50 percent of all believers now live in the Two-Thirds World … a huge challenge to First-World Christianity emerges. Without a doubt, most individual and church budgets need drastic realignment” (Blomberg 1992a: 126-27; cf. also idem 1992b; Schmidt 1988; Hagner 1995: 562).

Do Not Value Possessions Enough to Worry about Them (6:25-34)

Jesus’ message here picks up his earlier discussion of secret charity (6:1-4). Christians must not seek material gain (6:19-24), but should trust God’s power to provide for genuine needs (6:25-34). Jesus’ culture, of course, defined need quite differently from modern Western society. If God sustains life and protects the bodies of those who serve him, they should not complain if he provides without honoring the symbols of status their culture values (6:25). If he feeds his children like the birds (6:26; cf. 1 Kings 17:6) or clothes them like the flowers (6:28), he will have provided more than what human cultures value, not less (6:29). Yet if God provides for birds and flowers, he will also provide for his children (6:30).

God promises the basics (6:25-26, 28-30). Jesus twice uses a standard type of Jewish argument traditionally called qal waḥomer: “how much more?” (6:26, 30).

Jesus draws a lesson from God’s care for birds and flowers (6:26, 30). Although later Jewish teachers prohibited prayers for birds, considering this a trivialization of prayer (m. Ber. 5:3; Jeremias 1971: 182; Urbach 1979: 1:383), they did recognize God’s provision for creatures (cf. Ps 104:24-27; Langer 1991) and that people were worth much more than birds. Jewish people recognized that God knew the exact number of raindrops he caused to fall (2 Bar. 21:8; cf. Mt 10:29). Teachers recognized God’s care for animals in Scripture (Deut 25:4) and sometimes reasoned from this observation to God’s care for people (Cohen 1966: 63; cf. Jos. Apion 2.213; 1 Cor 9:9-10); some emphasized mercy to animals (Test. Zeb. 5:1; Gen. Rab. 33:3; Pesiq. R. 48:2, 4). A late-second-century sage allegedly learned that not a single bird hunted by a fowler died or escaped apart from a heavenly decree, and decided that therefore he should emerge from hiding, trusting God to protect him as well (Pesiq. Rab Kah. 11:16; Gen. Rab. 79:6; cf. Mt 10:29). Another early teacher observed that just as animals and birds, created to serve humanity, did not toil, people, created to serve God, would not have had to toil had they not sinned (m. Qidd. 4:14).

Sheep were the most common grazing animal in the ancient Mediterranean world, so clothes were commonly made of wool, or of linen made from flax; only the rich wore silk, and cotton was not widely used. Poor people often wore wool undyed or, when possible, stained with cheap, dark dye producing a grey or dull brown cloak; for dressier occasions (cf. 22:11) they might wear brighter colors from vegetable dyes, though only the rich could afford the various shades of purple (Cary and Haarhoff 1946: 96-97). People considered their cloaks essential, and the law in fact took this for granted (Ex 22:26-27; Guelich 1982: 339). John had rugged clothing, but at least he had some (3:4). Some early Christians (less given to hyperbole than their Palestinian masters) declared that Christians need nothing more than food and clothing (1 Tim 6:8). But Jesus declares that God can provide for his children adequately even if they lack clothing (cf. also 5:40)! He appeals to the splendor of the fields, whose vegetation is nevertheless used as fuel for baking bread (Blomberg 1992a: 125; cf. Ps 104:27-36); were not people, to whom God gave such use of his creation, more valuable to him than these flowers? Since 6:30 identifies “lilies” (6:28) with “grass,” the term probably refers in a general way to any of Jewish Palestine’s wildflowers (Guelich 1982: 339; France 1985: 141), although some identify them with anemones, which were purple as one might imagine Solomon’s royal apparel to be (6:29; Gundry 1982: 117; Jeremias 1972: 215; for royal purple, cf., e.g., 1 Macc 10:20, 62, 64; 14:43-44). Solomon’s splendor had become proverbial (CIJ 2:83, §837; Jos. Ant. 8.35-41; m. B. Meṣ. 7:1; Guelich 1982: 340; Vermes 1993: 87n.11), but it remained miniscule compared to the splendor of God’s creation (cf. Ps 8:1-9). In one ancient story, a powerful king asked a sage if he had witnessed any sight as lovely as the king’s array; the sage responded that he had seen pheasants and peacocks far more beautiful, “for they shine in nature’s colours, which are ten thousand times more beautiful” (Diog. Laert. 1.51, LCL 1:53). A Jewish teacher similarly reminded his hearers that no matter how much wealth a king possessed, only God could send him the rain to produce sustenance (Sifre Deut. 42.1.5). Health matters more than wealth (Sir 30:14-16), as the body matters more than clothing (Mt 6:25). In the end, Jesus teaches here, wealth does not matter, but God’s blessing does, and he will provide it.

Jesus again shames his hearers by reminding them that even Gentiles seek material things (6:31-33; cf. 5:47; 6:7). Pagans seek (NRSV: “strive for”; NIV: “run after”) their own needs (6:31-32); God’s children should seek instead God’s agendas, assured that God will care for them in the process (6:33). Even in Jesus’ model prayer, his disciples seek God’s kingdom first (6:9-10; on seeking God and his Torah, see, e.g., Ps 9:10; 27:8; 34:10; 119:2, 45; Sir 35:15; 51:13-14, 21; Wis 1:1-2; CD 1.10). The faith Jesus taught was not an intricate ritual to get what one desired, as in later magical texts; his teaching of faith meant obeying God’s will with the assurance that God would ultimately fulfill the best interests of his children. In the Gospel tradition, that kind of faith grows only in the context of an intimate relationship of love between the heavenly Father and his children, the kind of relationship Jesus had with his Father and modeled for his disciples in his relationship with them.

Apart from a few philosophers who advocated concern for only one matter (e.g., Epict. Disc. 1.14), to the average Roman citizen of means, material advancement constituted a basic goal, as it does for most Western Christians (White 1971: 233). Yet nearly all Gentiles, especially the vast majority who were peasants working feudal estates, sought the basics, and some Greek-speaking Jewish writers, eager to perpetuate the notion that the Jews were a nation of philosophers, contrasted themselves with the Gentiles on this point. Other nations “are men of food and drink and raiment, for their whole disposition has recourse to these things,” whereas the Jews disdained such concerns and contemplated only God’s reign over the world (Ep. Arist. 140-41, trans. Hadas 1951: 157).

Jesus not only failed to associate faith with being able to obtain possessions from God, but Jesus did not even associate it with diligently seeking basic needs from God. Pagans seek those things, he warned (6:32); you should seek instead God’s kingdom and his righteous will (6:33; cf. Clement of Alexandria’s report of Jesus’ saying in Jeremias 1964c: 99). Seeking God’s kingdom means valuing what God values and obeying his commands: it is when his people care for others in need among them that God supplies the needs of his people as a whole, perhaps because then he can best trust them to use his gifts righteously (Deut 15:1-11; Blomberg 1992a: 126).

Jewish people recognized that in calling them to love him with their whole heart and soul, God demanded that they care for him more than for their life or possessions (Sifre Deut. 32.4.2). Jesus and the prophets had faith in the Hebrew sense of ʾemunah — a firm, persevering trust (cf. Vermes 1984: 49). Modern readers who wish to hear the text as Matthew’s first audience would have should listen to the text’s demand in its radical fulness.

Anxiety does no good (6:27, 34). Anxiety will not add even the smallest unit of time to one’s life. Some translations read as if one added a cubit to one’s height (Schwarz 1980, speculatively retroverting into Aramaic; cf. Tert. Spec. 23), but the adjective “single” in the phrase “a single cubit” militates against this interpretation. Jesus in 6:27 refers not to adding a “mere” cubit to one’s height — which would be a considerable addition! — but to adding a “mere” cubit to one’s longevity (see Schweizer 1975: 165; Filson 1960: 101; France 1985: 140; cf. Ps 39:5), thus the NRSV translation, “a single hour.” (Though a graphic image, a cubit as a metaphorical time unit was intelligible; cf., e.g., Ap. Rhod. 4.1510.) Jesus may employ intentional understatement here (rhetoricians would have called his figure “catachresis,” whereby a related term substitutes for a more precise one, such as “short power” or “small height” — Rhet. ad Herenn. 4.33.45). Not only is it true that one cannot extend one’s life by worrying; daily experience in our comparatively fast-paced culture confirms the wisdom of an earlier Jewish sage who observed that worry and a troubled heart actually shorten life (Sir 30:19-24; cf. Pub. Syr. 187). If much study is wearying to the flesh (Eccl 12:12), “worry” about wealth also banishes sleep and destroys the flesh (Sir 34:1).

Greek philosophers sometimes disdained such bodily needs altogether, complaining that their bodies were prisons because they were dependent on food and drink (Epict. Disc. 1.9.12) and advising that one turn one’s mind to higher pursuits (Marc. Aur. 7.16). A Greek sage like Epictetus insisted that God would take care of good men, who ought not worry about food (Disc. 3.26.27), although he added that it was no major loss should God fail to provide and the good man die (Disc. 3.26.29; cf. 1.9.19-20)! Jesus never condemns people for recognizing these basic needs; their Father knows that they need food and clothing. Yet he calls them to depend on God for their daily sustenance, a provision that Jewish people considered one of God’s greatest miracles (e.g., Gen. Rab. 20:9; 97:3; Pesiq. R. 33:5), and the most peasants could consistently hope for (cf. Oakman 1992: 118). Jewish teachers often insisted that God cared for Israel’s needs, but only when Israel performed his will (Sifre Deut. 42.3.3). Those who could trust their heavenly Father to care for them (as most first-century Jewish children could depend on their earthly fathers) need not be anxious concerning clothes or food (Ep. Diogn. 9 follows Jesus here).

Unlike some early Christian writers, Jesus makes his point in graphic word pictures; his is the language of the oral literary artist. Like a typical sage, Jesus finally notes that one has enough to worry about for the day without adding tomorrow’s worries (6:34; cf. Prov 27:1; b. Ber. 9b; Sanh. 100b; Yebam. 63b; Epict. Disc. 3.24.26).

Yet when Jesus graphically forbids his disciples to worry about tomorrow (6:34; cf. “worries” also in 10:19; 13:22; Phil 4:6), this does not suggest that he expects them to ignore whatever concerns arise. Rather, he expects them to express dependence on God in each of these concerns, praying for their genuine needs (6:11), provided they pray for God’s kingdom most of all (6:9-10; most of Paul’s “concerns” fit this category — 2 Cor 11:28; 1 Thess 3:1-5). Whether or not “bread for tomorrow” is the correct interpretation of the petition in 6:11, Jesus’ exhortation in 6:34 would not prohibit prayer for tomorrow’s bread. Thus another early Jewish teacher could on the one hand daily utter the Jewish prayer called the Amida, the ninth benediction of which sought God for a good harvest, while contending on the other hand, “Whoever has a morsel in his basket and says What shall I eat tomorrow? is among those of little faith” (b. Soṭa 48b in Abrahams 1924: 106; cf. Mek. 16:4 in Smith 1951: 137).

Do Not Judge (7:1-6)

Cf. Mk 4:24-25; Lk 6:37-42; 8:18. The rhetoric of this section, like many of Jesus’ other sayings, employs familiar techniques like hyperbole that may have moved an ancient audience to laughter. In this case, Jesus would have been employing such Middle Eastern humor (cf. Pilch 1995) to disarm his audience and communicate his message with intensity.

Matthew continues to arrange Jesus’ teaching in a relevant, pastoral way to his readers. Jesus probably followed many topics at some length in his teaching before changing the subject, and the oral tradition of his teaching probably continued the process of arrangement. But Matthew has a special penchant for arranging Jesus’ sayings, so it helps us to notice how he ties different blocks of Jesus’ teaching together in the Sermon on the Mount. He retains at least 7:1-5, 12, 15-27 from the extant version of Jesus’ sermon on this occasion (cf. Lk 6:31, 37-38, 41-49), which provides an extended sample of his teaching.

But both these and other teachings obtain special nuances by their context in Matthew’s whole sermon. Thus, just as outward acts of righteousness can be misleading (6:1-18), disciples should avoid external evaluations of individuals altogether (7:1-5) and certainly not trust all religious claims (7:15-23). Just as Matthew’s promise concerning giving (6:19-34; cf. Lk 11:34-36, 12:22-34) picks up his earlier discussion of private charity (6:1-4), his promise concerning prayer (7:7-11; cf. Lk 11:2-13, which includes the prayer of Mt 6:9-13) expands his earlier discussion of private prayer (6:5-15) and probably “seeking” the kingdom first (6:32-33). Jesus’ admonition to self-examination (7:1-5), warning that few will enter God’s kingdom (7:13-14), observation that one’s behavior reveals one’s character (7:15-20), and caution that one’s life and not just lips must acknowledge Christ (7:21-23) suitably climax in his final warning that only those who obey his teaching will endure the judgment (7:24-27).

Paul seems to allude to this judgment saying in Romans 2:1 (cf. 14:1, 10, 13; also Hagner 1993: 169); James 5:9 may also allude to it. Warnings about judging or accusing God’s servants are, of course, much more ancient (Ps 109:6, 20, 29). The principle of reciprocity in 7:12 apparently forms an inclusio (a framing device; cf. 5:3, 10) with 7:1 (the NIV’s “so” in 7:12 means “therefore,” connecting it with its preceding context): since what you do will be returned to you, make sure you do what you would like to have done to you. In the context in Luke, who includes more sayings on the subject, giving and receiving God’s mercy includes being like God (6:35-36; cf. Mt 5:45, 48). In both Matthew and Luke, this text reminds the sermon’s readers that one cannot take the kingdom’s demands seriously without also embracing grace.

Judging assumes a divine prerogative. The second line of 7:1 declares that the person judging “will be judged.” It is not impossible that when Jesus first taught the crowds, he offered a proverb about human reciprocity: people will think ill of a critical, judgmental person (cf. 7:12). But another reading fits as well, and in this context, commentators are correct to read this line as a future divine passive indicating that God will judge conclusively on the day of judgment (Gundry 1982: 120-21; France 1985: 142; see 7:13-14, 25-27). The final judgment belongs to God alone, and those who seek to judge others now usurp God’s position.

By this point in the sermon, a disciple who has been taking the Matthean Jesus’ words seriously might well be too introspective to focus on judging others anyway. The graphic language of Jesus’ teaching so far (5:3–6:34) challenges its hearers to a radical personal commitment to God’s kingdom and righteousness that should scare them into attending to themselves. But just in case the hearers had been too obtuse to grasp that point in 5:3–6:34, Matthew renders it explicit in 7:1-5. One dare not assume God’s prerogatives by withholding forgiveness (6:12-15) or judging (7:1-5). Disciples are instead objects of God’s evaluation, and God evaluates most graciously the meek, who recognize God alone as God and judge. One should note, however, that Jesus warns against assuming God’s prerogative to condemn the guilty, not against disciples’ discerning truth from error (7:15-23). Further, Jesus does not oppose offering correction, but only offering correction in the wrong spirit (7:5; cf. 18:15-17; Gal 6:1-5).

The discourse recognizes that right beliefs about judging are inadequate. Although Jesus regards scribal and Pharisaic righteousness as inadequate (5:20), it is not because the scribes and Pharisees professed the wrong doctrine on this issue. The popular early sage Ben Sira warned that if one takes vengeance, God will take vengeance for one’s sins (Sir 28:1), if one forgives others one will be forgiven by God (28:2), if one hates others one does not merit God’s pardon (28:3). Another early sage, Hillel, reportedly declared, “Do not judge your neighbor until you have been in his situation [lit., ‘his place’]” (m. ʾAbot 2:4/5).

As noted above, the issue is not failure to discern, but hypocrisy in judging others for one’s own faults. Later rabbis declared that one should “remove [one’s] own blemish first,” giving the example of a rabbi who deferred a case to correct his own behavior before he ruled that another must do the same (Abrahams 1924: 118; see other examples in Bultmann 1968: 107; cf. b. Rosh Hash. 16b; Gen. Rab. 98:4). Greek and Roman sages offered similar wisdom: for example, one must solve one’s own problems, and only then may one turn to criticizing others accurately (Demosth. 2d Olyn. Or. 27); we see others’ faults more quickly than our own (Longinus Sublime 4.1; Phaedrus 4.10; Babrius 66; Sen. Dial. 4.28.6-8). Likewise, “Practice nothing in your deeds for which you condemn others in your words” (Isoc. Nic./Cypr. 61, Or. 3.39, LCL 1:110-13),

Not only the basic principle but the very image of measuring back what one measures out (7:2; what goes around comes around) was proverbial wisdom. In the marketplace one would measure out to others the appropriate portions of what they were purchasing (e.g., m. Beṣa 3:8). This image had become a Jewish maxim, however: “By the measure by which a man metes it is measured to him” (judgment in the present era in m. Soṭa 1:7; b. Soṭa 8b).

One blinds oneself by rationalizing away one’s guilt (7:3-5; also 6:22-23; cf. Rom 2:1-3; Tert. Apol. 39.14). A splinter or wood chip in one’s eye might render one blind, but a plank imbedded in one’s eye would certainly render one blind. The image (possibly borrowed from a carpenter’s workplace — France 1985: 143) is graphic, even hyperbolic (Tannehill 1975: 114-18):

Even when one is right, one should not impose the truth on others against their will (7:6). Jesus’ saying in 7:6 is certainly authentic; although unattested elsewhere, it is inconceivable that Matthew would simply create a saying that fits his context with such difficulty (also in favor of authenticity, cf. the Aramaic rhythm in Jeremias 1971: 25). Its meaning is unfortunately less clear than its authenticity; as Schnackenburg puts it, the saying is “rätselhafter” and “dunkel” (1985: 72-73). Perhaps because the saying seems to make such little sense in its Matthean context, interpretations of 7:6 abound.

Some think that the “dogs” here are the Gentiles (15:26) and the pearl the gospel of the kingdom (13:45-46; see Meier 1980: 69-70).

Nevertheless, Matthew’s audience, hearing the Gospel more than once, might interpret this saying in the light of 15:26. In that case, the saying might warn against giving miracles (cf. 7:7-11) to those unwilling to be part of the family, just as Jesus demands faith and submission rather than bestowing his power like magic (15:22-28). In this case the saying forces people to press in to become disciples (13:10-12); it would qualify both the following context about prayer and the preceding prohibition against “judging,” inviting disciples to discern “dogs” from God’s children. Still, both 7:6 and 15:26 appear preredactional, and it is possible that Matthew intended no connection; had Matthew intended an obvious connection, 7:6 would have fit better closer to the pericope of the Canaanite woman.

In its most general sense the logion probably was simply a wisdom saying like Proverbs 23:9: “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, who will only despise the wisdom of your words” (NRSV; cf. also Syr. Men. Sent. 328-32). Some thus suspect that Matthew has apostate Christians in view (Meier 1980: 69-70; Guelich 1982: 354). Dogs may refer to the wicked or oppressors more generally (cf. Ps 22:16, 20; 59:6, 14-15; Prov 26:11; Gen. Rab. 63:8; 65:1; Ex. Rab. 9:2).

Its possible sense in its present Matthean context has provoked a variety of proposals; after all, Matthew had some reason for including the saying where he did, even if it is not a perfect fit.

Most likely, 7:6 provides a transition between the preceding and following contexts. One commentator suggests that just as people are careful how they measure and to whom they give (7:1-6; cf. Hesiod W.D. 354: Give only to one who gives), God will do likewise, giving only to those willing to receive from him, forgiving the forgivers and being merciful to the merciful (7:7-11; Fenton 1977: 110). A similar interpretation might combine the strengths of several of the above proposals: correcting those who will not receive correction is futile (7:1-5; Prov 9:8; 23:9); one should discerningly continue to offer wisdom or the gift of the kingdom (cf. 13:45-46) only to those willing to receive what one offers, just as God does (7:7-11). In this case the text sounds a note of reciprocity to be repeated in 7:12 (Keener 1993: 64). If 7:6 means something along these lines, it does not allow one to prejudge who may receive one’s message (13:3-23), but does forbid one to try to force it on those who show no inclination to accept it (10:13-16; cf. Carson 1984b: 185; Blomberg 1992a: 128-29; Hagner 1993: 172).

Good Gifts Guaranteed (7:7-11)

Cf. Lk 11:9-13. Jesus’ call to prayer in this passage opens with a typically Semitic step parallelism (Bailey 1976: 48; cf. Manson 1979: 32; Jeremias 1971: 25; Tannehill 1975: 46-47):

A Ask, and it will be given you

B Seek and you will find

C Knock and it will be opened to you

A′ For everyone who asks receives

B′ And the one who seeks finds

C′ And to the one who knocks it will be opened

Matthew did not elect to place this passage on prayer in his longer section on the subject in 6:5-15, but the present passage fulfills important functions in its immediate context. The image behind “asking” is that of a dependent child making a request of his or her father (6:8-9; cf. 21:22); the image of giving a gift may continue the thought of 7:6 suggested above.

God can supply anything to the righteous who seek his purposes (7:7-10). This pericope emphasizes some important lessons: First, Jesus promises his disciples extraordinary power with God, like that of Elijah of old. In this case, the Gospel narratives and other “charismatic” sayings (e.g., Mk 9:23; 11:22-25; Jn 14:13-14; 15:7; 16:23-27; cf. Jas 1:5) demonstrate that Jesus was not speaking figuratively, but training disciples to express bold faith (cf. 6:8; 18:19; 20:20; 21:21). Early Jewish teaching did celebrate God’s kindness in answering prayer (Hagner 1993: 174), but rarely promises such universal answers to prayer to all of God’s people as the language here suggests.

Second, it presupposes that the petitioners will be as committed to God’s purposes as Elijah and like-minded servants of God were. Such a call to believing prayer supposes a heart of piety submitted to God’s will; although Jesus states the promise graphically, he implicitly addresses only disciples, who will seek the good of God’s kingdom and provision for their basic needs (6:11, 19-34). Jesus’ promise is for the righteous — people who share kingdom values in 6:19-34, who ask God to supply their basic needs and requests concerning the kingdom. But beyond this significant limitation, Jesus’ promise might have amazed and troubled his first hearers (most proposed parallels in Dalman 1929: 230; Smith 1951: 137-38 resemble the wording only, not the concept). Jesus’ disciples were to be prophets (5:12) and holy persons whose requests God would hear, like Elijah or Honi of old.

Third, this passage’s context suggests the kinds of prayers Matthew intends such righteous people to offer. They seek first the purposes of God’s kingdom (6:9-10, 31-33; cf. Ps 9:10; 24:6; 27:4, 8; 34:14; 63:1; 69:6, 32; 70:4; 119:45; 122:6-9; and especially Prov 2:4-5; 8:17; Is 55:6; Jer 29:13) and provision for their own basic needs (6:11). “Good things” (7:11) is not very specific; it sometimes referred to agricultural produce that the righteous would then share with others (Test. Iss. 3:7-8), and at other times to prosperity more generally (Sib. Or. 3.659-60, 750; cf. Test. Jos. 2:7). Some traditions (probably foreign to both Jesus and Matthew) suggested prayers for “good things” in general because one could not know what was good, for any specific gift one might seek could produce harm (Pythagoras in Diod. Sic. 10.9.8; Diog. Laert. Lives 8.1.9; contrast Mt 6:11-13).

God’s Fatherly care for his children is their assurance that he will answer them (7:11; cf. 6:8). God, who gives “good gifts” to his children, may not grant a child’s request for something harmful (in contrast to some pagan expectations concerning misplaced prayers — Ovid Metam. 2.44-102; 3.287-98, 308-9; 11.100-105; 14.129-53),

Reciprocate good deeds in faith (7:12). Cf. Lk 6:31. If those who condemn others are condemned (7:1-5), God clearly operates on a principle of reciprocity; thus one must do good to people in advance of their doing good to one, trusting God to reward one later. The principle in this context is: as one gives, it will be given to one by God in the day of judgment (cf. also Test. Zeb. 5:3). If God is the example of giving (7:7-11), one should give whatever people need (5:42). How one treats others (7:12) reveals one’s character (7:16-20), hence one’s eternal destiny (7:13-14, 21-23).

This golden rule was a widespread principle of ancient ethics.

Another early Jewish work employed a form that straddled both, advising a king: “Just as you do not wish evils to befall you, but to participate in all that is good, so you should deal with those subject to you and with offenders” (Ep. Aristeas 207; trans. Hadas 1951: 181). Although some commentators have tried to disparage the negative form by contrast with the positive (seeking to make Jesus’ rule here more distinctive), they mean essentially the same thing; both biblical law (Lev 19:18) and Paul (Rom 13:10) define the positive commandment of love by means of negative commandments (Sanders 1992: 258-59; cf. Guelich 1982: 360-61).

Apart from its function as an epitome of the law, the saying was probably a proverb before Hillel (Moore 1971: 2:87), as its earlier occurrence in Tobit and its later appearance without citation in a story of an early second-century rabbi indicate (see Dalman 1929: 226; Montefiore and Loewe 1974: 172-73). The principle that God requites what people have sown is also ancient (e.g., Judg 1:7; 9:24, 56).

One who observes this basic principle will fulfill all the basic principles of the law the way God intended them (cf. 5:21-48; 22:37-40). Later Jewish tradition declares that the sage Hillel, who taught before Jesus did, had already seen this rule as “the heart of the law,” as Jesus also put it (possibly drawing on contemporary Greek concepts of the unwritten law — Jeremias 1963: 3). As the story goes, a Gentile approached both Hillel and his rival sage, promising each that he would convert to Judaism if the sage could teach it to him concisely (“while standing on one foot,” which was proverbial for doing something with ease, e.g., Hor. Sat. 1.4.10; plausibly but less likely, Jospe 1990 prefers reading rgl as the Latin “rule”). Hillel declared, “Do not do to your fellow what you hate to have done to you. This is the whole Law, entire; the rest is explanation. Go, learn!” (b. Shab. 31a as quoted in Moore 1971: 2:86-87).

This principle must guide one’s daily treatment of others. The principle is so natural that it appears in cultures totally isolated from the ancient Mediterranean, including Confucian teaching from sixth-century-B.C. China (verbally almost identical to the negative formulation above; see Jochim 1986: 125). The commonness of this principle should not surprise us because one of the most natural rules of ethics is that a person extrapolates from his or her own worth to that of others, and hence values others as oneself (cf., e.g., Sir 31:15); thus every person is morally responsible to recognize how he or she ought to treat every other person.

In Matthew’s ethics, no one so insensitive as to demean another human being on account of that person’s social station (e.g., a child — 18:3-4; 19:14; 21:16) warrants God’s mercy (5:7; 6:14-15; 7:1-5). This is the law of love, the principle by which Jesus epitomizes the entire humanward aspect of God’s law (22:39-40; cf. Jn 13:34-35), a principle Jesus’ earliest followers never forgot (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14; 6:2; Jas 2:8) What is distinctive about Matthew’s citation of the principle is its relation to the day of judgment in this context (7:1-2, 13-14; contrast Lk 6:31, where it naturally fits the flow of Lk 6:27-36//Mt 5:38-48).

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