Bible Commentaries
Matthew 5

Verses 1-48

V 1-VII 29 Sermon on the Mount. Structure and Content —The discourse, four times as long in Mt as in Lk, appears to have been expanded by the evangelist according to a fairly recognizable plan. Internal criticism and comparison with Lk’s gospel indicate Mt’s deliberate insertion of some passages of our Lord’s discourses spoken on other occasions. This is in accord with the evangelist’s habit of synthesis (cf. Introduction, §678c). But Mt has not been haphazard: though the connexion in some places be loose, the discourse as it stands is a connected whole and Mt proposes it as such. According to Lagrange the imported passages are as follows: 5:13-16 (Luke 14:34f.; 11:3); 5:18 (Luke 16:17); 5:25-26 (Luke 12:57-59); 6:7-15 (Luke 11:2-4) 6:19-34 (Luke 12:33 f; 11:34-36; 16:13; 12:22-32); 7:7-11 (Luke 11:9-13); 7:22-23 (Luke 13:26f.). The Sermon, pronounced in substance in the first few months of the Galilean ministry, sounds the keynote of the new Age which our Lord has come to introduce. The new spirit (and with this our Lord is chiefly concerned) is to be gentle, 5:3-121, generous, 5:21-24, 38-47, thorough, 5:27-30, simple, 5:33-37, and above all sincere, 6:1-6, 16-18. It must not be arrogantly censorious, 7:1-5, but rather mistrustful of self, 7:13-14, yet sober, prudent, discriminating, 7:15-20, and, finally, energetic, 7:21-27. In short, the spirit of one always consciously imitating his perfect and watchful Father, 5:48. Since this fatherhood of God pervades the discourse, 6:4, 9, 15, 18, 26, 32; 7:11, implicit appeal is made throughout to filial love. Love is to be the mainspring of the new era—and love can ask more than fear can command. God, through his prophets demanded less of a people that had to be mastered by awe; when the time was ripe he, through his Son, asked more of those who were made free by love; cf. Augustine, PL 34, 1231. The new spirit is thus at variance with the Pharisaic ideal by reason of the emphasis laid upon the spirit at the expense of the letter of the Mosaic Code and of the casuistry that had gathered’ about it. The Law does not pass, on the contrary its moral commands remain, but the fullness of time demands a new perspective. The Law, of its nature, could not go deep enough into the heart of man; its Pharisaic interpretations had spread too widely over his external actions. Hitherto there has been a wrong emphasis and an imperfect law. On our Lord’s attitude to the Law cf. the interesting study of * P. Lestringant, Essai sur I’Unité de la Révélation Biblique ( Paris 1942) 44-62.

Analysis. (1 ) The New Spirit: Basic Qualities and Rewards, 5:3-12—The selfless outlook, having little to attract externally, must first be presented with prospect of heavenly reward (Beatitudes). 13-16 are a parenthetical warning to the preachers of the new spirit. (2 ) The New Spirit and the Old Law: perfecting, not opposing, 5: 17-48. (i) The principle laid down, 5:17-20. (ii) The principle explained by examples, 5:21-48. (a) Murder and ’ internal ’ murder (anger), 5:21-26. (b) Adultery and’ internal ’adultery (impure thoughts etc.), 5:27f. (c) Divorce once restricted now abrogated, 5:31-32. (d) Oaths once regulated now declared unnecessary, 5:33-37. (e) Strict justice gives way to mercy, 5:38-42. (f) Limited charity to break its old bounds, 5:43-47 (3 ) The New Spirit and Hypocrisy, 6:1-6, 16-18 , (i) Example taken from almsgiving, 6:2-4. (ii) From prayer, 6:5-6; followed, 6:7-15, by a development on the subject of prayer. (iii) From fasting, 6:16-18. (4 ) Interlude on the Demands of the New Spirit, 6:19-34. These verses occupy a central place in Mt’s arrangement. They describe the outlook that the new spirit demands-the single heart and the will confidently surrendered to the Father. (5 ) The New Spirit in Action, 7:1-27, (i) Its social manifestation (charity, prudence), 7:1-6, 12. (ii) Its difficulties and unpopularity, 7:13-14. (iii) Its opponents, 7:15-20. (iv) Its true possessors, 7:21-23. (v) Reward of action; penalty of lethargy, 7:24-27. Note: 7:7-11, absent from Lk’s sermon, on the efficacy of prayer, have no clear connexion with the context.

V 1-12 Introduction and Beatitudes— 1-2. ’The mountain’ which served as our Lord’s pulpit was evidently a hill near Capharnaum (cf. 4:13; 8:1, 5) dominating the plain of Genesar. It is perhaps near et-Tabgha, about half an hour’s walk from Capharnaum (DBS 1, 947-50). Among the audience were many besides his more regular followers, 7:28.

3-12. The sermon opens with a series of magisterial pronouncements which, in rhythmic prose, describe and approve the new spirit that our Lord is to preach. The form chosen (’Blessed’, Latin: ’Beati’; hence ’Beatitudes; ’) is biblical; Psalms 1:1; Psalms 111:1; Proverbs 3:13 etc. The qualities mentioned are so clearly the product of one, consistent, spiritual outlook (’many facets of one diamond’) that the shades of difference are at times very faint. The number of Beatitudes is reckoned variously as 7 (by elimination of 4), 8 (retaining 4), 9 (reckoning all the ’Beati’ formulae, even that of 11), 10 (as a new ’Decalogue’). The last is the least probable and the choice probably lies between 7 (Lagrange) and 8 (Pirot, Buzy).

3. The ’poor in spirit’ of Mt (i.e. lowly in their own estimation) renders the sense of Lk’s ’poor’ (probably the original form of the dictum) since ’poor’ in biblical language indicates all in adversity (rich and poor) who humbly turn to God; cf.*Plummer 64, It is for such that the kingdom, even now awaiting them ’in heaven, is designed; cf.Isaiah 61:1.4. The term ’meek’ (p?ae?+??) in its OT background seems to imply much the same as ’poor’ (pt???í) but lays more emphasis on manly resignation to adversity and less on the adversity itself. The reward in its original setting (Psalms 36:11, almost verbatim) is of prosperity in the land of promise. In this context, however, the land’ is a reward as spritual as the kingdom of heaven, 3, or the vision of God, 8, and indeed the qualities our Lord demands (meekness etc.) are unlikely to win political success.

5. The third blessing (reckoned in the second place by many ancient manuscripts and modern authorities, cf. WV) is for those who have cause to lament (without complaint, as is clear). It is a challenge and an answer to the problem of suffering. The promised’ comfort’, as the atmosphere of the promises shows, will far exceed the sorrow, John 16:20.

6. The eager desire for ’justice’ will be more than satisfied. This ’justice’ may be the state of the soul described in the Sermon (’justness ’ WV) or possibly the manifestation of divine justice when God is to reward the poor, the meek, the afflicted; cf. DBS 1, 935.

7. The ’merciful’ (i.e. forgiving, sympathetic, etc. to others) will obtain God’s pardon which, to meet man’s needs, must be and is infinitely greater than man’s; cf. 18:23-25.

8. From the heart come (in Heb. metaphor; cf. RB 31 [ 1922] 493-508) thought, plans, memory, affections; its ’cleanness’ (cf.Psalms 23:4) means, therefore, a freedom from blemished purpose. This purpose is, as the reward shows, the search for God. Nothing short of the direct vision of God will be its recompense, envisaged already in the OT, Ps 16(17) 15 (HT), more clearly in the New, 1 Corinthians 13:12; I John 3:12.

9. The ’peacemakers’ are those who by patience and, if, necessary, judicious intervention spread their own inward peace about them, These shall be called (i.e. ’shall be’, in Heb. idiom) children of God—made in the likeness of the God of peace, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, whose Son by nature is ’the Lord of peace’, 2 Thessalonians 3:16.

10. Persecution endured for the sake of the religion of which our Lord is the founder and object (cf.Luke 6:22, ’for the Son of Man’s sake’) is pronounced a’blessing (cf.Acts 5:40 because it establishes a claim to the kingdom of heaven. This last phrase (10b) echoes that of 3b; if this is the Semitic literary device known as ’inclusion’ (the ending of a discourse as it began, cf. 15:2-20; 16:6-11; 18:10-14; 19:4-8; 19:13-15), it is probable that the Beatitudes finish here.

11-12. An expansion of the last beatitude with the warmth and appeal of personal address and the added consolation of suffering with God’s chosen prophets.

13-16. dealing with the responsibilities arising from the world-importance of Christian discipleship (cf.Mark 4:21; Mark 9:50; Luke 14:34-35; 8:16; 11:33) have no close connexion with the context. The world (the ’earth’) is henceforth dependent for its moral well-being on the preservative influence of the Christian disciple. If this ’salt’ become insipid (as the impure salt of common Palestinian usage could), there is nothing in the world to restore its savour. It is so much rubbish to be cast out into the street (the oriental refuse-bin). Even the world as it passes spurns the disciple who has lost his fervour. The comparison changes to light, like salt a necessity of life. The disciples have the social obligation (not incompatible with personal humility, cf. 6:1, 52, 16) of lighting the way to the Father by their example for a world in darkness. If they shirk this responsibility they thwart their public purpose; they will be as useless, as a lamp hidden behind the flour-bin (’bushel’; µód??? actually means one peck in dry measure; here used for the jar that contains it). The comparison of the hill-town is surprising here and may be a separate saying of our Lord inserted in this place for convenience. The image recalls Matthew 16:18.

17-48 New Spirit and Old Law. V 17-20 The Principle— 20. The solemnity of our Lord’s opening pronouncements and his clear intention of inaugurating a new religious movement make it necessary for him to explain his position with regard to the Mosaic Law. He has not come to abrogate (?ata??e??) but to bring it to perfection (p?ð???+??), i.e. to reveal the full intention of the divine legislator (cf. 22:40 note). The sense of this ’fulfilling’ will become apparent from the few samples he chooses, 21-48; the object of it is the total expression of God’s will in the old.order (’the Law and the. Prophets’). Here, as the context shows, the emphasis is rather on the moral life in the new kingdom than on the fulfilment of prophecy in the person of its founder.

18. Far from dying (our Lord proceeds, in this parenthetical verse) the old moral order is to rise to a new life, infused with a new spirit. Not its tiniest letter (the letter yod = i, in the square alphabet of our Lord’s time) nor’ flourish’ (KNT) of a letter (narrowly distinguishing letters like kaph and beth) is to pass away. It is as durable as the heavens and the earth themselves (cf.Luke 16:17, e???p?te???). 19, pursuing the statement of 17 (cf. ’therefore’) insists that this re-born Law will be enforced with no less rigour. The Christian disciple is perforce always a teacher by his example, 13-16: neglect even of the minutiae will be noticed and will do damage. The new order is to be distinguished by the perfection of its inward spirit, 21-48, but it will not dispense with external works. By its exacting standards the careless disciple will be accounted less than his more scrupulous brother. The ’kingdom’ in this and the following verse would appear to be the new kingdom of Christ on earth in which the Law and the Prophets find their goal and their deepest sense.

20. Membership of this kingdom imperatively demands a sanctity more generous than that of the leading exponents of the Mosaic Law because its ideals are higher and its spirit more profound.

V 21-26 First Example of the New Spirit: Thou shalt not kill— 21. For the prohibition cf.Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17 and, for its sanction, Exodus 21:12; Leviticus 24:17. The old Law, being a law, could control effectively only external acts. The new spirit reaches down to the innermost part of. man and its sanctions are of the spiritual order. This double truth is expressed in Semitic fashion by our Lord in three parallel and synonymous sentences without crescendo, but with cumulative effect. For internal anger or a sharp, angry word man is to be accountable before the tribunal of God (?????? t?+? ??íse? . . . t? a??ed?í?) and thus liable to divine punishment (?????? e?? t?? ??e??a?). The tribunals mentioned (DV ’the judgement’ and ’the council’, i.e. Sanhedrin—perhaps, respectively local and central courts) are terms symbolic of God’s judgement as the last sanction (hell-fire) shows and as the context demands. The Aramaic word ’ Raca’ (rêqa’ or ’empty-head) means much the same as the ’fool’ (µ??ó?) of the later part of the verse. The Aramaic Gêhmnâm (DV ’hell’; ??e??a), i.e. ’Valley of Hinnom’, a ravine touching Jerusalem on the south, was the ever smouldering rubbish-dump (cf.2 Kg 23: 10) of the city. In some pre-Christian Jewish writings it becomes the place of punishment for the wicked. Used symbolically it is opposed to eternal life by our Lord himself, 18:19. The shock of the phrase in our context is lessened if we remember that our Lord is simply saying in striking language that the smallest faults of enmity are matter for accusation before a divine tribunal in whose competence lies even the extreme spiritual penalty. Naturally the tribunal will judge of greater or less. Nevertheless our Lord seems to imply that even internal anger can be murderous and so of mortal guilt (cf. ST II, 2, 158, 3 ad 2). The virtue of charity, therefore, comes before all ceremonial pieties, even that of sacrifice (’gift’).

25-26. It is a matter of spiritual prudence, too, as our Lord parabolically explains (cf.Luke 12:58-59). We owe a debt of charity; the prudent debtor will attempt an amicable arrangement before the matter comes to court and so to imprisonment. The solemnity of our Lord’s warning suggests the spiritual application of the parable.

V 27-30 Second Example: Thou shalt not commit Adultery (Matthew 18:8f.; Mark 9:43, Mark 9:47)—The prohibition (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:15; cf.Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22) in the polygamous society of Moses’ day attached to the wife but not to the husband (over whom none of the wives had exclusive rights)—unless, of course, he sinned with the wife of another. Hence the punishment of Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22 is appointed only for a wife and her accomplice. Our Lord, who is directly addressing men, again condemns the internal act even if unaccompanied by external effect (DV ’to lust’, p??? t? ?p?Tµ?+?sa?, i.e. ’to the point of lusting). He is the first to point this out (the Rabbis quoted in this connexion, SB 1, 299, are post-Christian). The energetic language in which our Lord warns against the occasion of sin must not be taken literally, such language has its freedoms: the left eye, for instance, is no less a danger than the right. ’Right eye’ and ’right hand’ clearly mean all we hold most dear. If these are a trap (s???da???) in the moral path they must be put aside.

V 31-32 Third Example: Let him give her a bill of Divorce’ (Luke 16:18; Mark 10:11f., Matthew 19:9)—Deuteronomy 24:1-4 mitigated the evils of divorce by demanding of the husband a formal renunciation of rights in the interest of the dismissed wife. Our Lord, attacking the matter radically, roundly denounces divorce itself as incompatible with the new spirit. The whole tone of the Sermon and the magisterial ’But I say to you’ lead us to expect a fundamental reform. Clearly our Lord is not simply taking sides in a rabbinic dispute. Rather is he robbing those disputes of meaning. (See § 708b-d, 19:3-12).

V 33-37 Fourth Example: Thou shalt not forswear thyself (Mt only)—The Old Law, Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 23:21; Numbers 30:3, forbade perjury and infidelity to solemn vows made to the Lord. This was good so far as it went, but such external vehemence should be unnecessary in the new regime of inward sincerity of mind and honesty of purpose. Henceforth, therefore, it will involve a disrespectful use of God’s name amounting to a usurpation of what belongs to God. The disrespect is no less if the Name be casuistically avoided, as when the Pharisees swore by heaven and by the temple. They even sustained the validity of oaths made to the detriment of justice as when, e.g. a husband vowed to deprive his wife of conjugal rights. (This last practice was so common that it may account for the juxtaposition of Divorce and Oaths in the Sermon, Lagrange.) Man, therefore, has no right to pledge what is God’s. He must not swear even by his own body, for over this, too, God has dominion, not man: the youth cannot make his dark hair grey, nor the old man his white hairs black. Our Lord asks for a simplicity of speech that reflects the equable spirit ’Let your word "Yes" be "Yes"; your " No", "No"’ (cf.James 5:12). Extravagant vehemence proceeds from a disordered state of human relations (’is of evil’) and has no place in the new order. In this, it should be noted, our Lord is giving a general rule of Christian life; moreover, his clear-cut phrases must be interpreted with the finesse that all aphorisms demand. Thus, for example, it was no less clear to him than it is to us that some answers cannot be ’Yes’ or ’No ’without misleading. Thus, also, he is not attacking juridical procedure in which oaths are calmly and respectfully taken. Yet even here the necessity for such oaths issues from a defect which, though characteristic of human societies, should be absent from the kingdom whose charter our Lord defines.

V 38-42 Fifth Example: ’An eye for an eye’ (Luke 6:29 f)—The Mosaic code (Leviticus 24:19f) sanctioned the existing practice of vendetta, but restrained it by the principle known in Roman Law as talio (cf. Lat. ’talis’, Eng. ’retaliation’) : the compensation was not to exceed the damage. This principle of personal vindication, effective in primitive conditions and the unpoliced State, had probably taken the shape of pecuniary compensation in gospel times. Our Lord, again speaking for the individual Christian soul and not for governments, subordinates strict justice to generous charity. Four little examples illustrate his point. Here again allowance must be made for the vigour of his language: he himself did not literally ’turn the other cheek’, John 18:23, but his prayer, ’Father forgive them’, Luke 23:34, shows what he means. The second picture, 40, is of the law-court where a man is sued for his undergarment—’ Let him take thy cloak, too!’ The third, 41, is of a man (or his beast) temporarily requisitioned for State service by way of errand or transport (???a?e?se? DV ’force’, is technical in this sense). Let such a one overcome his natural resentment by, doing more than he is forced to do. As for the borrower (the fourth picture, 42 ), our Lord recommends neither the worldly prudence of a Polonius nor (for the whole context would protest) the investments of a Shylock.

V 43-47 Sixth Example: ’Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy (Luke 6:27 f.)—Only the first half of this sentence is found in the OT, Lev 19-18. Bearing in mind the sharp Semitic antithesis, the occasional Heb. use of the word ’hate’, Genesis 29:31; Malachi 1:2f., and the hint of’ permission’ often contained in the future tense, we may thus render the second half of the sentence: ’but need not love thy enemy’ (Joüon). The old Law, addressed primarily to a nation, secondarily to individuals, was perforce at war with pagan foreigners inasmuch as they Were a menace to the purity of race and religion, Deuteronomy 23:6. Moreover, by the lex talionis, § 686d, it committed to individuals the punishment of enemies (’hate’ in the juridical order). For the OT and the Rabbis, the ’neighbour’ is the Israelite. For our Lord (cf.Luke 10:36) the word admits of no exception. ’Jesus was the first to teach mankind to regard everyone as a neighbour and to love him’ (SB I, 354). Our Lord recommends not tolerance but positive beneficence: ’Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you! This shorter version of 44 is to be read with the best manuscripts; cf. WV.

45. In this we shall be in the likeness of God—demonstrably his children—because he (not ’who’ DV.), with his sun and rain, feeds the lands of friend and enemy alike. If we refuse this, in what are we superior to the despised publicans (9:9 note) or the pagans? If we salute only those of our clique, what generosity is this? (t? pe??ss?? p??e?+?te). (For the Aramaic flavour of 43-48, cf. Black, 137-9.) 48. By way of conclusion to his programme of the new perfection our Lord refuses to set bounds to the ideal. The children are asked to aim at the completeness of their spiritual capacity. When, in their measure, they achieve this they will be like their Father who possesses (though he eternally and of necessity) the fullness of his being.