Matthew's Gospel

Text
33 Πάλιν ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη τοῖς ἀρχαίοις· οὐκ ἐπιορκήσεις, ἀποδώσεις δὲ τῷ κυρίῳ τοὺς ὅρκους σου. 34 ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν μὴ ὀμόσαι ὅλως· μήτε ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὅτι θρόνος ἐστὶν τοῦ θεοῦ, 35 μήτε ἐν τῇ γῇ, ὅτι ὑποπόδιόν ἐστιν τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ, μήτε εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα, ὅτι πόλις ἐστὶν τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως, 36 μήτε ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ σου ὀμόσῃς, ὅτι οὐ δύνασαι μίαν τρίχα λευκὴν ποιῆσαι ἢ μέλαιναν. 37 ἔστω δὲ ὁ λόγος ὑμῶν ναὶ ναί, οὒ οὔ· τὸ δὲ περισσὸν τούτων ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἐστιν.^[1]

Translation
33 Again, you have heard that it was said to the ancients, “You [singular] will not break your oath, but you will fulfill your vows.” 34 But I am telling you all to not make oaths at all. Not by heaven, because it is the throne of God, 35 nor by the earth, because it is his footstool, nor for the sake of Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king, 36 nor by your head shall you swear because you do not have power to make one hair white or black. 37 Instead, let your word be Yes or No. Anything more than this is from the evil one.

Reflection
Two of the most important ideas to keep in mind when reading the Sermon on the Mount are that:

1. Matthew wrote it because he thought Jesus really wanted us to put it into practice.
2. There are exceptions to many of the commands that are simply assumed without elaboration. So the point is probably not merely that all oaths are bad (Jesus answered under oath in court in Matthew 26:63). There is likely to be something else going on.

There is some evidence that ancient persons were not future oriented in the same way that modern Americans are (note how often Paul cancelled his travel plans in his letters). In this way, it is possible that people would make lofty oaths to gain honor and trust in the present even though they had no intention to keeping their vows in the future. In fact, in 2 Corinthians, Paul notes that he wasn’t a man who broke oaths, but that his vacillation between visiting or not was not dishonesty but legitimate frustration with the Corinthians that kept him from visiting (2 Cor 1:16-24).
What Jesus seems to be saying is that grand gestures of fealty and integrity are unnecessary for God’s people. We simply need to say, ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Oaths taken for honor’s sake in the Old Testament never turned out well. Jesus even tells people to consider whether they will follow him and to weigh the options carefully (Luke 14:26-35). This is a message that is greatly needed in our present culture because lofty promises are made by politicians and millennial types often never show up to things they claimed they would intend. In a real way, Jesus’ teaching here appears to be moving integrity to the locus of personal consistency rather than the external locus of group rapport.

Translation Reflections
There is no reason for the phrase, “μήτε εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα” to be translated “nor by Jerusalem.” It carries the force, “nor for the sake of Jerusalem.” In other words, don’t even take oaths for the city.  I’ll have to look more deeply into this expression, but my instinct is that it is related to political zealotry, perhaps oaths to attack Rome when the moment is right. But the point is not the oaths, (which are prohibited with the infinitive, not the imperative), but the point is that that Jesus commands us to simply say yes or no and to do what we say we’ll do.

^[1] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Mt 5:33–37.

27 Ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη· οὐ μοιχεύσεις. 28 ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ. 29 εἰ δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ὁ δεξιὸς σκανδαλίζει σε, ἔξελε αὐτὸν καὶ βάλε ἀπὸ σοῦ· συμφέρει γάρ σοι ἵνα ἀπόληται ἓν τῶν μελῶν σου καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου βληθῇ εἰς γέενναν. 30 καὶ εἰ ἡ δεξιά σου χεὶρ σκανδαλίζει σε, ἔκκοψον αὐτὴν καὶ βάλε ἀπὸ σοῦ· συμφέρει γάρ σοι ἵνα ἀπόληται ἓν τῶν μελῶν σου καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου εἰς γέενναν ἀπέλθῃ.^[1]

Translation
27 You heard that it was said, “You will not commit adultery.” 28 But I am telling you that everyone who looks at a woman for the purpose of lusting after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 Now, if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and toss it from you; for it is better for you that one body part of yours be destroyed and not to have your whole body tossed into the Valley of Hinnom. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and toss it from you; for it is better for you that one body part of yours be destroyed and not to have your whole body go away into the Valley of Hinnom.

Reflection
Most interpret this passage to be Jesus’ using hyperbole to say, “Do whatever it takes not to sin.” I think it’s more of a metaphor. The eye and the hand are representative of favorite bodily actions or mental dispositions of thought/emotion. The reason this seems less clear to us is probably because we don’t read the Old Testament enough. The right hand/arm of a person is commonly representative of their strength/capabilities/accomplishments. Similarly, the eye is related to somebody’s intentions, internal disposition, and so-on. So, Jesus’ point here is not merely to use hyperbole to help us see how bad sin is, it is to use metaphor to show how much better it is to do without sin than to keep it.

In this case, the sins are dispositional sins regarding sexuality. The wrong way to take this is to think that, “I’ve already lusted, so I might as well have sex with a stranger.” The right way to think of it is, “I don’t get brownie points with God for being lascivious in my thoughts just because I’m too shy or scared to be evil in my actions.” Jesus’ rhetorical goal appears to be rooting out a warped view of other human beings that lurks behind the apparently chaste glances of the people who want to be a part of God’s kingdom.

Another important approach to this passage is that Jesus says that men (and indirectly, women) are responsible for their own lust. In the ancient world, it seems, women were commonly treated as blameworthy for men’s dispositions toward them. Jesus says that in God’s kingdom this is not how it should go. I would add that everybody, to some degree, knows that their actions will elicit certain behaviors from others but when somebody lusts after another, Jesus says that ultimately the luster is culpable, not the lustee. This is important for today because when Christians teach about modesty, I often hear them teach it from the perspective of “people might lust” rather than from the perspective of Scripture itself. For instance, Paul taught that modesty is connected with self-control, frugality, and good works (1 Timothy 2:8-10). Now, just because Jesus, in Matthew 5, primarily addresses men, does not mean that the teaching cannot likewise be applied to women.

Finally, this passage is intentionally limited to a particular aspect of human sexuality that the Bible deals with elsewhere. There is “looking in order to lust,” probably at somebody who is unavailable for marriage to you since the word adultery is used. But then there is looking with desire (same Greek word) because you’re single and they are too. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7, it’s also all over Proverbs, and Song of Solomon. There is a fine line here, but somebody who is sexually attractive to you could easily become your spouse. It’s not wrong to think, “I must have the attention of this person.” Jesus isn’t talking about that here. He’s talking about something that is a corollary to adultery: looking at a woman solely in order to fantasize about her (or a man). It’s clearly not about the motivation to get married because the whole unit of teaching is connected to a command against ruining marriages. In other words, single folks should not feel evil for thinking that somebody looks good. They also should either ask them out on a date or move on in order to avoid going into full blown pedestal/fantasy/lust mode over them.

Translation Comments:
A great many translations translate, “πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν” as “look with lust.” Προς or εις plus the articular infinitive take the meaning of “in order to” or “with the result that” so often, that translating it as “with” just blows my mind. I’ve never found that translation defended, I’ve only ever found it used. I think that the NIV translation of this passage (from conversations since my teenage years with Christians who read the NIV) makes a lot of people think that normal sexual desire is repudiated by Jesus. This simply is not so. Jesus commends married people and is clear that only some citizens of the kingdom of God will find it advantageous not to be married.

^[1] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Mt 5:27–30.