Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Notes

  1. KNT: “say yes when you mean yes, and no when you mean no.”

  2. There are some additional rulings. An example can be found in Numbers 30:3–15, where a woman’s vowed words are examined in the situation of her phase in life: before marriage, married, widowed, and divorced. The implication is that a woman’s vow can be overturned by her father and husband. Notably, Jesus’ words provide no opportunity for such patriarchalism because he demands honesty in all verbal exchanges, whether words from a woman or a man.

  3. See Josh McDowell, Right from Wrong (Nashville: Word, 1994), 11–22.

  4. Notice that if “but fulfill to the Lord the vows you made” derives explicitly from Ps 50:14, where the word “vows” (euchas) becomes “oaths” (orkous), the explicit change from euchas to orkous probably means Jesus is talking about oaths (not vows). But, since these two terms overlap, we need to avoid dogmatism. See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:534.

  5. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 212–14; A. Gross, “Oaths and Vows,” EDEJ, 1005–6.

  6. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 99. The simple fact is that “at all” means just that. Far wiser to see this as exaggerated rhetoric in a particular context of scaling obligations than to tamper with what the words actually mean.

  7. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 266.

  8. For an exceptional discussion of disagreement over this issue, with R. Aqiba agreeing more or less with Jesus, see m. Nedarim 1; see also m. Sanhedrin 3:2.

  9. But they did flex on this in requiring oaths to enter into the sect (1QS 5:8).

  10. S. McKnight, The Letter of James (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 423–29. The Greek has “yes yes” and “no no”, and the duplication serves to emphasize. We could translate, “Let your agreement be simply with Yes.” The use of No No or Yes Yes is not an alternative oath, as can be seen in 2 Enoch 49:1, which appears to be dependent on either our antithesis or Jas 5:12.

  11. D. Bonhoeffer, “”What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?” in Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 16; ed. M. S. Brocker; trans. L. E. Dahill; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 601–8. All citations are from these pages.

  12. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 264. See also his sketch of the history of interpretation (266–69).

  13. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 129. See the discussion of this in Quarles, Sermon on the Mount, 143–44.

  Chapter 9

  Matthew 5:38–42

  LISTEN to the Story

  38“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

  Listen to the text in the Story: Exodus 21:23–25; Leviticus 24:19–20; Deuteronomy 19:21; Obadiah 15.

  Where to begin? With justice. Justice is the core of the world’s system of appropriate and justifiable relations among people. Behind every attempt to define justice is a standard. In the United States that standard is the US Constitution, in England it is the Magna Carta, in Germany it is the Grundgesetz. A society’s legal standard creates a certain kind of society: the Germans call their society a Rechtsstaat—a society ruled by law. The same applies to England and to the United States, where we say we have the “rule of law.” “Justice,” then, is used for conditions and behaviors that conform to the standards or the laws at work in a particular society.

  But where do we get the standard so a society can be ruled by law? There is a social history and a theological answer. The social history answer is that, say, the USA got its laws from England, not to neglect important voices like those of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison; and England got its laws from Europe, and Europe from Rome and Greece. This will lead us to admit that all of the Western countries owe their basic legal systems to early codes like the Nomos of Solon and The Digest of Justinian. The prominent laws of a given society are the laws that have worked well in this history, and they are more or less the will of a society or the will of its lawmakers.1

  Ancient Israelites had the Torah of Moses, but with one major difference from our law codes: it was claimed that the Torah of Moses had a divine origin. This claim transformed Israel’s sense of justice because it became conditions and behaviors that conformed to the will of God. While the social history answer seeks to explain a given set of laws in light of its predecessors, a theological approach finds divine revelation. That revelation is expressed in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, and those laws were then worked out in rulings down the ages in Judaism in what was eventually called halakhot. So the Story of Israel, within which one can find the central role of the “story of the Torah,” has its own story of how justice is formed and reformed, shaped and reshaped. In other words, the Torah story is one of formation and adaptation, and these adaptations (later rulings of interpretation) were sometimes perceived as divine.

  In both the social and theological worlds, a staple of law is commensurable punishment. Punishments are to be equal to the crime. In Latin this is called lex talionis, or the law of retribution. A fundamental expression of this is found in Exodus 21:23–25:

  But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

  This lex talionis is expressed more theoretically in Leviticus 24:19–20:

  Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.

  A third expression in Deuteronomy 19:21 is much like Exodus 21 but a bit more succinct:

  Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

  The impact of these three expressions of law is clear: justice requires retribution. Notice the words “show no pity,” and “if there is … you are to take … ,” and “anyone who injures … is to be injured….” But retribution is limited, but equal to, the original injury. This principle of equal retribution curbs violence and prevents vengeance from spinning out of control.

  A good example of reckless violence in the Bible is Lamech in Genesis 4:23–24. Samson in Judges 16:28 relishes victory over his enemy when he transforms blindness into the death of many. But settling on the Old Testament as offering the lex talionis only to restrict revenge misses a major theme: retribution is demanded in these texts. The lex talionis leads to two fundamentals of law: required retribution and equal retribution. By making it law, punishment is moved out of the private sphere into the sphere of the public forum. For Israel, behind the lex talionis stands a God who himself takes vengeance (cf. Ezek 16:59; Obad 15).

  Jesus steps into this legal history.2 What he teaches in this fifth antithesis is both a revelation of God’s intent and a “constitution” for the kingdom society. This text is a Messianic Ethic for the messianic community and an Ethic from Beyond. Instead of the requirement of retribution, Jesus reveals that grace, love, and forgiveness can reverse the dangers of retribution and, even more, create an alternative society.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  Unlike the previous two antitheses, where Jesus summarized one or more passages, this time he simply quotes Scripture. Still, there is no way to know which text he is quoting because the same precise words are found at Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; and Deuteronomy 19:21, and we will also need to take looks at texts like Genesis 9:6; Exodus 21:28–32; Leviticus 19:18; Numbers 35:31–32; Deuteronomy 25:11–12; 32:35; Judges 1:6–7; 2 Samuel 4:9–12; 1 Kings 20:39, 42; Esther 7:10; Job 2:4; Psalms 9–10; Proverbs 20:22; 24:29; 25:21–22; and Daniel 6:19–24. Jesus quotes the Torah and then counters an understanding of Torah with his own kingdom ethics, his Ethic fr
om Beyond. Anyone who heard Jesus would have asked, “Who does he think he is?” That is, we see again his Messianic Ethic.

  Lex Talionis

  Israel’s law on retaliation included both capital punishment (“life for life”) and corporal punishment (“tooth for tooth”). It is not entirely clear if ancient Israelites distinguished manslaughter (unintentional) from murder (intentional) as carefully as we do in Western law (cf. Exod 21:18–19; Num 35:22–23; Deut 19:5). The principle here is not just “life” but the taking of a “human life,” and it required the retribution of capital sentence. The death of another person’s animal only required a commensurate animal’s life (cf. Lev 24:17–21). As well, a feature of Israel’s talion law is that it is egalitarian: man or woman, young or old, rich or poor—each is subject to retribution while some Mesopotamian cultures scaled the retribution according to one’s status.3

  The requirement of equal retribution was at times transformed into financial compensation. At Numbers 35:31 we read, “Do not accept a ransom [a fine] for the life of a murderer.” The prohibition of a “ransom” for the taking of a life implies that a ransom was paid for other crimes. Fines are clearly taught by later rabbis for at least the “tooth for a tooth” law. Thus, Mishnah Baba Qamma 8:1 says: “He who injures his fellow is liable to [compensate] him on five counts: injury, pain, medical costs, loss of income, and indignity.” This leads to how much one is worth, and here is the ruling: “If one has blinded his eye, cut off his hand, broken his leg, they regard him as a slave up for sale in the market and make an estimate of how much he was worth beforehand [when whole], and how much he is now worth.” The lex talionis is still required but converted into financial value. The potentially barbaric nature of the talion led many to convert punishment into fines. But rendering the retribution into financial compensation does not go as far as Jesus went.

  Jesus’ Kingdom Vision: Nonresistant Love

  The lex talionis was not just about curbing violence; it was an emphatic requirement of justice. Deuteronomy 19:21 says, “Show no pity.” The “no pity” clause is not just for cases of murder but for the entire system: “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” A crime required a just retribution.

  There is no way around explaining what Jesus is saying in our text: Jesus overtly ends the Mosaic command to “show no pity” in the appropriation of the lex talionis and in its place orders his followers to be merciful. Jesus’ words take the lex talionis to a different place: that law was concerned with the requirement of equal retribution while Jesus undermines the requirement and reshapes how his followers are to respond to perpetrators. Jesus’ words are: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.” Or, as Tom Wright has it, “don’t use violence to resist evil!” (KNT). Bonhoeffer draws us to Jesus’ kingdom society: “Jesus releases his community from the political and legal order, from the national form of the people of Israel, and makes it into what it truly is, namely, the community of the faithful that is not bound by political or national ties.”4

  Jesus uses a term that indicates “nonresistance” (antistēnai), but the specifics of this word take on concrete variations in the lines that follow and caution us to build our beliefs on the specifics instead of on our philosophy. His examples reveal that “do not resist” is as much a positive action of love as it is a negative posture. It could be translated, “Be ready for an act of grace.” Jesus’ words also “resist” Moses’ words: the older framework was one of resisting injustice by requiring equal retribution, but Jesus denounces resistance. It is too easy to stand up and give a big clap for Jesus and his innovation. The facts are that Jesus is not alone in his Jewish world in this teaching, and there are precedents in the Old Testament itself (Lev 19:18; Prov 20:22; 24:29). He is, then, drawing on a latent theme in the Bible and in his Jewish world, and there are similar ideas in the wider Mediterranean world.5

  It is not clear why Jesus teaches this. It may be that he saw the lex talionis as a permission granted because of the sinfulness of Israel. Such an approach is not consciously expressed here, as it is in the divorce teaching of Jesus, but by implication has something to commend it. Jesus is teaching a kingdom ethic, and the kingdom will not trade in retribution because people will live justly, lovingly, and peacefully with one another. Bringing that kingdom reality into the present is what the kingdom ethic of Jesus is all about. Hence, one could infer from his Ethic from Beyond that the entire legal apparatus was only a permission from God rather than the intent of God for his true people. I’m inclined to accept this interpretation but not to grant it logical priority. In addition to this reading, is there not an inkling of resignation here, as if Jesus were saying, “Look, guys, you can do nothing about it so you might as well go limp in the face of their power”? And neither does Jesus seem to be using this as a strategy, as if he were saying, “The really good way to get their goat or to get them on our side is to cooperate.”

  Rather, Jesus’ ethic here, like so much of his Messianic Ethic, is shaped by the Jesus Creed of loving God and loving others. Those who love will love even those who dish out injustices. A person shaped by the Jesus Creed responds to injustice not with retaliation and vengeance but with grace, compassion, and abundant mercy in such a way that it reverses injustice. In other words, Jesus’ followers dwell in an alternative society that protests systemic injustice and embodies an alternative love-shaped justice. No one said this better than Bonhoeffer, whose final end embodied it: “Evil will become powerless when it finds no opposing object, no resistance, but, instead, is willingly borne and suffered. Evil meets an opponent for which it is not a match.”6

  Jesus defines the one who treats others unjustly with this expression: “an evil person.” The word used here (ponēros) is the same word used in 5:37: “from the evil one.” Whether or not that text or this text is referring to the Evil One, i.e., Satan (cf. 12:45; 13:19), is less important than seeing the character of those who deal in injustice (20:15). He refers to those who sin (7:11; 12:34–35; 13:38; 15:19), who break shalom, who are unloving, and who violate the codes of the Torah.7 But this term “evil” could be a code word for those who “belong to the other group,” those who don’t follow Jesus or who are Gentiles (cf. 5:45; 7:17–18; 13:49; 18:32; 22:10; 25:26). Thus, though perhaps a little on the speculative side, the term could be referring to “Romans.”

  But Jesus’ point is not so much to label the other person as “evil” but to reveal to his followers that messianic people respond to the “other” with nonresistant, life-transforming love. In fact, Jesus prepares for the next antithesis by showing that in his Ethic from Beyond, the “evil person” becomes the “neighbor.”

  Examples of Jesus’ Kingdom Vision of Nonresistance

  Jesus’ four examples of how to behave “nonresistantly” to “evil” persons emerge from the concrete experience of subjection to Rome. The four examples, and they may be in descending order of severity of offense, concern being insulted, being sued in court, being conscripted to support the Roman military, and being asked to help others with money.8 In each instance Jesus advocates grace beyond retribution and expectation. He does not advocate passivity but active generosity that deconstructs the system because of the presence of the kingdom. Surrendering one’s rights for the good of the other manifests the Jesus Creed and its variant, the Golden Rule of 7:12.

  Reading this antithesis in light of the Story of God in the Bible, with its concentration on Jesus as the center of the Story, cannot help but find parallels in Isaiah 50’s servant description.9 Most notably, Isaiah 50:6–8:

  I offered my back to those who beat me,

  my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;

  I did not hide my face

  from mocking and spitting.

  Because the Sovereign LORD helps me,

  I will not be disgraced.

  Therefore have I set my face like flint,

  and I know I will not be put to shame.

  He who vindica
tes me is near.

  Who then will bring charges against me?

  Let us face each other!

  Who is my accuser?

  Let him confront me!

  “If anyone slaps you …”: For a person to be slapped on the right cheek apparently assumes being hit by a person facing them with a backhanded slap (or a left-handed person striking a person with an open hand). The backhanded slap is a gross insult to the dignity of a person. This principle of the later rabbinic rulings probably reflects the social customs at work in first-century Galilee, and here is the principle: “Everything is in accord with one’s station [status].” This means, “if he smacked him, he pays him two hundred zuz.” But, the text continues, “if it is with the back of the hand, he pays him four hundred zuz” (Mishnah Baba Qamma 8:6, italics added). Instead of striking back, which would be both justifiable and equal retribution and a part of Moses’ “no mercy” law, Jesus creates an almost laughable scene of grace: “turn to them the other cheek also.” This is how Jesus did respond (Matt 26:67).

  “If anyone wants to sue you …”: Jesus subverts and parodies a legal setting and a social custom. Males wore two levels of clothing: an outer cloak and an inner garment, roughly a coat and shirt. In the event someone seeks to sue a follower of Jesus in court, and the reasons aren’t stated, and they sue for one’s shirt (undergarment), Jesus urges his followers to go further and give them the robe as well. But the social custom is more particular here, as it was in the previous example: a person’s robe was used both as a cover and a sleeping blanket, but it was prohibited to take such from an Israelite for any length of time (cf. Exod 22:26–27; Deut 24:12–13). So the person suing goes for what is legal (a shirt), but Jesus goes further by urging his followers to relinquish their rights to a robe. This would deprive the person of standard comforts and provision. What Jesus says, at face value, is to strip in front of the person as a means of exhibiting radical distance from social custom. Jesus experienced this too (cf. Matt 27:35).