Matthew Chapter 5 verse 22 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 22. - But I say unto you. "I" emphatic (as also in vers. 28, 32, 34, 39, 44), in contrast to God, as God's utterance was then conditioned; i.e. in contrast to God's voice to and through Moses (cf. John 1:17; John 7:23; Hebrews 10:28, 29). Christ claims for his words the same authority, and more than the same authority, as for those spoken once by God. The circumstances had altered; the message for τοῖς ἀρχαίοις was insufficient now. Christ brings his own Personality forward, and claims to give a more perfect and far-reaching statement of the sixth commandment than the current form of its teaching, notwithstanding the fact that this current form represented truly the original thought underlying its promulgation. In the following words our Lord speaks of three grades of auger, and, as answering to them, of three grades of punishment. The former will be examined under the several terms employed. Upon the latter it is necessary to make a few remarks here. They have been very variously understood. (1) (a) "The judgment" means the judgment of God alone, for he alone can take cognizance of mere anger; (b) "the council" means the judgment of the Sanhedrin, "a publick tryal;" . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(22) I say unto you.--The I is emphasized in the Greek. It was this probably that, more than anything else, led to the feeling of wonder expressed in Matthew 7:28-29. The scribe in his teaching invariably referred to this Rabbi and that; the new Teacher spoke as one having a higher authority of His own.Angry . . . without a cause.--The last three words are wanting in many of the best MSS. They may have been inserted to soften down the apparent harshness of the teaching; but if so, it must have been at an early date--before the fourth century. They may, on the other hand, have been in the text originally, and struck out, as giving too wide a margin to vain and vague excuses. Ethically, the teaching is not that the emotion of anger, with or without a cause, stands on the same level of guilt with murder, but that the former so soon expands and explodes into the latter, that it will be brought to trial and sentenced according to the merits of each case, the occasion of the anger, the degree in which it has been checked or cherished, and the like. As no earthly tribunal can take cognisance of emotions as such, the "judgment" here is clearly that of the Unseen Judge dealing with offences which in His eyes are of the same character as those which come before the human judges. "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?"Raca.--As far as the dictionary sense of the word goes, it is the same as that of the "vain fellows" of Judges 9:4, Jdg_11:3; Proverbs 12:11; but all words of abuse depend for their full force on popular association, and raca, like words of kindred meaning among ourselves, was in common use as expressing not anger only but insolent contempt. The temper condemned is that in which anger has so far gained the mastery that we no longer recognise a "brother" in the man who has offended us, but look on him with malignant scorn.The council.--Offences of this kind are placed by our Lord on the same level as those which came before the great court of the Sanhedrim. That word, though it looks like Hebrew, is really only a transliterated form of the Greek word for council. The court consisted of seventy or seventy-two members, with a president and vice-president, and was made up of the heads of the twenty-four courses of the priests, with forty-six or forty-eight (how chosen it is not known) from the "elders" and "scribes." Like the Areopagus at Athens, it took cognisance--as in the case of our Lord (Matthew 26:65) and Stephen (Acts 6:13)--of blasphemy and other like offences, and its peculiar prerogative was that it could order death by stoning. The point of our Lord's teaching was, therefore, that to scorn God's image in man is to do dishonour to God Himself. We cannot truly "fear God" unless we also "honour all men" (1Peter 2:17). The reverence for humanity as such must extend even to the man who has most provoked us. In the unseen eternal world the want of that reverence has its own appropriate punishment. . . .