Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

The thesis that precedes the antithesis is clear. “Those of ancient times” are the Israelites who received the Torah at Sinai. To that generation, and thus to all of Israel, “it was said.…” The passive construction is used at this point to avoid employing the name “God.” What it means is that God said to Israel, when proclaiming the Torah at Sinai, “You shall not murder.” This is a word-for-word quotation of the prohibition of murder in Exodus 20:13, with the addition of “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” There is nothing more said about what will then happen to the murderer on trial, since that is obvious. One who murders another human being is punished with death (cf., e.g., Lev 24:17). That is the thesis. Jesus is only reminding his hearers of what was known to every Jew of his time.

But now comes his antithesis: “But I say to you.” This “but I” is uncanny, because if God has already spoken, then “but I” can only mean: “Now I am speaking with the same authority with which God formerly spoke. I am speaking in the role and in the place of God.”

And what does Jesus say? What does he proclaim with the same authority once exercised by God at Sinai? He says that bitterness against one’s brother or sister, that is, against one’s fellow believer among the people of God, is the same thing as murder. Just as a murderer is brought to judgment and then punished with death, so will anyone who is merely angry at the fellow believer be brought to judgment and punished with death.

Given the way the antithesis is laid out, the anger against the fellow believer can, naturally, only be an internal emotion, anger in the heart, cold rage against the other—that is, something that would never bring anyone before the judge because it is not justiciable. Otherwise, the antithesis would not function.²⁵ Jesus is saying: “God has ordered that for murder one must be brought to judgment. But I am now decreeing that one must be brought to judgment even for holding anger in one’s heart.” It had to be clear to every hearer, at least after the initial shock, that while Jesus is formulating his words as a legal decree (if someone does such-and-such, then this and that will follow), in reality he is using that form only to uncover what it means to be angry with a fellow believer. It is like murder.

This play of language, sharpened to the utmost, is characteristic of Jesus. He can use imagery that is scarcely bearable, such as that of a beam in the eye (Matt 7:3), of tearing out one’s own eye (Matt 5:29), of swallowing a camel (Matt 23:24). But he can also play with rhetorical genres to provoke or, better, to bring his hearers to insights they constantly repress. In our case this is the recognition that the deep division in the people of God that prevents them from becoming a sign for the world begins with anger against the sister or brother. No, it does not merely begin there; when anger is present, destruction is already at hand. Internal bitterness is murder of the sister or brother, murder of the people of God.

What was Jesus doing with this antithetical speech in Matthew 5:21-22? Did he abolish the Torah, or the fifth commandment of the Decalogue? By no means! Did he replace the Torah with a new commandment? Not that either! He left the fifth commandment as it stands, irreplaceable and unconditionally necessary. But he grasped it down to its roots. Murder begins in the heart and the head. It begins with anger.

And now the crucial point: this working out of the root of the fifth commandment happens already in the Torah itself. It is nothing new. When Cain was envious of his brother, when his anger boiled over and his face sank to the ground, God said to him, “If you do well, can you not look up? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7).²⁶ This assumes that murder begins in the mind. Outwardly Cain had not yet done anything. But he is already on the point of murdering his brother. The evil intent is working in him. Sin is already threatening.

Human judges cannot govern thoughts; they are not justiciable. But before God the human being is a single unit, irreducible, indivisible. Therefore, one is to love God with the whole heart, soul, and strength (Deut 6:4). The trinity of “heart, soul, and strength” encompasses everything that is human: from the heart, the innermost sphere of the human, through the realm of communication (“soul” in Hebrew = “throat,” “speech”), to the external, material sphere that surrounds us (“strength” in Hebrew = “ability,” “property”). It is as this all-encompassing, indivisible unity that a human being is to love God.