The Sermon on the Mount
in
The Gospel of Matthew

A beatitude is a literary genre, possibly originating in Egypt but frequent in the Hebrew scriptures, in Hebrew wisdom literature, in apocalyptic literature, and in rabbinic literature, in fact, throughout ancient cultures at the time of the NT (Betz 94).

In Egypt "blessed" meant a state of being proper to the gods which can be given to men. The word has both eschatological and this-worldly meaning. The primary use seems to have been liturgical. Here it is didactic, the foundation on which the sermon rests. Beatitudes are to be learned by heart and remembered. Lists of beatitudes were common ways of introducing didactic texts, e.g. Psalm 1: "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, . . . his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." They assume a human condition characterized by great contrasts: poverty/wealth, mourning/comfort, gentleness/domination, God/humanity, heaven/earth, past/present/future. Life is full of extremes and contradictions, but there is an ethical way worthy of trust leading to final joy and fulfillment. They prescribe a way of life that is EXCEPTIONAL. The disciple must travel the rough road, not the smooth one, he or she must be among the few, not the masses. Discipleship--as presented here--is not membership in a small sect, but being fully human in an uncompromising way. (Betz 61).

Actual poverty is not a blessing. Rather the poverty spoken of is the poverty of the human condition. This sense was current among Greek philosophers, in Jewish wisdom literature and apocalypse at Qumran and after. BECOMING AWARE OF THIS CONDITION IS ESSENTIAL FOR ONE'S UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE IN GENERAL; IT IS THE STARTING POINT OF AN ETHIC. IT IS A RENUNCIATION OF HUBRIS.

In Judaism it is connected with the anawim--Jews who regarded themselves as poor creatures in the eyes of God. To Greeks human life was poor because mortal and finite. Socrates says he lives in abundant poverty. His life reflects the philosophers' suspicion that wealth is not to be trusted. Choosing poverty was believed to be the way of achieving the freedom of the gods. The notion of poverty of spirit has certain affinities to Plato's dictum: THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING (the examined life realizes its situation of poverty).

The context is ancient consolation literature. In Israel, it is the response of faithful Jews to the terrible state of the nation. Judaism regulated and approved mourning; Greeks and Romans (Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans) regarded it as proper only to the uneducated. Here: it is the mark of the disciple to discern and accept the deplorable facts of human life.

The meek are, effectively, the same as the poor in spirit. The idea is in Isaiah (66:2), many psalms (24, 33, 75, 146, 149) and in the Wisdom of Sirach, as well as at Qumran, in apocalyptic texts and rabbinic literature. MEEKNESS IS THE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE SAGE. For the Greeks mildness was closely associated with philanthropy and a mark of the philosopher, e.g., Socrates.

Ps 36:11: but the meek will inherit the earth/land. Earth? Probably not the kingdom of heaven, but the actual earth--whether "old" or the "new" earth of the kingdom. Matthew probably meant the earth as mission field.

Not physical hunger and thirst, which may foster either goodness or despair and greed. Again this is the fruit of insight into the human condition: If the human condition is one of unrighteousness, then knowledge of that fact induces the desire to overcome it. [There is no clear distinction here between personal righteousness and social justice.]

God represents righteousness and the kingdom of the heavens is the realm of righteousness. Righteousness is given to Israel and to humanity as a inherent in creation; the Torah is the guide toward it. At the most, only a few can attain righteousness. Consequently those who simply persevere in their desire for righteousness are worthy of reward.

Both a Hebrew and a Greek value; for the Hebrews because God was a God of mercy.

The implication: NO ONE WHO APPEARS BEFORE GOD WILL BE SO INNOCENT AS NOT TO NEED MERCY.

Purity is not explained and is not mentioned anywhere else in the sermon or in the New Testament. Generally it meant ritual purity from external pollution--with an unclear relationship to morality.

This text affirms the universal discovery among both Jews and Greeks that inner purity was more important: see Psalm 24: "Who may go up to the mountain of the Lord. . . One who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not set his mind on what is false, . . . ." See also Isaiah, passim. The chief point is: God is not interested in external ritual behavior if one is not performing it with a sincere heart.

According to Betz, it was the Greeks who connected purity of soul with the vision of God, and so it became conventional among the Jews as a product of the universality of Hellenism.

The context of the sermon suggests peacemaking within the context of individual and familial relationships. God is the ultimate peacemaker, and so all peacemaking is imitation of God. There appears to be no interest in group peace-activism. The notion of pax romana suggests that peace was a value of the time.

MAKING PEACE WAS ONE OF THE TASKS OF PHILOSOPHERS. In Judaism peacemaking was a long-held value. The dimensions of peace were cosmic, involving the order of the universe. But Qumran texts and various Jewish uprisings show that the value of peace did not rule out war and violence. Nor was early Christianity clear on peace and war.

This, too, is an eschatological promise. Not every Jew will be called a child of God, but only those who qualify as a peacemaker.

The ultimate test of righteousness: the ability to undergo persecution, gives this beatitude THE CLIMACTIC POSITION. The notion of the good being persecuted by the evil is basic to the Wisdom literature of the Bible: "Let us lie in wait for the righteous man because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sin against the law" (Wis 2:12ff); also in the Psalms. It is also connected to the persecution of the prophets, and later it becomes a theme of apocalyptic literature. It leads eventually to the ideology of martyrdom.

IMPORTANT PARALLEL: Socrates, who is killed precisely for his "pursuit of justice." NB: No connection is made here with the death of Jesus. In general the Sermon lacks a christology, which suggests that it comes from a source that existed before the gospel of Matthew itself.

Addressed to the disciples rather than to people in general. They are not called a "church," and no use is made of specific Christian terms. These disciples regarded themselves as a kind of avant-garde within Judaism. The commission is no different from that of every faithful Jew--to represent God on earth.

The disciples are to be involved with the life of the world, not passive or helpless; rather movers and shakers. Doing good is not just a matter of personal goodness, but resonates among others who are encouraged to do good by the disciple's good deeds.

Isaiah 42: I have given you as . . . a light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. At the time of Jesus this seems to have been a very important part of Jewish identity, since political power was gone.

(Note the relationship with American Puritanism with its image of America as a city on a hill, a beacon for all nations.) Though many ancient towns stood on hilltops, Jerusalem is obviously understood--which suggests that the original audience of the Sermon was the early church in Jerusalem.

Good deeds benefit their recipients, but also those who see them, because good deeds motivate those who see them to praise God. This apparently contradicts the later passage of the Sermon where cultic acts are to be done in a "hidden way." The passages seem to come from two different traditions, and express different concerns. (1) Unless they see good deeds people will not be motivated to praise God. (2) Still they must be done so as to avoid premature praise to the doer; in fact, the best "good deeds" are those that are done without self-awareness--e.g. at the last judgment those who are admitted into heaven because they have helped the poor, etc., ask Jesus, "When did I help, etc." This anticipates Wordsworth's "little acts of unremembered kindness and of love," as "the best part of a good man's life."

Since Aristotle, philosophical ethics had been putting the law under stress. Aristotle's contribution: juxtaposing the notion of (epikeia) equity/fairness alongside (dikaiosune) righteousness. The Sophists and Plato had raised the problem of the man who relentlessly follows the law. Aristotle recognizes that the law cannot fit all situations; justice requires "correcting" the law through equity. The goal of the law is justice, and a too rigid or literal adherence to law can destroy justice, the very purpose of the law. In Judaism, Hillel is associated with addressing these issues, motivated by the existence of both a written and an oral Torah, extrabiblical legal traditions, among other things. What is said here presupposes both Greek and Jewish influences. It is a response to accusations about Jesus' interpretation of the Torah, i.e., that his interpretation was arbitrary: its effect was to undermine the authority of the Torah.

"The Law and the Prophets" refers to the two fundamental divisions of the Hebrew Bible at the time of Jesus. Therefore the phrase refers to the scriptures. Some branches of Christianity explicitly claimed to abolish the Law, e.g., the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of the Egyptians. Most importantly, Marcion wanted to abolish all use of the Hebrew scriptures. He explicitly denied the truth of this saying of Jesus. Paul himself speaks of the law being superseded. This passage seems to set itself against Paul, as well as against those other Christians.

Complete/Fulfill: Justice is served with the law fulfills its purpose. Laws are intended not just to be complied with but to meet the demands of justice. The ideal of justice is above the law and even above Scripture. Socrates is on both sides of the issue: In the Apology he is accused of and partly accepts the designation of one who does not accept the gods of the people. In the Crito he insists that disobedience to the laws destroys the laws. But he clearly distinguishes between the court and the command of the god at Delphi.

Note that the law will endure for a limited time--as long as heaven and earth, that is, until the apocalyptic moment. This states a clear difference with Paul for whom the law does not endure as long as heaven and earth; it has been superseded by the coming of Christ. In this passage the law will be superseded, but only at the very end, when salvation comes.

This is a fairly mild "punishment" and suggests the sense of this Jewish-Christian community that the followers of Paul are not outcasts or heretics, but "lowest" in the kingdom of heaven.

A polemical statement. Little is known about the precise teachings of scribes and Pharisees at the time of Jesus--Rabbinic teaching is of a later date. The statement agrees that the Scribes and Pharisees are basically right, but incomplete. The point: merely going by the rules is not enough. Obedience to God demands that one respect both the written laws and the unwritten moral demands. It takes both to be righteous.

There is no literary analogy to these anywhere else in early Christian literature. All the antitheses make sense in terms of the "love command" in the Holiness Code of Leviticus: "You shall not seek revenge, or cherish anger towards your kinsfolk; you shall love your neighbour as a man like yourself. I am the Lord" (Lev 19:18). All the instances are concerned with broken relationships. The basic conflict is between the written text of the law and its intended meaning. The "accusation" within the sayings is that present interpretation has been corrupted in its oral transmission. "But I say to you." There are no exact parallels in rabbinic literature, but the phrase, "but you must say" is close. Here the tone is more final, prophetic.

The interpretations are not arbitrary; rather they are "argued" for by way of examples, proverbs, etc., suggesting that they are not esoteric revelations but the product of deeper understanding of the scriptures. There is no indication here of a Messianic authority, just as there isn't when Paul makes the same sort of pronouncements. The Teacher of Righteousness of Qumran spoke in similar terms. It is simply that Jesus is seen as a righteous man and teacher who teaches with authority. According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus did not set aside either the Torah or the Old Testament but is shown to refute wrong interpretations by right ones. In the terms of the history of exegesis and theology, in the Sermon Jesus did not proclaim a "new law" or a particularly Christian ethic, juxtaposed respectively to the old Law (Jewish Torah) or to rabbinic ethics; rather, he expounded what the will of God as revealed in the Torah had originally intended. This is not, then, the charter of a new religion, but a renewed understanding of the Jewish heritage (Betz 214).

Anger is obviously not a criminal offense? However, anger might be answerable in an eschatological court. The whole ancient world understood that anger leads to murder. It corresponds to hatred, the opposite of the love commanded in the Holiness Code.

Clearly this saying assumes the continuation of Jewish sacrificial offerings. The still unforgiven grievance clearly destroys the purpose and meaning of the sacrifice. To offer a gift of love to God while still hating your brother is contradictory: you can't love God and hate your brother. It is not that the sacrifice is less important but the grudge against the brother destroys its integrity.

Simple prudence. The Greek word, "well disposed" suggests that the basic reason for going to court is emotional, related to anger, and so the cause is not the issue; rather it's uncontrolled anger. By gaining control over the anger the litigants will find no reason to go to court.

The Greek word (gune) means wife. This does not forbid delight in beauty, but longing. The important moral shift in the gradual definition of adultery was from a physical breaking of a taboo to a decision of the heart, arrived at before the physical act. Philo Judaeus (of Alexandria) was concerned that situations be avoided that stimulate evil desires and pleasures. This seems to have been the common drift of Jewish thought, which then became a part of rabbinic thought.

Obviously not to be taken literally--self-mutilation. Rather an indication of the severe eschatological consequences of adultery. Avoidance of adultery is one application of the love-command of Leviticus.

NB: This passage reflects a Jewish milieu, where men divorced their wives (nothing is said about women divorcing their husbands). Mark, however, writing in a Roman context, speaks of women divorcing their husbands. Clearly divorce was a controversial matter at the time (as it is today). There were two tendencies: (1) complete outlawing of divorce--leading eventually to the rejection of marriage--e.g., Qumran texts. (In rabbinic theology: Shammai.) (2) greater liberalization of divorce and expansion of the man's rights to divorce. (In rabbinic theology, Hillel.) Jesus clearly forbids divorce. There is no clear source for saying what his basic motivation was: (1) the imminence of the end time, (2) social criticism, (3) humanitarian reasons.

Oaths: Why do they exist? When trust is absent, other safeguards are needed--thus, religious formulae invoke the divine forces of the universe as witnesses--suggesting a magical origin, a sense that words could control the gods. This passage is not in the written Torah, but was nevertheless considered a Torah prohibition. The question of oath-taking was debated throughout antiquity. Hellenistic Judaism connected false-oath-taking with the commandment not to take the name of the Lord in vain. The idea of rejecting oath-taking seems to have come from Hellenistic philosophy: Sophocles is against them, Epictetus (Stoic) forbids them, and so does Marcus Aurelius. Why? Taking oaths involves overstepping human limits and usurping powers belonging to the divine sphere--hubris. The rejection of oaths throws us all back on trust: the basic capacity of human beings to communicate with one another. To use oaths is to undermine this sense of trust.

Are we dealing here with a magical theory of language? Socrates: Cratylus proposes that words have their meanings from the gods. But this tends to give words a magical power. Socrates rejects the theory, saying that the reality of things cannot be learned from their names. Perhaps the use of oaths was, to Jesus, a hubristic attempt at a magical use of language--an attempt to control god, forcing him to bear witness to mere human affairs.

The lex talionis goes back to the most ancient legal rules of Western culture (Code of Hammurabi, Jewish, Greek, Roman law). Its origin is unknown. It replaced the primitive system of blood revenge and it is wrong to identify it with the system of blood revenge. It seeks to establish justice by proportionate revenge. It continues to underlie penal systems today.

To preclude all resistance is to preclude all forms of self-defense and to allow evil to take its course. This is to collude with evil; it is immoral. The meaning seems to be rather non-retaliation: the refusal to return evil for evil. To say that this is a Christian law of love in opposition to Jewish law is to violate the Jewish context of the Sermon. Rather, again, Jesus proclaims this as the "true intent" of the Torah: to eliminate violence and in this way to establish justice. Non-retaliation is not passive so much as it is a positive gesture of generosity which expects the adversary to respond in kind. Paul says: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom 12:21). Philosophers in the Hellenistic era were moving in this direction away from the stricter lex talionis of the classical era, e.g.: in Plato's Republic, when one of the young men says that justice is to benefit your friends and harm your foes, Socrates counters: "in no case is it just to harm anyone." Betz contends that by the time of the Sermon, retaliation was discredited among the Stoics. Cicero said, "it is foreign to the nature of the Wise Man not only to do wrong but even to hurt anybody." This, says Betz, was also accepted in the popular morality of the time.

Usually a slap on the right cheek would have to be give by the back of the right hand of the slapper, increasing the humiliation. To turn the other cheek is a provocative invitation. It exposes the act of the slapper as morally repulsive and challenges him. To continue to act in the same way is simply to reveal himself as an uncivilized brute.

The literal following of this would be absurd, leaving you standing naked, but the logic of it is the same as above.

It was, and is, possible for a policeman to compel you to render services (he can take your car for a chase, for instance).

The purpose of the lex talionis is to achieve justice, after injustice has occurred. Non-retaliation makes sense in so far as it tends to separate the evil-doer from his deed by a kind of shock therapy. In this way it may interrupt the cycle of violence and counter-violence. It may not always work, but it is not unreasonable and not irresponsible.

The command to love your enemies is not in Paul, nor in any other New Testament text, even in the gospel of Matthew. This, too, is Jesus' interpretation of Leviticus 19:18, the command to love one's neighbor as oneself. Neighbor, in that context meant parents, the poor, the hired hand, the handicapped, the slave, the aged, the stranger. Excluded, only the profaner of the holy. There is nothing in the Torah that says "hate your enemy." Clearly, this second phrase is an interpretation of the Torah command which Jesus ascribes to contemporary teachers (adding interpretations was fairly common in both Jewish and Jewish Christian writing). Jesus may have had in mind the Qumran sect in which hatred of the enemy was prominent. Jewish wisdom literature is preoccupied with how to decide who is a true or a false friend, a good or a bad neighbor. It generally concludes that hating the enemy is imprudent, but loving him is foolish. Humane treatment of one's enemy is urged by the wisdom writings of Babylon, other near eastern texts, Greek and Roman ethics. Socrates argues that wrongdoing is always wrongdoing and a disgrace to the doer, even if it is done to requite evil. This must be a peculiar teaching of Jesus, that goes all the way back to him. The "persecutors" were probably fellow Jews.

Again, the "reward" is both eschatological and in this world. God is the model, in that he gives to those who are his enemies with no expectation that it will make them cease being his enemies.

(1) The people of antiquity had a strong sense that there was a proper way to approach the deity. (2) However, proper religious practices did not necessarily have any connection with morality. Only gradually were rituals subjected to the criteria of ethics. The prophets were extremely important in this process. Betz also quotes Xenophon, Plato, and Isocrates saying that the best sacrifice is to be a good man. Hellenistic Judaism was very sensitive about the connection between ritual and ethics, as was early Christianity: You can perform rituals in a way that is contrary to righteousness.

Almsgiving is given priority here among acts of worship--it is a ritual act required by the Torah and not merely a social obligation. It grew in favor during Hellenistic times as criticism of animal sacrifice increased.

Both Greeks and Jews understood God as one who sees and hears everything. It is hard to reconcile the extreme inconspicuousness here with the idea, above, of using good deeds for the edification of others. The problem is reconciled by common sense: unostentatious but clear goodness is edifying; ostentatious ritual observance is clearly not. NB: The "hypocrites" here are not said to be the Pharisees or enemies of Jesus, as they are in the rest of Matthew, but here they are rather a character type. The underlying image is of a quid pro quo relationship with God. God has given us everything; almsgiving is simply returning some of those gifts to God, and God will, in turn, reward. The almsgiver who flaunts his almsgiving leaves God out of the quid pro quo, and gets nothing from him.

The proverb is famous. There are no Greek or Roman or Jewish sources, but there are Arabic ones.

This passage has a puzzling relationship to the idea of public worship in general. It seems to emerge from a contemporary controversy about prayer.

The reference may be to the Greeks who had magical papyri, or to the inarticulate oracular speech of their Sibyl. The important point of the attack is that this sort of prayer makes words magical, so that multiplication of words multiplies their power. Ecclesiastes: "Do not rush into speech, let there be no hasty utterance in God's presence. God is in heaven, you are on earth; so let your words by few." (5:2-3) Egyptian wisdom: "Do not talk a lot.. Be silent, and thou wilt be happy. Do not be garrulous. The dwelling of God, its abomination is clamor." Pythagoras said men should not list their needs but simply pray for all good things. Seneca also commends quiet and short prayers.

Antiquity considered it presumptuous and potentially dangerous to claim to know what one's needs are before the gods. There is no necessity or point in informing God of our needs.

Betz points out that almost all the petitions in the following prayer have close parallels in older Jewish prayers. The text, says Betz, points to an origin in Hellenistic Judaism. John the Baptist taught his disciples a prayer. Betz surmises that it was customary for Jewish teachers at the time to formulate paradigmatic prayers for their disciples.

No name is given, typically of Jewish address to God. The term "father," which was common in Jewish prayers, as well as in Greek religion (father Zeus), suggests that God is in a permanent personal relationship with his creation. "Our" suggests a universal common human childhood before the father.

Jesus' word for "father," abba, was a very intimate one which some have even translated as "pappa." John Meier, A Marginal Jew II, (p. 294) translates it as "my own dear father."

Kaddish: "Let his great name be magnified and hallowed in the world when he has created according to his will." A traditional idea. It assumes that God's name is NOT NOW being sanctified, and it may be a prayer for the eschatological restoration of reverence for God--something which human beings are too weak to bring about.

Parallels show that a petition regarding the divine kingdom must have been part of most prayers at the time of Jesus, e.g., a rabbinic saying: "Any benediction in which there is no mention of the kingdom is no benediction." This is an eschatological wish: God's kingdom is established in heaven, but not yet on earth. But there is no mention of an imminent apocalypse. It is important to remember that Jesus preached the kingdom as already come, within each of his hearers. Consequently, no destruction looms; rather God is asked to "annex" the territory which at present is held by the rebellious human race.

Meier, p. 297: "God alone can rightly and fully manifest himself in all his power and glory, that is to say, God alone can sanctify his name, which, it is hoped, he will do soon."

This, too, is traditional in Jewish prayers: "Do thy will in heaven above and give rest of spirit to them that fear beneath." But it is not exclusive to Judaism: The Hymn of Cleanthes says: "No deed is done on earth, god, without your offices, nor in the divine ethereal vault of heaven. . . . But you know how to make things crooked straight and to order things disorderly." The Stoics: it is a matter of prudence to bring the human will into compliance with the divine will--which determines what will happen anyway. Rebellion is useless. Epictetus says, "Do not seek to have anything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene."

NB: Heaven (singular) is different from heavens (plural). Heaven (singular) means the sky, not the dwelling place of God. The will of God is being obeyed in the sky, among the heavenly bodies, the creatures of the air. No imminent destruction, rather continuation of the world is implied.

Real bread is meant, obviously, but in antiquity, as for us, bread is symbolic of nourishment and all other needs. The fact that bread is a cooperative fruit of many workers suggests a prayer that all will continue to provide. The petition is also meant as a modest one. One does not pray for wealth, gold, etc.

For Judaism, sinfulness is part of human limitation and consists of transgressions, whether conscious or unconscious. Note, however, that the basic notion of sin here is in relationships with others rather than in ritual failings. Wrong is imaged in terms of reciprocal obligations, like a debt. Justice requires that all pay their debts. However, when one is over one's head in debt to another and asks for forgiveness of the debt, one is expected also to have forgiven the debts of others. In this way justice is not violated. But what does God have to do with our relationships to other human beings? Mutual human obligations are enclosed within our relationship with God. In so far as human obligations are not justly fulfilled, we are in violation of the justice God demands.

This cannot mean that God tries to get us to sin. Rather it comes historically from Jewish wisdom: that God tempts and tests human beings for their moral education, e.g., Job. But if testing is inevitable, why pray to escape it? God leads into temptation by allowing evil to persist, i.e.: that his name is not hallowed, his kingdom has not come, his will is not done by men. By not bringing these things about, God allows evil to persist and to test men.

The meaning is disputed. The Greek Fathers of the Church preferred "the evil one." Most modern scholars prefer "evil."

Note that it is assumed that the disciples have done and will continue to do wrong (Luther's simul justus et peccator), and will continue to need God's forgiveness. That is, "the just man is at the same time a sinner."

Fasting is not a very significant part of the Sermon's religious vision. There seems to be no clear reason for fasting. And little is known about Jesus' attitude toward it, except that he did not seem to have a high regard for it. The passage assumes that the disciples are observant Jews. The gloomy-faced faster is a stock figure in Greco-Roman literature. To anoint your head and wash your face is ordinary hygiene, not a special sort of dressing up.

Materialism is the issue. But it is considered not in terms of selfishness but in terms of this world and the next. To choose this world or the next is to determine a whole outlook on life. Beginning with the pre-Socratics and right through to the Hellenistic period, the pursuit of wealth and luxury was considered destructive; true wealth was internal. "Treasure in heaven" was a commonplace of Jewish wisdom literature of the time (Betz cites Tobit, Sirach, Solomon, Enoch, Ezra) It implies that there is a record in heaven of the good deeds that men do on earth. Heart or Head? Jewish thought preferred "heart" but the later Fathers Platonized it as head/intellect. The point: if one envisions life in the perspective of heaven, this perspective will inform and guide the heart, which will then govern the choices of daily life.

This saying requires some understanding of Greek thought about sense perception, knowledge, eyes, light, darkness--which influenced Jewish wisdom literature. The most important distinction: (1) Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato say that the agent of knowledge is within each person. Knowledge occurs by way of an "effluence" to the outside, where "they" meet with entities akin to them in nature. (2) Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus say that the outside object impinges on the eye and shapes its vision. Matthew, by intention or accident, implies the Empedoclean and Platonic Tradition: vision occurs through light passing from the inside out! A "healthy" or sound eye is a Hellenistic metaphor for a moral perception which is simple, sincere, generous. The otherwise "dark" self, the body, is illuminated by it. An evil eye is the opposite. The evil eye also has a pronounced meaning in the ancient world: a begrudging look, envy, or even the magic evil eye.

A rhetorical twist: The source of light is within (as above). But this light can become a darkness (which is a twist on the Greeks who thought of the inner light as a spark of the divine). If sin can dim the inner light and make it dark, then one can no longer trust it as the ultimate weapon in the battle against the desires which, according to Greek thinking, are awakened by sense experience.

This sounds like a proverb, but it is a legal dictum, having to do with the ownership of slaves. Mammon is a foreign word, a personification of the material, and its juxtaposition here recognizes that materialism can have the structure of religion. It can be a pseudo-deity, which renders the service of God impossible.

Obviously food and clothes are important, but they must not be confused with life itself. As we know, the ancients were intensely concerned about anxiety and tranquillity. It was more than just an economic or political issue. Happiness was a central concern of philosophers and writers, and it required freedom, for the Stoics, from emotion; for the Epicureans, from disturbance. The language of "anxiety" is unknown to the Bible before the Hellenistic age.

The notion of "divine providence" was debated by Stoics--in favor--and Epicureans--against. The debate was carried over into Jewish wisdom literature (Betz does not cite the Bible, but monographs on the idea). [JEB] Perhaps it's pertinent to recall here that Erik Erikson speaks of the earliest identity crisis within the infant as a crisis of trust in the environment to fulfill its needs (the availability of the mother's breast). If the crisis is successfully surmounted, the result is basic trust and, he adds, the ground of religion is established.

This passage gives a surprisingly positive view of the natural order, which is normally of no interest in the New Testament. It does not base itself, however, on Genesis, as do the Psalms. Birds don't worry because they rely on nature's abundance and have no presumptions about controlling the future. Using animals as models for human behavior seems to derive from the fact that nature operates from cosmic laws which conform to cosmic reason. Therefore, animals, acting by instinct, conform to reason. Man, on the other hand, is alienated and must be brought back into conformity with "reason." The point seems to be that the disciples should trust in the natural order, in the goodness of life as experienced in daily life. It seems naive, but it is generally true, in spite of human sinfulness. God's generosity in nature prevails.

It is God who measures out the periods of life; human anxiety about it is presumptuous.

God is beautiful, and the cosmos mirrors his beauty, which is therefore incomparable with human creations.

Clearly addressed to men who have little confidence in God's providence.

The heathen, of course, are gentiles, the pagans. The faithful Jew assumes that God is caring for his needs. The pagan is identified with consumerism and materialism.

This is the most important statement within the argument. The lack of concern for material things is not quietism but a determined focus on eternity. Here we are in a typically Jewish context, as opposed to the Greek one where care of the soul/life was primary. Here the soul/life is defined by its destiny toward the righteousness of eternal life. No one has a right to the necessities of life; they are God's gift. Focus on justice and trust in God to grant the necessities.

There are many parallels in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman philosophy. Tomorrow is not in human control. However, people do have the power the confront the troubles of the present day. If it is wrong to worry about tomorrow, the right thing to do is to concentrate on today.

This is about correction among friends, family, kin, and it does not seek to eliminate correction. The Holiness Code (Leviticus): Reprove your fellow-countryman frankly, and so you will have no share in his guilt. Judging others is a necessary part of human life in society. What, then is criticized? The meaning here is closely parallel to the meaning above where non-retaliation is the issue. A habit of passing judgment sets off a chain of gossip (like the chain of revenge where violence is concerned). The prudent person will break the cycle by withholding judgment. Restraint motivates others to restraint. In the end, whatever measure we use to judge others, justice demands that the same one be used on us as we use on others. "The unexamined life is not worth living." Blindness to ourselves is the point.