Matthew 5:22 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But I say unto you— Which of the prophets ever spake thus? Their language is, Thus saith the Lord. Who hath the authority to use this language?—he who is able to save and destroy. The Lord Jesus Christ does not mean here that anger, or every scornful or reviling word deserves the same punishment from the magistrates as murder; that is to say, death; but only that anger, being in direct violationofthesixthcommandment, because it tends and disposes men to murder, the judgment of God will take cognizance of such anger, as well as of all desires of revenge, hatred, opprobrious or reviling language, &c. See 1 John 3:15. The word εικη, without cause, though found in almost all the Greek manuscripts, is omitted in most manuscripts of the Vulgate. By brother is meant another Christian; this is the meaning of the Greek word αδελφος, in the sacred writings; and that the same sense is put upon it here is evident from the next verse. The Jews would give the name of brother to no one who was not an Israelite. They vouchsafed to give that of neighbour to a proselyte, but would by no means bestow it on a Gentile. Our Lord did not design to authorize a like distinction, when he made use here of the word brother;forhe elsewhere enjoins his disciples to forgive all men in general, and shews that our neighbour is any man whatever. Luke 10:29-30; Luke 10:42. The word judgment here unquestionably must signify punishment from God; since this causeless anger might be so concealed in the heart, as not to admit of conviction before men. "He shall be liable to a worse punishment from God, than any which your common courts of judicature can inflict." See the note on Matthew 5:21. Our Saviour goes on, "Whosoever to his secret anger shall add opprobrious and contemptuous words,—for instance, shall say to his brother, Raca, that is, thou worthless, empty fellow! shall be exposed to yet more terrible effects of the divine judgment, and be obnoxious to a yet severer punishment; as far exceeding the former, as that inflicted by the Sanhedrim, which extends to stoning, exceeds that which follows the judgment of the inferior courts, which only have the power of the sword." Raca is a Syriac word, which, according to Lightfoot, signifies a scoundrel; according to Drusius, a coxcomb; and so is a term of great contempt. Κενε, vain man, used James 2:20 seems to be a translation of it; for, as St. Jerome observes, it is derived from the Hebrew ריק, rik, which signifies vain or empty. See Parkhurst on the word. The council—, in the Greek συνεδριον, a word which the Jews adopted into their language, giving it a Hebrew termination, sanhedrin, signifies the council or senate of the nation. It consisted of seventy-two judges, or, according to others, of seventy, besides the president. It used to sit at Jerusalem. Concerning the place where it met, see John 19:13. This was the supreme court of judicature among the Jews, and to it appeals were made from inferior tribunals. It took cognizance only of the most important matters; as, for instance, such wherein a whole tribe was concerned; those that related to the high-priest, a false prophet, idolatry, treason, &c. and could, while the Jewish government continued independent, inflict the heaviest punishments; particularly stoning, and burning with melted lead poured down the throat of the criminal after he was strangled. See Beausobre and Lenfant, and Calmet's Dictionary. Our Saviour goes on, "Whosoever, in his unreasonable passion, shall say to his brother, Thou fool, Μωρε that is to say, thou graceless wicked villain;—thereby impeaching his moral character, as well as reflecting on his intellectual; shall be obnoxious to the gehenna of fire; or, to a future punishment, more dreadful even than being burned alive in the valley of Hinnom; whence the name of the infernal regions is borrowed." Wicked men are so often called fools in the Old Testament, especially in the writings of David and Solomon; that the appellation of fool, in the Jewish language, signifies not so much a weak thoughtless creature, as a man deliberately wicked; for, as religion is the highest wisdom, vice must be accounted the extremest folly. Dr. Sykes draws the same sense from the word, by deriving it from the Syriac μαρα, rebellavit, he has rebelled; so that, according to him, the original Μωρε signifies a rebel against God, or an apostate from the true religion. The valley of Hinnom, called also Tophet, was the scene of the detestable worship of Moloch, as we have before observed, 2 Kings 23:10. See also Isaiah 30:33. In after-times continual fires were kept in this valley, for burning the unburied carcases and filth of the city, that, beingthus polluted, it might be unfit for the like religious abominations. The Jews, from the perpetuity of these fires, and to express the utmost detestation of the sacrifices which were offered to Moloch in this valley, made use of its name to signify hell, of which they conceived it a fit emblem. Hence our translators have given Tophet, or Gehenna, its metaphorical meaning in the present passage, whereas it ought rather to have had its literal signification; forour Lord, intending to shew his hearers that the punishment of causeless anger, contemptuous speeches, and abusive names, shall, in the life to come, bear a proportion to the guilt which is in these sins; and finding no means in the language of men, by which those different degrees of punishment could properly be expressed, he illustrated them by the punishment wherewith the Jews were acquainted. This interpretation of the punishment, in the latter clause of the verse, has a particular advantage attending it, as it prevents the reader from imagining, that only the sin of calling his brother fool will be punished with hell-fire. See Lightfoot and Macknight. St. Austin observes, thathere is a gradation in the faults reprehended. The first is anger, deliberately and causelessly conceived in the mind; the second, when that breaks forth in wrathful expressions; the third, when it vents itself in contumelious abuses. It is by these steps that a man, enraged with anger, sometimes proceeds to actual murder, but much oftener to the commission of it in his thought and intention; and we are here warned, that all these steps are criminal in their several degrees, and that the law not only prohibits murder, but even the remotest tendencies toward it.