Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 5:21-32, Anger, lust and divorce
Jesus takes the commands against murder and adultery to the heart, warns of the fire of Gehenna, and speaks against divorce except for sexual immorality.
Matthew 5:21-32, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus takes familiar commands on murder, adultery and divorce and presses each one back to the heart. Contempt for a brother already sits on the road to killing, so mending the quarrel comes before worship. Desire that treats a woman as something to take is already adultery, and he narrows divorce to the single case of a wife's unfaithfulness. He speaks as one with the right to say what the law was always after.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/gehenna\/","n":"Gehenna","s":"The valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place with a dark history, whose name had become the word for the fiery place of the wicked after death.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/temple-and-courts\/","n":"The temple and its courts","s":"Herod's huge rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, believed to be God's dwelling, laid out in courts that kept Gentiles, women and Jewish men at set distances.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/marriage-and-divorce\/","n":"Divorce and the certificate","s":"A Jewish husband ended a marriage, or a betrothal, by handing his wife a written certificate before witnesses that left her free to marry again, and the teachers argued over the grounds. In Greek and Roman law either partner could end a marriage by leaving.","r":""}
Raca is Aramaic for empty-headed, and the judgment, the council and the fire may all refer to God's heavenly court, which Jewish texts pictured as a supreme council (Keener). Debt prison was a Gentile custom Jewish hearers knew of, and the last small coin was worth a few minutes' wages. Keener also notes that the word Jesus uses for lust is the verb of the tenth commandment in the Greek Old Testament, you shall not desire your neighbor's wife. The last penny of 5:26 is the Roman quadrans, about a sixty-fourth of a denarius (Wilkins), and Mark values it at two lepta, the smallest bronze coin (the Zondervan Bible Dictionary). Wilkins adds that the valley of Hinnom was later used to burn Jerusalem's refuse.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 5:21-22, 5:23-24, 5:25-26, 5:27-28 and 5:31-32
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 5:21, 5:22, 5:26, 5:28, 5:31 and 5:32
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Matthew 5:31-32
- CSB Study Bible, note on Matthew 5:31
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 5:22 and 5:26
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry money
