Hearing Is Not the Same as Building

The Greek is a present imperative, which forbids a habit: stop making a practice of judging. Within a few lines the same sermon requires discernment about dogs, swine and false prophets. A saying of Hillel in the Mishnah runs nearby: “Judge not thy fellow until thou art come into his place.”

“Mete” is an old verb for measuring out grain or cloth. “Measure for measure” was a known Jewish principle; the Mishnah says “with the measure a man metes, it is measured to him”. Luke sets the same saying beside a merchant’s generous measure, “pressed down, and shaken together” (Luke 6:38).

A “mote” is a speck, a splinter of straw or chaff. A “beam” is the main timber of a roof. The picture comes naturally to the carpenter’s son (13:55). “Considerest” means notice or take in: the man sees the speck and fails even to register the timber.

The request is courteous, “Let me pull out”, which makes it worse. The Talmud records a proverb in almost the same shape: one man says remove the splinter from your eye, and the other answers, remove the beam from yours. The comparison was evidently common enough to be quoted back at critics.

“Thou hypocrite” is singular and pointed straight at the hearer. “See clearly” is a verb for seeing right through, used in Mark 8:25 of a blind man whose sight is fully restored. The speck is still to be removed, but by a man who can now see.

Dogs here are half wild street scavengers, not pets, and swine were unclean under the law (Leviticus 11:7). The “holy” thing suggests sacrificial meat, which only priests could eat. The verse is built crosswise: the swine trample, and the dogs turn and tear.

All three verbs are present imperatives: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Jeremiah 29:13 gave the promise to exiles: “ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Knocking belongs to a closed house at night, as in Luke’s parable of the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5–8).

The promise is made universal, “every one”, and the three verbs are repeated as settled facts. “It shall be opened” uses the passive in a way common in Jewish speech, where God is the unnamed one who acts, so the name need not be spoken.

The round flat loaves of Galilee looked much like the limestone stones of the hillsides, which makes the cruel substitution plausible. The same pair, stones and bread, was the tempter’s proposal in 4:3, where Jesus would not make bread for himself; here it is the Father who gives it.

Bread and fish were the everyday food of the lakeside, the same menu found in the five loaves and two fishes (14:17). Some Galilean fish are scaleless and eel-like, unclean under Leviticus 11:10, and could pass for a snake at a glance. The father in the saying would never try.

“Being evil” is thrown out as a given, not argued. The reasoning runs from lesser to greater, a form Jewish interpreters called qal wahomer, the first of seven rules of interpretation credited to Hillel. Luke’s version reads that the Father gives “the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:13).

Hillel is said to have put it negatively: what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour; that is the whole law. Tobit 4:15 has “Do that to no man which thou hatest.” Jesus gives it positively. “The law and the prophets” last appeared in 5:17, so the phrase brackets the heart of the sermon.

Moses set before Israel “life and good, and death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15), and Jeremiah 21:8 speaks of “the way of life, and the way of death”. The two ways were an old picture. “Enter ye in” is a single decisive act in the Greek, not a gradual drift.

“Narrow” is literally “pressed” or “squeezed”, from the verb whose noun is thlipsis, the tribulation of 13:21 and 24:9. Many manuscripts begin the verse “How narrow” rather than “Because”, turning it into an exclamation. “Find” implies that the gate can be missed.

Deuteronomy 13 and 18 already give tests for a false prophet. Zechariah 13:4 speaks of prophets who wear “a rough garment to deceive”, and Hebrews 11:37 remembers prophets who went about “in sheepskins”, so the sheep’s clothing may be a prophet’s own costume. “Ravening” means snatching, greedy.

Thorns and thistles are the pair from the curse on the ground in Genesis 3:18, and the Greek Old Testament uses the same two words. Grapes and figs, by contrast, were the fruit of peace, every man under his vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4).

“Corrupt” is sapros, rotten or worthless, the word for the bad fish thrown away when the net is sorted (13:48). The contrast is between a tree’s nature and its yield, and the verse says “every”: no exceptions are allowed on either side.

The verb is “cannot”, not “does not”: the saying moves from observation to impossibility. When Pharisees later accuse Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebub, he turns this same principle on them: “either make the tree good, and his fruit good” (12:33).

The line repeats John the Baptist’s words in 3:10 almost exactly, now on Jesus’ lips. “Is hewn down” is present tense, as if already under way. A fruit tree that bore nothing took up ground and water, and a farmer cut it down for firewood (Luke 13:7).

The paragraph closes with the sentence it opened with in verse 16, framing the grapes, figs and trees between. “Wherefore” is a strong inference in the Greek, something like “so then, surely”. The repetition marks the paragraph as finished.

Doubling a name signals urgency or intimacy, as when the angel calls “Abraham, Abraham” (Genesis 22:11). This is the first time in Matthew that Jesus says “my Father”, not “your Father”, a distinction the Gospel keeps with care from here on.

“In that day” is the prophets’ phrase for the day of the LORD’s judgment (Isaiah 2:11). In the Greek “in thy name” comes first in all three questions, stressed three times over. The speakers present the name as their credential.

“Profess” is the verb for making a public declaration, as in a court. “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity” is almost word for word Psalm 6:8. “Iniquity” is anomia, lawlessness, a pointed word after a sermon that began by upholding the law (5:17).

“These sayings of mine” puts Jesus’ own words where a teacher would put the law of Moses. The “rock” is petra, bedrock, the same word as “upon this rock” in 16:18. Luke’s version has the wise man dig deep to reach it (Luke 6:48).

In the land’s winter rains a dry streambed can become a torrent within hours; the “floods” are literally rivers. Rain from above, water from below and wind from the side cover every direction of attack. “Founded” is in the Greek a completed past: the foundation had been laid long before the storm.

A dry streambed floor is level, sandy and easy to dig in summer, the most convenient site in the valley and the worst. “Foolish” is moros, the word behind “Thou fool” in 5:22. Matthew pairs wise and foolish again in the ten virgins (25:2).

The sermon ends not on a promise but on a crash. Ezekiel 13:10–14 describes a wall daubed with untempered mortar, struck by an overflowing shower, hailstones and a stormy wind, and says “it shall fall”. There the builders were false prophets, the subject of verse 15.

“When Jesus had ended these sayings” closes each of the five long discourses in Matthew, with slight variation (11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1). Many have compared the five to the five books of Moses. “Astonished” is a strong verb, to be struck out of one’s wits.

Scribes taught by citing earlier authorities, rabbi so-and-so in the name of rabbi so-and-so. Jesus cited no one and said “But I say unto you” six times in chapter 5. Many manuscripts read “their scribes”, the same distancing pronoun Matthew uses with “their synagogues”.