“YOU FOOL!” MERITS HELL? (Matthew
5:22)
THIS IS THE
FIRST OF A SERIES OF STATEMENTS IN WHICH Jesus makes
the
requirements of the law more radical than the strict
letter might indicate. Quoting
the sixth commandment, Jesus says, "You have heard
that it was said to the
people long ago, `Do not murder, and anyone who
murders will be subject to
judgment.' But I say to you . . ." and then comes the
hard saying under discussion.
Murder was
a capital offense under Israelite law; the death
penalty could not be
commuted to a monetary fine, such as was payable for
the killing of someone's
domestic animal. Where it could be proved that the
killing was accidental--as when
a man's axe-head flew off the handle and struck his
fellow workman on the head--it did not count as
murder, but even so the owner of the axe-head had to
take
prudent measures to escape the vengeance of the dead
man's next of kin.
Otherwise, the killer was brought before the village
elders and on the testimony of
two or three witnesses was sentenced to death. The
death penalty was carried out
by stoning: the witnesses threw the first stones, and
then the community joined in,
thus dissociating themselves from blood-guiltiness
and expiating the pollution which
it brought on the place.
Jesus
points out that the murderous act springs from the
angry thought. It is in the
mind that the crime is first committed and judgment
is incurred. The earthly court
cannot take action against the angry thought, but the
heavenly court can--and
does. This in itself is a hard saying. According to
the KJV, "whosoever is angry with
his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the
judgment," but the phrase
"without a cause" is a later addition to the Greek
text, designed to make Jesus'
words more tolerable. The other man's anger may be
sheer bad temper, but mine
is righteous indignation--anger with a cause. But
Jesus' words, in the original form
of the text, make no distinction between righteous
and unrighteous anger: anyone
who is angry with his brother exposes himself to
judgment. There is no saying
where unchecked anger may end. "Be angry but do not
sin," we are told in
Ephesians 4:26 (RSV); that is, "If you are angry, do
not let your anger lead you
into sin; let sunset put an end to your anger, for
otherwise it will provide the devil
with an opportunity which he will not be slow to
seize."
There seems
to be an ascending scale of seriousness as Jesus goes
on: "subject
to judgment . . . answerable to the Sanhedrin . . .
in danger of the fire of hell." "The
Sanhedrin" is apparently a reference to the supreme
court of the nation in contrast
to a local court. Evidently, then, to insult one's
brother is more serious than to be
angry with him. This is clearly so: the angry thought
can be checked, but the insult
once spoken cannot be recalled and may cause violent
resentment. The person
insulted may retaliate with a fatal blow, for which
in fact if not in law the victim of
the blow may be as much to blame as the one who
strikes it. The actual insult
mentioned by Jesus is the word "Raca" as it stands in
the KJV. The precise meaning
of "Raca" is disputed; it is probably an Aramaic word
meaning something like
"imbecile" but was plainly regarded as a deadly
insult. (Words of abuse are above
all others to be avoided by speakers of a foreign
language; they can have an
unimagined effect on a native speaker of the
language.)
But "anyone
who says, `You fool!' will be in danger of the fire
of hell." From this
we might gather that "You fool!" is a deadlier insult
than "Raca," whatever "Raca"
may mean. For "the hell of fire" (RSV) or "hell fire"
(KJV) is the most severe
penalty of all. The "hell of fire" is the fiery
Gehenna. Gehenna is the valley on the
south side of Jerusalem which, after the return from
the Babylonian exile, served
as the city's rubbish dump and public incinerator. In
earlier days it had been the site
of the worship of Molech, and so it was thought fit
that it should be degraded in
this way. In due course it came to be used as a
symbol of the destruction of the
wicked after death, just as the Garden of Eden became
a symbol of the blissful
paradise to be enjoyed by the
righteous.
But was
"You fool!" actually regarded as being such a deadly
insult? In this same
Gospel of Matthew the cognate adjective is used of
the man who built his house on
the sand (Mt 7:26) and of the five girls who forgot
to take a supply of oil to keep
their torches alight (Mt 25:2-3), and Jesus himself
is reported as calling certain
religious teachers "blind fools" (Mt 23:17). It is
more probable that, just as "Raca"
is a non-Greek word, so is the word more that
Jesus used here. If so, then it is a
word which to a Jewish ear meant "rebel (against
God)" or "apostate"; it was the
word which Moses in exasperation used to the
disaffected Israelites in the
wilderness of Zin: "Listen, you rebels; must we bring
you water out of this rock?"
(Num 20:10). For these rash words, uttered under
intense provocation, Moses
was excluded from the Promised
Land.
Whether
this was the word Jesus had in mind or not, he
certainly had in mind the
kind of language that is bound to produce a murderous
quarrel: chief responsibility
for the ensuing bloodshed, he insisted, lies with the
person who spoke the
offending word. But behind the offending word lies
the hostile thought. It is there
that the guilty process starts; and if the hostile
thought is not killed off as soon as
the thinker becomes aware of it, then, although no
earthly court may be in a
position to take cognisance of it, that is what will
be the first count in the
indictment before the judgment-bar of
God.
Taken from
Hard Sayings of the Bible by Walter C. Kaiser
Jr. Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce and
Manfred T. Brauch. Copyright © 2002 by
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Permission
kindly granted to Faith & Reason Forum by
InterVarsity Press.