Transcript for What Jesus Means by “Turn the Other Cheek”

This can sound for some people like its license to get even. The intent of the rule was in many ways the opposite. It was about putting a ceiling on vengeance getting out of control.

Case study number five. Interestingly, this is one of the sayings of Jesus where it really, really matters. The ancient cultural context into which Jesus uttered these words. You know, sometimes there's parts of the Bible where you learn some context and you're like, ooh, that deepens. What I kind of already thought, but just it's even deeper and more beautiful or cool. And then there's sometimes where you're like, whoa, that's different. Yeah. Changes what I thought this was about in surprises me. And challenges me. Yeah, this was already a challenging thing of Jesus and at least in my experience understanding what Jesus was after in his cultural context makes it even more challenging, but in a way, the surprising.

So just like all of the other six case studies, Jesus begins with you've heard it said, and he provides some kind of quotation or summary of either one of the commands in the Torah or people's interpretation of it. And this is an example where it's just a straight up quotation.

It comes from the Torah. Actually, there's three places that have this phrase that he's quoting from or this idea. So one passage is in Exodus chapter 21. It's restated in another example in Leviticus 24 and then restated in another example is in Deuteronomy chapter 19. But in all of it, it's examples of where one person is wrong to another. And then it lists this set of items. So in Exodus 21, if there is serious injury, somebody got hurt, you are to take life for life. I for I, tooth for tooth hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. Pretty exact. Pretty long list. Notice it goes from just life, big category. to eye and tooth, so keep parts of the face, hand and foot, and then these like injuries. Yeah, injuries burn wound bruise. So it's various types of ways you can get hurt if you're in a bite with somebody. In Leviticus it adds fracture for fracture. So it seems like I for I-2s for 2s was kind of the shorthand to signal the whole list and the whole concept. It does sound kind of brutal. Totally. You take my eye, I'll poke out your eye. Yeah. You know, it's easy to hear it as vengeful, like you heard me, I hear you. So this law actually is stated three times in the Torah. It's referred to as the law of retaliation, or sometimes by the Latin phrase, Lex Talionus. So this was actually an ancient law already to Jesus, not just because it was in the Torah, but because it was ancient even in the time of Moses. So the earliest written examples of this principle of the I, for I, two sort of two type of example comes from a number of ancient Near Eastern law codes, one of the most famous ones, or maybe people know of the law codes of King Hummaropy. Babylonian king. Does anybody know about homeropy?

Okay. All right. I guess I thought maybe he still comes up in high school. History class.

Okay. He was a king of Babylon in the second millennium BC. Just old school ancient Near Eastern King. Okay. And there was this big, cool statue found of him making an offering at the throne of a son God and the God revealing to him all of these wisdom and laws that are contained in these law codes. And it's a few hundred ancient Near Eastern Laws called the Code of Home Rope. Wow, yeah, there we go. So among them are a number of statements that sound very similar. For example, if a Lord in here, this is about somewhat of high social rank, if a Lord has destroyed the eye of a member of the ruling class, they will destroy his eye. If he has broken the bone of a Lord, they will bring his bone. If a Lord has knocked out the tooth of the Lord of his own rank, they will knock out his tooth.

That's right. Yeah, it would be less. So actually here's, but this is interesting. As you go on to read in the laws, and I'm looking here at an excerpt from Mayhem Sarnas, a Jewish scholar, Comitarian Exodus. He's commenting on this. He notes that prior to Hammarabi, monetary compensation was the rule in recompense for bodily injury. And this is true of all of these different laws. In other words, if you destroy someone's eye, you have to pay the money.

Yeah. So most likely, even though the literal reading of the law is you poke out my eye, I get to poke out yours. The way it was typically applied and most of the law ancient lockups we know about was a monetary fine, which makes a lot more sense. I think the main point to get is that this can sound to some people like its license to get even. The intent of the rule was in many ways the opposite. It was about putting a ceiling on vengeance getting out of control, like putting a stopper. So if you take out my eye, I can't take your life. But that actually, it's not hard to imagine that happening, you know? Whether it's in a street brawl of like my eye, I can't see out of anymore and you go into a blind rage and you take someone's life. Essentially, the law is addressing two problems. One is trying to get even, but like overcompensating, you take my eye, take your life. But second, it is trying to prevent the escalation of, you know, I may be, I'm just thinking of Romeo and Juliet. The family, yeah, like blood feuds, the gone for generations and it just escalates over more and more people die, more people injured. And it's an effort to put a cap that's like if someone's injured or wrong, the recompense is equal to the wrong and then we're done. So it really is an effort to put a stop on spiraling human violence.

It's created a system so that the recompense that is due actually matches the scale of the wrong.

Yeah. Okay. So it's fairly intuitive on that level.

Oh, interesting. The assumption here is that if I've wronged you and you're out in I, You could poke out my eye, but doesn't seem like the system was applied that way. It seems like what's the value? Yeah. What's the monetary value that you suffered? And now, if I've taken out your eye to make it right, I need to pay for that. Right. So I guess you could call it just recompense. But you're right. The English word revenge or retaliation. Vengeance. Right. Has idea of you get even, or things are made right, and plus.

Yeah. That's right. So Jesus is response to this. It's really interesting. If we think that the law was originally giving license, like, hey y'all, open field, go get recompense. Yeah. Then GS' response feels like a true counter, like the opposite. But if what the law was intended to do was just create a level set on the amount that you can demand of recompense for damages, then Jesus' response, I think shifts a little bit, because the command wasn't, you have to demand recompense. It's just saying, if you're going to, you can't demand more than what's reasonable. Jesus, both, I think here in this saying, and then you can also see it playing out like in his life. He took really seriously a theme that's in the Hebrew Bible that humans are very imperfect judges of how to balance recompense. Yes. We're really poor at putting the iFRIED system like doing it right. And so there is a theme within the Hebrew Bible where Israel is at times called to not demand recompense or not retaliate and to trust. trusting in the character of God that God is the ultimate judge. For example, to drawn me 32, that's the famous line. Paul quotes it too, where God says, it is mine to avenge, I will repay. And again, the word avenge there, we might think, like, fair recompense plus. But the word just means recompense. Psalm 94-1 begins with a poem lamenting about really terrible people wreaking havoc in my Israelite town. Yahweh is the God who will bring recompense or avenge. Another good example is the story when David comes across Saul, King Saul, who's trying to kill him, going to the bathroom and a cave. Yeah. And he doesn't kill him.

That's a good scene. Yeah. So after Saul does his business, ancient bidets, I don't know, goes out of the cave and David follows and yells after him. You know, and says, hey, I could kill you, but I didn't. And then he says, may the Lord judge between you and me, may Yahweh avenge the wrongs. You have done to me, but my hand won't touch you. And that's really the takeaway from this conviction about God is you're trusting God will be the one to recompense.

Yes. Yeah. And implied there is God will be a better judge than I would be. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's how Paul in Romans, when he quotes this famous set of ideas in Romans 12, he says, don't take revenge, my friends. Leave room for God's anger. It is written. It is mine to avenge. I will repay. So, seems like what Jesus is saying is, don't try and engineer your own recompense. But then what he says, what his saying is in relation to this law, It's difficult to translate and I've labored long over this and tried to read the labor of other people. It's very difficult to capture and English what the Greek is doing here. So this will be a moment when we want to pause and become Greek nerds a couple minutes.

Do not resist an evil doer. Do not resist an evil doer. To the standard English phrase, we hear. Let's just look it up.

Yeah. Communicates. Yeah. Don't make it stop. Don't think wrong happening. Don't try and stop it.

Yes. But I think it's important to just name that. That's what it sounds like. Yeah. It's just a name. That is certainly not what he means.

Yeah, so what we're naming is the face value meaning of the English translation. We're not curious about what Jesus meant in his language. It's just here's what it seems to mean to me. And then that can be used to hurt people. What's tragic in these types of examples is that is certainly not what Jesus intended. But if you don't know that, and if you're not in a place or in a church community, that is curious about what Jesus might have meant in His language, then real quickly passage like this can, and does get abused to trap people in really bad situations.

I think there's two ways, one's about Greek, and so that may be a little less accessible. So I'll try and make that clear. But you could also just say, look at the three examples that he gives, and none of the three examples involve doing nothing. They all involve some kind of response. But the question is, well, what is that response? And how do we understand it? And it's just, just so happens like you read the meeting English, and they all just sound like be a dormant. So the three examples really it's about the ancient cultural context that really makes them pop with significance, but the phrase don't resist. It really comes down to the Greek phrase, it's used. Okay, so the actually key is Jesus is making a pun that links his response translated don't resist to the law of retribution. So up in the two statements of law of retribution in I for an I were tooth for tooth. That word for that preposition in English is translating a Greek preposition until which has a wide range of meaning, but in this context what it means is the thing in place of the thing that matches. In I, matching and I. And that tracks on English. It does. That means matching or same in kind or degree or level. That's one of the main meanings of anti. Okay. And Greek. In place of that. So what Jesus does is the word that He uses that gets translated resist. is a compound Greek word made of two parts. And one of those parts is that phrase anti, that preposition anti. So the word he uses is anti-stain-i. It's a compound anti, and then stain-i, which means to stand. So here, anti, is being used in another sense which can mean against like opposite like if I am standing in front of a wall you could say I'm standing until the wall in Greek like before it facing it yeah facing it or against it my faces against the wall okay so one typical use of on to stay and I or on to stay me to stand against means to oppose to stand against something that is to prevent it. Like if it's a moving object in use, anti-stain eye, you prevent it from going forward. On that meaning, it could be that Jesus is saying, if it has that meaning, something negative is happening to you, don't anti-stain eye. Don't oppose it. Don't stand against it. But then the three examples that he's going to give when you read them in cultural context don't mean that. Like, they mean the opposite of that. They actually are a kind of resistance. Opposition. But they're a very creative, courageous, bold twist on what it means to oppose something. And so there are many scholars who think that this is a pun. meaning that the anti is actually being used in the sense of don't stand against someone in a way that matches what they've done to you. So in I in place of an I, tooth in place of a tooth, don't let your standing against match how the other person is standing against you. But still stand against them. Yeah, still stand still stand still respond. But don't respond like that. But not the same posture. Yeah. So where we landed about project scholar team. We had five biblical scholars. We debated for almost an hour and a half. It's like just look at the nerve in the air. It's just, it was a great day. We looked at all the commentaries we can get our hands on the history of translation. And where we landed to try and communicate the idea that he meant was don't resist in kind, meaning they're standing against you. Don't stand against them in the same way that they are standing against you. That begs the question.

What does that look like? And then the three examples, I think, provide kind of like the definition. Does that relatively clear?

He's using the same precision and then saying don't stand over against the other.

Yeah, stand in a way that you don't treat them the way they're treating you. He's riffing on eye for an eye. Yeah. But now he's saying is instead of it meaning gaining recompense of equal kind, don't treat them back in equal kind to the way they're treating you.

So let's look at those three examples, just one little concluding note, one wonderful control tool. that's very helpful for interpreting the sermon on the Mount is because it was so foundational in early Christianity. The things of Jesus get re-quoted and we stated all over the New Testament. And so this line actually gets picked up by Paul a couple times and he changes the verb. Oh. It's very interesting. So in 1st, Thessalonians chapter 5, he says, see that no one repays another with evil for evil. Hmm. So instead of saying, resist, he gets repay, but he uses the same phrase, anti. Okay. That Jesus did. Evil, anti-evil. So he's assuming what Jesus meant was not just resistance in general, but standing against someone in the way that they've stood against you. Paul kinda makes a little more clear for me. Totally. I completely agree.

Oh, yeah. He says it again in Romans 12. And he quotes from another saying, and just a paragraph later, bless those who persecute you, bless and don't curse. That's from the sermon on the mountain. And then he says, never pay back evil for evil. And there's onto you again to anyone. Do what is right. And the eyes of all men. never take your own vengeance, leave room for the vengeance of God. So it's a helpful test case too to see how the teachings of Jesus were received. But really it's the three examples that are where the action is and I'll be curious to see how you guys process this because this was a big deal for me. These three examples that felt like bipolar. So the first one is if someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer them the other. So one thing we know is that slapping wasn't something, and this is pretty intuitive. I think you still today slapping is more about insulting someone's honor or dignity than it is about actually trying to take them out. Yeah, you close your fist if you're going to take them out. That's right. So in that sense, nothing is changed, slapping throughout the Bible, old and new testament. It's always about shaming, public shaming. Yeah. So then the question is, okay, what about public shaming? What does a slap on the right cheek mean? Interestingly enough, throughout Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, there are many places that talk about the significance, the symbolic significance of right versus left hand. So whether we're talking about the mission, which is the collection of Jewish teachings after the time of Jesus, talking about discussions of rabbis from the time of Jesus, Or the writings of Josephus, who was the historian, or the writings of other Greek and Roman philosophers, just across the board, whenever the right cheek is mentioned, and you kind of have to stop and close your eyes and imagine it. But if you're being slapped on your right cheek from someone facing you, and if they're slapping with the right hand, which would be... They're dominant hand. It's a backhand slap. And here I'll just quote Craig Keener. It's commentary on Matthew here. Craig Keener is a sage guru of all things Greek and Roman cultural backgrounds. He puts it this way. He says, the backhanded blow to the right cheek did not imply shattered teeth. It was an insult. The severest public affront to person's dignity. God's prophets, sometimes suffered such ill treatment as Jesus would himself, yet, though this was more in a front to honor a challenge rather than a physical injury. Ancient Near Eastern societies typically provided legal recourse for this offense within Lex Talionus regulations. So in real true honor shame societies where your social rank is your and your family is kind of like life. It's you know, it's really a severe public offense. But you're you're actually putting someone down a rank. You're asserting dominance. Yeah. With the backhand it's lap. Yes, that's right. So if that's the case, then not backing down. Turn the other cheek. Yeah, not walking away, but standing right there. And then just looking in the eyes, the person did that, and then offering him your other cheek isn't doing nothing. What you're requiring them to do is slap you again, but this time, and open with an open hand. Yeah. And again, you can just go right through the literature that these scholars quote, that are an open palm slap. is symbolic of like a social equal.

So backhand is shaming, but the open hand is how you would slap someone of equal rank. Wow. Like it like almost like a challenge. Yeah. But you're forcing them to reevaluate you. And so you are not resisting in kind. It's resistance. But it's not resisting in kind.

And it is in effect to say, why does it that you think that you need to treat me as lower or higher than yourself? What does this whole system anyway? That you think you need to do this to a certain who you think I am? It's in a way stating that I'm not controlled by your attempt to put me in a social rank.

Yes. Excellent.

Yeah.

It's all not yours. A demonstration, my honor is not determined by by the way you treat me.

Yeah. It's rooted in something deeper. which for a disciple of Jesus is like, that's, yes, identity 101, you know, I'm a son or daughter of the father. When I was learning about the history of the civil rights movement, I will never forget the video footage of the Selma alabama march in 1965. And the marchers going across the bridge. And they were getting sprayed by fire hoses and having dogs. And they didn't walk away. Dogs like that on them. They didn't walk away. But also they didn't fight. They just kept slowly taking steps forward. And they didn't stop. And it's like the whole scene became this ridiculous expoze on what a first, the legal establishment was in that situation that we're setting dogs and firehouses on, unarmed people who were just saying, we have dignity. Something like that is more I think what Jesus had in mind.

Wow. That is 100% Jesus style. Yeah. But as so much wisdom there, it requires training. It's like retraining our instinct. Yeah. Because that is not intuitive.

Yeah, that's excellent. I've wondered the same too, and it's almost like these three examples we've probably done one. Doesn't spell it out completely, but this saying is followed by the sixth and final case study, which is about loving and blessing your enemies. which surely they're next to each other because who else would be slapping you and suing you and forcing you to go next for a mile it would be your enemy somewhere the feels like your enemy so it's almost like you get the the first response of what not to do not to resist in kind and then the last saying Just the next case study comes alongside with the hope is a relationship of love and blessing. It's changing the game. The response is one that scrambles the system so that it just doesn't acknowledge the system of value, honor, injustice that these practices uphold. That's step one. Step one is naming what's wrong. Yeah. And then step two is moving towards the offender in a bid for a different kind of relationship.

Yep, it's exactly right. They're trapped. Whatever mindset or social system that makes them think that they need to behave like this to have their own dignity or maintain order or whatever, which is its own kind of different kind of prison. The second example explores the same dynamics just from a different angle. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. So there's no way this will land the way Jesus meant it in our cultural setting. I have lots of shirts and I actually have a coat for each season of the year.

I'll give you a half a dozen fair. So, standard dress in GSA's day, you basically have two garments and you probably just have one pair of each. If you're wealthy, you have a handful of each. Most people in GSA's class below would have been. You got one set. So you have your tunic, which is called ketone in Greek or ketone in Hebrew. And that's like it's next to your skin. That's the shirt. That's your shirt. That's the shirt. Yep. Whereas your outer garment, what we would call the coat is like heavier thicker. That's like keeps you warm. Keeps up the elements. That kind of thing. So they're thicker. They're made of wool. They're sturdy. You want to last a long, long, long, long time.

Yes. Which it often was in Galilee, especially in the other than summer. Spring is cold night. So that's one piece. It's assumed closing knowledge. The other piece is notice Jesus assumes this is the legal case. Somebody's suing you. Okay. Now, what he's appealing to is actually a network of laws in the Torah again, laws that are aimed to prevent exploitation of poor and day laborers, especially that if somebody owes you money and all they have anymore, The most valuable thing they own is their outer cloak. You can take that as a pledge of them paying you back, but you have to give it back every night. Oh, it's their blanket. Yep, sex is 22. If you ever take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge for that, return it to him before the sunset. That's his only covering. It's for his body. So the laws of the Torah are about somebody suing and taking a cloak. Don't ever do that. So the picture he's painting is of somebody suing you and taking, not your cloak, your outer coat, but your shirt. Like the thing next to your body.

All you have left is your clothes, your itchy clothes. In other words, it's kind of comic. It's like, who would do that?

So whoever is doing this.

It's a law. It's a wrongful suit. So if somebody is so, if somebody's in that space where they think that's what they need to do, then see him one more to use a poker phrase, give him your coat. And notice what Jesus is recommending here is that you end up handing over all of your clothes, which means you're standing there in public naked. When this person holding all your clothes.

Seems like what Jesus is saying is, go for shock value. Draw attention. If they're going to take your tunic, then kindly offer to them. They're not demanding. Hmm. Here. Dear friend. Yes. He had it to him. You clearly need my stuff more than I do. Hmm. Have this, too.

And then you're staying there naked. Everybody is watching and that person is holding all of your clothes. So it's a matter of generosity. You're giving them. But it's you're using generosity to subvert the whole system by which they are wrong. So the legal system allows them to do this thing to you and you're exposing it for what it is. but it through generosity you give. It's brilliant to talk about the theory. Sure. But to really to be in a position where this is the option before you and you choose generosity, but also you're trying to shake things up. You're certainly not being a dormant.

Though this one does seem you're trying to almost shock the person's conscience who's wronging you. That's not doing nothing. It's not doing nothing, but it is not resisting in kind. But it's not resisting in kind. Respond in a way that you are able in a creative nonviolent way, but don't resist in kind. So the third example, follows in meaning. So if someone forces you to go one mile, offer to go another. So that phrase forced to go is the technical term on grusine, and it's used to describe how Roman soldiers could force Imperial subjects to carry their gear. I mean, it's carried a lot of stuff around. Lots of stuff.

Totally good. The armor, their packs, all that. This is the word used to describe when Jesus is carrying his cross. And as he was walking up the street, the soldiers forced that guy Simon of Cyrene. Yeah. And when it says they forced him into service, they were using their right as soldiers to just be like, hey you, you know, carry this thing. Carry this thing. But the Roman Empire knew this would be prone towards abuse. assuming it was already a piece of it. I know, but so they put limits and the mile over the million. So they were limited. They were limited on how far they make you be their pack animal.

So once someone, and I just imagine, just put yourself with your family, you know, and you're, I don't know why I'm thinking of having a picnic. By the sea of Galilee. But whatever, you and a father and his two sons are working, and Roman soldiers come by, and then the soldier just picks the dad out, and he's got teenage sons. and stats, all of a sudden, made to do that. Like, think of the relational dynamics of what a dad now feels, humiliating, or that kind of thing. So that's the feel of this example that he names. Surely he wouldn't name it unless it was something all this listener would be like, yeah, like I know that. I know that.

So within their power, they can only do one. So notice the subversive generosity move, similar to the giving of the cloak. You offer. So they exerted their power, asserting who they are in the rank and who you are. And then the moment that miles over, generosity can redefine the relationship. So they can treat you like a pack animal for one mile. the moment that Miles done, you have an opportunity to redefine the relationship. You know, usually the kinds of people who offer to carry things for other or like people you care about. Yeah.

Yeah. Whoever has to pick up trouble.

That's, that's a lot. That's a lot. Yep, that's right. Once they're done treating you like an animal, it almost becomes synonymous with bless your enemies. Yeah. Of. Can I give you something?

Yeah. And it's generosity. Yeah. So the first one was the other cheek was about a nonviolent response that forces them to reevaluate the relationship. The second example was the subversive generosity that exposes the system and how it's being abused by someone. And then this feels very personal. It's sort of like, you, you need help.

That's it. The assumed context for all of this. is a subjugated, ethnic religious minority group before an imperial power. That's the setting, all of these sayings, right, have that as the context. And so there wasn't any hope of changing the system overall. The point is, how can we respond in a way that reflects the justice and generosity of God that exposes injustice? And then also can affect change, but on like the level of real change, which is relationship. Somebody who has been the victim of an abuser, time and time again. This is not what Jesus is talking about in the same type of context. A lot of it has to do with what kind of context is assumed that we would apply these words in.

Well, sad. Yeah, that's exactly right. Just to comment on one aspect of that, the goal of the shock value, you know, of some of these examples, probably just knowing the heart of Jesus that's displayed in these teachings. It isn't just to make the person feel humiliated as such, but it is to expose and to name and to show trusting that eventually at some point, the perpetrator themselves could come to see that they're just as trapped, right? As you were talking about earlier, Michelle, and it is love. It is love.

In a way that becomes the bedrock under all of the case studies. All the way back to the beginning relationships, sibling family close community relationships of anger and resentment, male and female sexual desire. feeling the need to manipulate people instead of just treating them as worthy of the truth. It really is how we view the worth of other people that's underneath all of these. And a conviction, in this case, that violent resistance simply will not solve our most intractable entrenched problems in the human story. It cannot. And it's not even just that it can't, but that only generosity can. It seems to be what Jesus is after here.

Yeah. Lord, have mercy upon us.

Yeah. Out of all of the sayings of Jesus, I'm assuming on the Mount, this one deserves special time and meditation.

There's a deep well here. Yeah. Yeah. For me, still too. For all of us.

Listen to remember this is a fraught political social context that Jesus is saying these words in for an occupation by the Roman Empire. What they represent is idolatrous, pagan, empires for over 500 years.