Matthew 5:22

“But I say to you, that every one who is angry with his brother will be in danger of the judgment.”

“I say to you.” This will be repeated on each proposed extension of men's understanding of the commandments. Jesus speaks with a unique authority. He does not need to appeal to the fathers, or to the wisdom of the past. He can speak on His own authority. This is basically at the minimum a Messianic claim. And He does it as One Who expects that His authority will be accepted.

Jesus now looks at three examples of people's attitudes towards each other, each of which God is concerned about, and each of which, (and even more so when they were combined), could lead up to murder. And He describes three punishments for them which get severer as they go along. These are first the ordinary law court (compare Deuteronomy 16:18), then the Supreme Court (the Sanhedrin, or the court of twenty three members set up to deal with criminal matters), and finally the tribunal of God. His point is that as we become more involved in sin so the judgment gets steeper, and that while no one would, of course, be taken to court, or before the Supreme Court for such behaviour as He describes, they should certainly recognise that it might eventually lead on to that if the anger gets out of control, and that meanwhile they can be certain of the fact that they will have to face the judgment of the Messiah and of the Supreme Court of God, where they can be sure that they will receive the full punishment for their behaviour. For let them be in no doubt about it, for such things they will be cast into the destructive fire of Gehenna.

The fact that there is a build up in the level of the punishment, (compare also the building up of the situation in Matthew 5:25) suggests that we are to see a build up in the level of sin. What He may thus be saying is that men commence with anger, then they move on to ridicule and contempt, and then they move on to more serious accusations, and as their crime grows (with the seething anger still there) so does their being deserving of condemnation. All of us know what it means to allow anger to build up into resentment, and resentment to build up into more violent reaction It was as a result of this that the people had persecuted the prophets. And this would eventually be why His disciples would be persecuted, because this was how people regularly behaved. And yet no one in authority had as a whole really stopped and considered these matters. As long as the number who were murdered had been kept to a reasonable level they had been satisfied with passing judgment on the murderers, and had left the world to seethe on by itself.

The first example He speaks of is anger. Jesus here goes beneath murder, and other acts of violence, and asks what it is that causes them. And His reply is that it is people's ‘anger'. Control people's anger and there will be far less murder. So He points out that as far as God is concerned, not only murder, but to show unreasonable or undeserved anger towards others also puts men and women in danger either of men's judgment or of God's judgment. It is in a sense equally deserving of the same kind of punishment as murder (‘the judgment'), for it is murder in waiting. Anger may well even in this life lead to activities which result in a chargeable offence before a court, or it may not, but however that might be, they can be sure that it will certainly be a chargeable offence in the judgment to come. In God's eyes, if not in man's, it is seen as ‘judgment-worthy'.

“And whoever shall say to his brother, Raca, will be in danger of the council.”

The next example is of someone calling his brother or sister ‘Raca'. We do not know exactly what this denoted, but it is clearly either a comment of extreme animosity, or of grave insult or of supreme contempt. Many see it as being a transliteration of the Aramaic ‘Rake' signifying, ‘blockheaded, empty headed, stupid imbecile' (as multi-language Jews many of Jesus' listeners would be used to carrying words over from Aramaic into Greek). Others have referred to a Zenon papyrus of 257 BC where the word is used in an uncomplimentary, if not foul manner, and where it is not related to the Aramaic. But either way the idea is not just of a casual comment (although such too should be watched) but of a comment made as a specific judgment on someone, a judgment which could only cause offence. Jesus may have seen this as a sin standing on its own. But He may equally well have seen it as the next stage on top of anger. First the anger, then the insult spoken in anger. That would explain why the judgment becomes more severe. In God's eyes he should be in danger of ‘the council', the Supreme Court (either the central or a local sanhedrin, or the court of twenty three).

So Jesus mention of the ‘council' (or Sanhedrin) as being what men and women who say such things will be in danger of, rather than just ‘the judgment' as in the case of anger, may well be His way of demonstrating that because the sin is building up, the judgment is building up. Let men and women not think that God will treat such things lightly Of course the Sanhedrin would only actually be interested in such a ‘crime' if the insult was made against people who were considered to be important (such as themselves). But Jesus wants them to know that God treats seriously all people who behave like this to anyone.

“And whoever shall say, ‘You fool', will be in danger of the hell of fire.”

How we see this will depend on the meaning we give to the word ‘fool' (moros). It could refer to someone being seen as ‘foolish' or ‘lacking in common sense' (the usual meaning of the Greek word), or it could be seen as a transliteration of the Hebrew ‘moreh' signifying ‘God-despiser', ‘rebel' (see Jeremiah 5:23; Psalms 78:8; Numbers 20:10; Deuteronomy 9:23; Deuteronomy 21:18; Joshua 1:18; 1 Samuel 12:15; Nehemiah 9:26; Isaiah 1:10; Isaiah 63:10; compare Psalms 14:1, although LXX has aphrown here and never uses moros). In this latter case it is therefore the equivalent of declaring them to be worthy of Hellfire, which helps to explain the severity of the punishment. They are receiving what they wished on others.

If we take it as the first this might indicate that Jesus is selecting the severest punishment for what may seem the lesser ‘crime'. In that case He may be harking back to the same principle as lay behind His reference to ‘the least commandment' (Matthew 5:19). As He has already pointed out there is no such thing as a least commandment. All are important. And now He may be pointing out that there is no least sin, all are important. So even calling a brother or sister ‘a fool' is to deserve the greatest punishment of all. For it is a sin, and all sin brings forth death.

Or He may be saying that as the person's anger has built up, and has then moved on to insult and contempt, it has now finally boiled over into an accusation which in that society would have been seen as the height of insult, or even worse. It was a suggestion that the person was godless and a rebel against God in a society where to be that was to be despised and even hated. Thus the person responsible for these words is now in even greater danger, he is in danger of the Gehenna of fire.

The Gehenna of fire originally referred to the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. It had been defiled by idolatry and child sacrifice (2 Kings 23:1), and had been turned into a rubbish dump and place for the disposal of the bodies of criminals (compare Isaiah 66:24 which refers to such a rubbish dump). But by the time of Jesus it had come to signify the eternal judgment of God.

So Jesus' meaning is clear. His point is that in giving the commandments God had always intended His people to go to the root of them, in this case to the root of unrighteous anger and unfeeling contempt.