Matthew 5:22

Matthew 5:22. But I say unto you. This implies equal authority with Him who gave the Decalogue, greater authority than those who expounded it. The two thoughts of Matthew 5:21 require two here.

Every one who. This is the literal sense.

Angry with his brother. ‘Brother' is equivalent to neighbor, in the wide sense. The best authorities omit ‘without cause.' Probably inserted by way of mitigation. Several fathers expressly say that it is not in the text

The judgment. As before, the earthly court.

Raca. This is a word of contempt, meaning either ‘empty head,' or ‘spit out,' i.e., heretic. It is rendered, ‘vain fellows,' in the plural, by the translators in 2 Samuel 6:20.

Council. The Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, consisting of seventy-two members; the highest earthly court.

Thou fool. The Greek word implies ‘stupid fool.' It may be a Hebrew expression (‘moreh') containing a charge of wickedness and great impiety. Perhaps an allusion to the atheist, Psalms 14:1.

In danger of, literally, ‘into,' i.e., in danger of being cast into, the hell of fire, ‘Gehenna of fire.' The first word originally meant the valley of Hinnom, once a place of idolatrous worship, on the south side of Jerusalem. It became a place of defilement, where the corpses of malefactors were thrown, and was also, it is said, the scene of execution in certain cases. ‘Of fire;' either because of the fires kept burning in this valley to consume the offal of the city, or on account of the worship of Moloch, practised there, in which children were burnt alive. In either case, the whole phrase is a significant expression for the place of future punishment. It probably means this here, but not necessarily. General sense: murderous feelings and words are deemed a proper ground of condemnation in Christ's kingdom. A more particular explanation involves a difficulty. Two kinds of earthly punishment are spoken of, and then a future one is attached to the use of a word, which does not seem very different from the preceding ones. Since no earthly court does punish feelings of anger, it would seem that all three refer to a future punishment, or at least to God's judgments, the degrees being represented by Jewish usages. It is clear from the passage that there are different degrees of guilt, and that even the germ of sin in the heart condemns before God. The sin is not in the word and act as such, but in the motive and spirit. There is also a righteous indignation and wrath, an innocent use of terms like those forbidden here (comp. Matthew 23:17; Matthew 23:19; Luke 24:25; Galatians 1:8-9; Galatians 3:1; Galatians 3:3; Tas. Matthew 2:20).