Teaching on Adultery and Lust

Study notes

This pericope advances the discourse's pattern of intensifying the law's demands by relocating the prohibition of adultery from the completed act to the intention formed in the heart. The claim that looking at a woman to desire her already constitutes adultery shifts the focus from observable behavior to hidden disposition. The paired directives concerning the right eye and right hand then press the seriousness of this internal violation, framing decisive removal of a member as preferable to the whole body entering Gehenna. The unit thereby presents the commandment as addressing the sources of action rather than only their outward expression, with the repeated reference to final judgment underscoring the weight attached to the will's movement before any further deed occurs.

What is Teaching on Adultery and Lust about?

In the sequence of teachings that follow the declaration that Jesus has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, this unit takes up the sixth commandment's prohibition of adultery. The speaker directly addresses those who have heard the traditional statement of the command and then presses beyond outward compliance to the condition of the heart. The central tension lies in the claim that a look undertaken with desire already constitutes the act of adultery internally, shifting attention from visible behavior to hidden intention.

This unit stands immediately after the treatment of anger and reconciliation, extending the same pattern of moving from the external prohibition to an internal standard. The radical instructions about removing an eye or hand underscore the seriousness with which the internal violation is to be taken, because the consequence named is the whole body being thrown into Gehenna. The placement makes clear that the righteousness required exceeds what the scribes and Pharisees practice, as stated in the preceding paragraph. The two closing warnings repeat the same logic about one member perishing rather than the whole body entering Gehenna, showing that the issue is not isolated moral advice but a consistent demand that reaches the sources of action.

Where does this passage sit in Matthew?

The unit opens by repeating the exact formula that governed the preceding treatment of anger: the citation of a commandment followed by the direct counter-statement beginning 'But I say to you.' This repetition binds the two blocks together as successive applications of the same interpretive principle. Where the earlier section moved from the prohibition of murder to the internal sources of anger and the requirement of reconciliation before offering a gift, the present section advances from the prohibition of adultery to the internal act of looking with desire. The shared structure creates an accumulating pressure: each new application raises the standard from observable deed to the disposition of the heart.

The radical instructions that follow, concerning the right eye and the right hand, echo the earlier warning about Gehenna that concluded the anger unit, yet they intensify it by applying the same consequence to a second sphere of life. The language of stumbling and casting away a member therefore functions as a deliberate escalation rather than a new departure. Immediately after this block the discourse turns to divorce, a topic that presupposes the same sphere of sexual fidelity already under discussion. The sequence therefore moves from the internal violation of the marriage bond to the legal dissolution of that bond, keeping the reader inside one sustained argument about the integrity of human relationships under the law that Jesus claims to fulfill.

Within the larger sequence of antitheses that occupy the rest of chapter five, this unit occupies the second position and thereby sets the pattern for the remaining four. Each subsequent block will again cite a traditional formulation and then press beyond it, so that the placement here establishes the rhythm the reader will encounter through the treatment of oaths, retaliation, and love of enemies. The continuity of the formula across these units makes the present passage less an isolated saying than the second link in a chain that redefines righteousness as something that reaches the hidden springs of action.

How is the passage structured?

The unit opens by quoting the received prohibition in full, then immediately counters it with a direct address that widens the scope from the act to the preceding intention. The second sentence supplies the decisive redefinition: the look directed toward desire already places the person inside the violation. No further elaboration of the external command appears; the text moves at once from the quoted statement to this internal standard.

Two conditional sentences follow, each naming a single bodily member as the source of stumbling. The first isolates the right eye, the second the right hand. Both employ the same sequence of imperative, rationale, and consequence, creating a tight parallel structure. The rationale in each case repeats the comparative judgment that loss of one member is preferable to the whole body entering Gehenna. The repetition fixes attention on the severity attached to the internal violation rather than on any gradual process of reform.

The passage therefore consists of three linked movements: the initial quotation, the contrasting redefinition of the offense, and the paired hyperbolic directives that close the unit. No intervening material delays or qualifies the second and third movements. The architecture places the weight of the unit on the final pair of sentences, where the demand for decisive action is anchored by the repeated reference to the body’s fate.

What is the historical background?

The prohibition quoted in this unit comes from the Decalogue as preserved in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, where adultery is defined as a violation involving a married woman and carrying potential capital consequences under Torah jurisprudence. In first-century Jewish practice the courts required witnesses and overt acts for conviction, so the public standard remained behavioral. Jesus’ statement therefore operates against a background in which legal liability attached only to completed acts, while moral teachers already warned that unchecked desire could lead to those acts.

Gehenna, the destination named for the whole body, refers to the valley of Hinnom southwest of Jerusalem’s walls. By the first century the site had long been associated with idolatrous child sacrifice in Israel’s past; later it served as a refuse dump whose fires supplied a ready image for eschatological judgment. The phrase “thrown into Gehenna” therefore evokes not merely physical death but the final divine verdict already anticipated in some streams of Jewish apocalyptic literature.

The specification of the right eye and right hand draws on a widespread ancient valuation of the right side as the stronger or more valued member. Removing such a member would have struck hearers as deliberately extreme, underscoring that the internal violation is treated with a seriousness normally reserved for threats to communal holiness. No contemporary Jewish teacher is known to have advocated literal self-mutilation; the language functions as hyperbolic intensification rather than a new legal statute.

The participial construction rendered “to desire her” reflects the common Septuagintal and later rabbinic pairing of seeing and coveting, a linkage already present in the tenth commandment’s warning against desiring a neighbor’s wife. The unit therefore assumes readers familiar with a scriptural tradition that already connected visual attention to interior disposition, while pressing that connection to its logical limit within the present discourse on the law’s fulfillment.

What does this passage teach about God?

The teaching locates the violation of the commandment not in the outward deed alone but already in the intention formed by looking with desire. The statement that everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart treats the hidden movement of the will as the point at which the command is broken. This reading of the sixth commandment therefore presents God as one who judges the heart rather than only the completed act.

The repeated reference to Gehenna makes the consequence concrete. The warning that it is better for one member to perish than for the whole body to be thrown into Gehenna, and the parallel statement that it is better for one member to perish than for the whole body to go into Gehenna, frame the internal violation as carrying the same final weight as the external act. Judgment is not postponed until an outward line is crossed; the disposition itself places the person under the same threat.

Human responsibility is correspondingly sharpened. The instructions to remove the right eye or cut off the right hand present discipleship as requiring decisive intervention against whatever produces stumbling. Because the right eye and right hand are singled out, the cost is measured by what is most valued, yet the passage insists that preservation of the whole person before God outweighs retention of any faculty. The language leaves no room for negotiated compromise with the source of desire.

Taken together, these verses portray sin as a condition that begins in the heart and that demands a response proportionate to its seriousness. God’s scrutiny reaches the intention, the disciple must act against that intention, and the alternative is stated without mitigation as the loss of the whole body in Gehenna.

What are the interpretive difficulties?

The participial construction in verse 28 leaves a modest but genuine ambiguity about the precise trigger for the internal violation. The supplied rendering takes the phrase as purposive, so that the look is undertaken with a view to desire. Yet the Greek can also be read as describing a look that simply issues in desire, without requiring prior intent. The passage itself does not resolve which reading better captures the intended force, and either option still locates the decisive movement inside the heart rather than in any further outward act.

A second question concerns the two conditional sentences that follow. The instructions to remove the right eye or cut off the right hand are framed as urgent remedies once a member causes stumbling. Nothing in the immediate unit or its immediate predecessor indicates whether these measures are meant to be enacted literally or whether the stark alternatives serve to measure the seriousness of the internal breach. The text records no further clarification on application, nor does it address whether the same standard would extend to other members or to different forms of desire.

The repeated reference to Gehenna as the alternative to losing one member also stands without elaboration. The unit does not define the term or specify the timing or scope of the judgment it names. Readers are left to infer from the contrast itself that the internal violation carries consequences comparable to those attached to the external act prohibited in the traditional commandment.

Finally, the passage assigns the status of adultery to the man who looks in the manner described, yet remains silent about any corresponding responsibility on the part of the woman or about situations in which desire is not acted upon. These silences do not contradict the claim that the heart already incurs the guilt; they simply mark the boundaries of what this particular teaching undertakes to settle.

Notes accompany the Anselm Project Bible, an AI translation from the original languages. Tap any verse above for the committee's word-level decisions.