What Does Matthew 5:29 Mean?

(29) **If thy right eye offend thee.**—The Greek verb means, strictly, to cause another to stumble or fall into a snare, and this was probably the sense in which the translators used the word “offend.” It is doubtful, however, whether it ever had this factitive sense in English outside the Authorised version, and the common use of the word gives so different a meaning that it cannot be regarded as a happy rendering. The difficulty of finding an equivalent is shown by the variations in the successive English versions: “offend,” in Tyndal’s; “hinder thee,” in Cranmer’s; “cause thee to offend,” in the Geneva; “scandalise,” in the Rhemish; “offend,” again in the Authorised version. Of these the Geneva is, beyond doubt, the best. **Pluck it out.**—The bold severity of the phrase excludes a literal interpretation. The seat of the evil lies in the will, not in the organ of sense or action, and the removal of the instrument might leave the inward taint unpurified. What is meant is, that any sense, when it ministers to sin is an evil and not a good, the loss of which would be the truest gain. Translated into modern language, we are warned that taste, culture, æsthetic refinement may but make our guilt and our punishment more tremendous. It were better to be without them than “Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.” [“ And for life’s sake to lose life’s noblest ends.”] **It is profitable.**—The element of prudential self-love, of a calculation of profit and loss, is not excluded from Christian motives. As addressed to a nation immersed in the pursuit of gain, it conveys the stern, yet pertinent, warning—“If you must think of profit, make your calculations wisely.” **Hell.**—Gehenna, as in Matthew 5:22. The language is still symbolical. The horrid picture of a human body thrown into the foul, offal-fed flame of the Valley of Hinnom is again a parable of something more terrible than itself.