Jesus Christ · The Sermon on the Mount
Anger and Murder of the Heart
“Ye have heard… Thou shalt not kill… But I say unto you.” Jesus opens six antitheses with this pattern, and the first one goes straight to the sixth commandment's root. Murder starts long before the hand moves — in unrighteous anger and contemptuous speech — and God judges the root the same way He judges the act, even where no human court can reach it.
THE ARTWORKBloch paints the crowd close enough to see faces — the same crowd that heard this teaching's hardest line first: that the anger and contempt behind a word are judged like the blow behind a fist.
The Text
— Matthew 5:21–26You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Do not murder’ and ‘Anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ will be subject to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to the fire of hell.Anger and contempt, traced back to the commandment against murder.
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.Reconciliation comes before the gift on the altar.
Reconcile quickly with your adversary, while you are still on the way to court. Otherwise, he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.Settle it quickly, on the way — before it reaches the judge.
This is the first of six “Ye have heard… but I say unto you” teachings that run through the rest of the chapter (5:21–48), each one pushing a command from the hand to the heart. Jesus does not lower the bar He just named in 5:17–20 — He goes straight to its root.
The Escalation Ladder
— three words, three tribunalsTHE WORD
“angry with his brother”
THE TRIBUNAL
“in danger of the judgment”
the local court of twenty-three
What He Is Saying
— the root judged like the actEveryone in the crowd already knew “Thou shalt not kill.” Jesus does not repeal it — He shows where it actually starts. Unrighteous anger, a contemptuous word muttered at a brother, a name thrown to write someone off as worthless: these are murder's seed, and God's courtroom sees the seed as clearly as the deed, even when no earthly court ever will.
The three courts, and the Hinnom Valleyjudgment · council · Gehenna
Jesus names a rising scale of consequence. “The judgment” was the local court of twenty-three, the ordinary tribunal in every Jewish town. “The council” was the Sanhedrin, Israel's supreme court of seventy-one, seated in Jerusalem. “Hell fire” is literally “the Gehenna of fire” — the Hinnom Valley just outside Jerusalem, a place associated with judgment since the days of the kings and, by Jesus's day, a standing byword for final judgment itself. The scale is not a menu of graded temporal penalties; it presses the point that words as much as deeds stand before God.
Raca and “thou fool”empty one · godless
“Raca” is Aramaic — roughly “empty one,” a contemptuous put-down aimed at a person's worth, not just their argument. “Thou fool” translates the Greek mōre, which may carry a graver overtone still — closer to calling someone “godless” than merely “stupid.” Both words do the same thing at different volumes: they write a person off.
A textual question sits inside this verse, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a quiet edit. The King James reading — “angry with his brotherwithout a cause” — comes down through the manuscript tradition behind it, but the phrase is missing from the earliest manuscripts we now have, which is why modern translations (ASV, ESV) simply read “whoever is angry.” The longer reading leaves room for righteous anger, of the kind Jesus Himself shows elsewhere (Mark 3:5); the shorter reading makes the prohibition of anger itself more absolute. Both readings are named here, not settled here.
“Without a cause” — a textual notethe manuscript question, both sides
Clarke argues the phrase is a later addition, missing from the oldest witnesses; Jerome makes the same case from the other direction — that removing it makes the command harder, not easier, to keep:
Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause - ὁ οργιζομενος - εικη, who is vainly incensed. This translation is literal; and the very objectionable phrase, without a cause, is left out, εικη being more properly translated by that above.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), Matt 5:22
(Verse 22) Because whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. In some manuscripts it is added, without cause: but in the true definitive sentence, anger is completely eliminated, as the Scripture says: Whoever is angry with his brother. For if we are commanded to offer the other cheek to the one who strikes us, and to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us (Luke 6), all occasion for anger is removed. Therefore, without cause must be removed, because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1).
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 5:22
The Voices
— the church hears Matthew 5:21–22Ye have heard,.... That is, from the Scriptures being read to them, and the explanations of the ancients, which were called שמעתא, "hearing", being read in the schools, and heard by the scholars (o); so that to "hear", was along with the recital of the text, to receive by tradition, the sense the elders had given of it: of this kind is the instance produced by Christ.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament (1746–1748), Matt 5:21
For wrath is the root of murder. And you see that He who cuts up the root will much more remove the branches; or rather, will not permit them so much as to shoot out at all.
John Chrysostom· Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 16 (on Matt 5:21)
So that this righteousness does not exceed theirs. But Christ teaches, that we ought not, for any cause, to be so angry as to call any man Raca, or fool. We ought not, for any cause, to be angry at the person of the sinner, but at his sins only.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), Matt 5:22
The gradation, read carefullynot three tiers of penalty
JFB warns against reading the three courts as three escalating tiers of church discipline; Hilary of Poitiers presses the Raca clause specifically — contempt aimed at someone the Holy Spirit fills:
But Romish expositors greatly err in taking the first two--"the judgment" and "the council"--to refer to degrees of temporal punishment with which lesser sins were to be visited under the Gospel, and only the last--"hell-fire"--to refer to the future life.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Matt 5:22
"Whoever says to his brother, 'Raca,' shall be liable to the council." One who reproaches with empty-headedness someone who is filled with the Holy Spirit becomes liable to the council of holy men and is to expiate this outrage against the Holy Spirit through punishment handed down by the holy judges. "Whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire." … Thus whatever the law has not condemned as to a person's works, the faith of the Gospels castigates because of one's readiness simply to use insulting words.
Hilary of Poitiers· Commentary on Matthew 4.17 (367), on Matt 5:22
The Reconciliation Clause
— Matthew 5:23–26 — worship interruptedJesus makes this concrete and costly. Temple worship for a Galilean meant a real trip to Jerusalem — not a quick errand, but days of travel. Even so, if a worshipper remembers, gift in hand at the altar, that a brother holds something against him, he is to leave the gift right there and go be reconciled first. The command in 5:25–26 pushes the same urgency into an everyday dispute: settle it “quickly, while thou art in the way with him,” before it reaches a judge who will not let it go unpaid.
O goodness! O exceeding love to man! He makes no account of the honor due unto Himself, for the sake of our love towards our neighbor; implying that not at all from any enmity, nor out of any desire to punish, had He uttered those former threatenings, but out of very tender affection. For what can be milder than these sayings? "Let my service," saith he, "be interrupted, that thy love may continue; since this also is a sacrifice, thy being reconciled to thy brother."
John Chrysostom· Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 16 (on Matt 5:23–24)
The converse of the truth here taught is very strikingly expressed in Mr 11:25, 26: "And when ye stand praying (in the very act), forgive, if ye have aught (of just complaint) against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you," &c.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Matt 5:24
The concluding words--"Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out," &c.--manifestly show that though the language is drawn from human disputes and legal procedure, He is dealing with a higher than any human quarrel, a higher than any human tribunal, a higher than any human and temporal sentence.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Matt 5:26
Where It Points
— the same root named across ScriptureEveryone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life does not reside in a murderer.“Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” — John names the same root Jesus named.
My beloved brothers, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires.“Slow to wrath” — the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God.
“Be angry, yet do not sin.” Do not let the sun set upon your anger,“Be ye angry, and sin not” — anger itself is not automatically the sin Jesus targets.
Barnes draws this thread together: not all anger is condemned here (Scripture records God's own anger, and Jesus's), but anger nursed “without a cause” toward a brother is treated as the seed of the very thing the sixth commandment forbids.
Anger, or that feeling which we have when we are injured, and which prompts us to defend ourselves when in danger, is a natural feeling, given to us: 1. As a proper expression of our disapprobation of a course of evil conduct; and 2. That we may defend ourselves when suddenly attacked. When excited against sin, it is lawful. God is angry with the wicked, Psa 7:11. Jesus looked on the hypocritical Pharisees with anger, Mar 3:5. So it is said, Be ye angry, and sin not, Eph 4:26. This anger, or indignation against sin, is not what our Saviour speaks of here. What he condemns here is anger without a cause; that is, unjustly, rashly, hastily, where no offence has been given or intended. In that case it is evil; and it is a violation of the sixth commandment, because he that hateth his brother, is a murderer, 1Jn 3:15.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832–1869), Matt 5:22
Closing
“Thou shalt not kill” never needed Jesus to make it stricter. What He shows is that it was never only about the hand. A word can carry the same contempt a blow carries, and the remedy Jesus prescribes is not a heavier law but a costly, specific command: go be reconciled first — even before the gift, even before the case reaches a judge who will not let it go unpaid.