Matthew 5:38 and the Antithesis of the Antitheses
Making Fences around the Torah
Many readers, when encountering Jesus’ teaching about “an eye for an eye” in Matthew’s Gospel, often assume they’re reading a dramatic rejection of earlier biblical traditions. This interpretation has shaped centuries of Christian thought, positioning Jesus as someone who came to overturn or nullify the Torah’s commandments. Unfortunately, this reading misses something essential about how Jewish teachers of the period approached biblical interpretation, and more specifically, how they sought to protect and preserve the Torah’s teachings through careful reading, interpretation, and application.
One specific example from Matthew 5:38, where Jesus quotes the principle of proportional justice found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, before offering his own interpretation about turning the other cheek, represents a particular method of biblical interpretation that would later be formally recognized in rabbinic literature. This approach involves creating protective boundaries around the Torah’s commandments, making them more difficult to violate by extending their application beyond what may appear to be its face value requirements. Rather than weakening or nullifying the commandments, this interpretive practice actually intensifies them, demanding a higher standard of behavior that addresses not just actions but the intentions and circumstances that lead to those actions.
The phrase “But I say to you …” which appears throughout this section of Matthew, has contributed significantly to this misunderstanding. Many readers interpret these words as a declaration of opposition to the Torah, as if Jesus were setting up his own authority against that of Moses. Historically, this marker and its place in the intertextual relationship in this section of Matthew has led to its being labeled “the antitheses”. However, within the context of Jewish teaching methods, that is not the intent of the language. It typically signals that the speaker is offering their interpretation of the text, participating in the ongoing tradition of biblical commentary that characterized Jewish interpretation and practice.1 Understanding this distinction transforms how these passages read, not as a replacement of the Torah but as an engagement with it that seeks to reveal its intent, trajectory, and broader application.
If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. An eye for an eye If he break another mans bone, his bone shall be broken If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina. If he put out the eye of a man’s slave, or break the bone of a man’s slave, he shall pay one-half of its value. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. A tooth for a tooth. If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina. (Code of Hammurabi)
“If men fight and hit a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the one who hit her will surely be punished in accordance with what the woman’s husband demands of him, and he will pay what the court decides. But if there is serious injury, then you will give a life for a life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-24)2
Understanding Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah requires examination of the broader ancient Near Eastern legal context from which these biblical commandments emerged. This principle of proportional justice, often designated by its Latin term, “lex talionis,” appears not only in Exodus and Leviticus but throughout ancient Near Eastern legal collections, most notably in the Code of Hammurabi. These parallels reflect shared legal traditions and common concerns regarding justice and social order. The biblical formulation “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” directly corresponds to similar provisions in Hammurabi’s code, which prescribes matching injuries for damaged eyes, broken bones, and removed teeth. However, while Hammurabi’s laws differentiated between social classes, prescribing monetary compensation for injuries to lower-status individuals while requiring physical retaliation for harm to social equals, the biblical version demonstrates a more uniform and egalitarian application of the principle.3
The function of these laws emerges more clearly through consideration of their historical context. Rather than promoting violence, the expression of “lex talionis” served to constrain it. In cultures and societies where personal vendettas could escalate into protracted cycles of revenge, these laws established clear boundaries: the punishment could not exceed the original injury. The principle required proportionality, one eye for one eye, not multiple injuries or a worse punishment for a single act of harm. This framework of measured justice prevented the disproportionate retaliation that threatened to destabilize the kinds of large family structures and groups that operated in the Near East.4 This protective dimension helps to form a bedrock reading of what the Torah is doing in the context of Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek.
Whoever injures another person must receive the same injury in return, losing the same body part they caused the other to lose—unless the injured party chooses to accept monetary compensation instead. The law allows the victim to determine how much their injury is worth and to set the compensation, unless they prefer a stricter punishment. (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 4)
The interpretation offered by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote roughly at the same time as the New Testament, provides additional evidence that Jesus’ approach belonged to a broader trajectory of Jewish interpretation. While acknowledging that someone who injures another “must receive the same injury in return,” he immediately clarifies that this is not a requirement and can be avoided if “the injured party chooses to accept monetary compensation instead.” This reading reframes what may appear to be mandatory retaliation into a system that accounts for victim agency. According to Josephus’ interpretation, the law grants injured parties the authority to determine appropriate compensation and even to set its value, with physical retaliation serving as an option only if the victim “prefers a stricter punishment.” This reading demonstrates that Jewish legal thinkers of the period understood these laws not as demands for violence but as a way to approach justice fairly and even mercifully. Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek thus appears less as a radical departure from Jewish law and more as a continuation of this interpretive trajectory—one that increasingly emphasized the victim’s power to break cycles of violence through choosing forgiveness or compensation over physical retribution.
If a man inflicts an injury on his fellow citizen, just as he has done it must be done to him — fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth — just as he inflicts an injury on another person that same injury must be inflicted on him. One who beats an animal to death must make restitution for it, but one who beats a person to death must be put to death. (Leviticus 24:19-21)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well. (Matthew 5:37-40)5
As highlighted in Matthew 5, Jesus advances this interpretive trajectory to its logical conclusion. Where Josephus presents retaliation as optional and compensation as acceptable, Jesus suggests that non-retaliation represents the ideal fulfillment of the commandments purpose. His instruction to “turn the other cheek” extends the principle beyond mere limitation of violence to its complete cessation. This teaching demonstrates how the underlying intent of the commandment, to break cycles of escalating violence, reaches its fullest expression when victims choose to break the cycle of all violence.
This interpretive approach exemplifies the Jewish practice of “making a fence around the Torah,” an interpretive method designed to safeguard the Torah’s core principles by extending their application.6 If Jesus had intended to nullify or cancel this commandment, the result would have been the opposite of what he teaches, it would have removed all restraints on retaliation, allowing anyone to respond to injury with whatever disproportionate violence they desired! Instead, Jesus constructs a protective barrier around the commandment’s essence and trajectory. Just as his teachings about anger prevent murder and his teachings about lust prevent adultery, his teaching about non-retaliation prevents any violation of the Torah’s concern for proportional justice. The fence he builds makes it impossible to exceed the bounds of appropriate response because it eliminates violent response altogether. This represents not a weakening but an intensification of the law making it more difficult, not easier, to violate the Torah’s vision of a just society where violence is limited.
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in the administration of justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah. (Pirkei Avoid 1:1)
The traditional designation of these teachings as “antitheses” fundamentally misrepresents what they are working to accomplish and their place within Jewish interpretive tradition.7 What Jesus demonstrates throughout Matthew 5 exemplifies the very essence of first-century Jewish biblical interpretation, a practice whose name would later receive formal articulation in rabbinic texts like Pirkei Avot. Jesus’s movement from prohibiting murder to prohibiting anger, from forbidding adultery to forbidding lustful thoughts, and from limiting retaliation to asking for non-retaliation, represents this interpretive method in action. Rather than opposing the Torah, these teachings demonstrate deep engagement with Jewish halachic, or legal, reasoning, participating in the ongoing tradition of intensifying the law’s demands to better fulfill its intent.
Betz, Hans Dieter and Adela Yarbro Collins The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Including the Sermon on the Plain (p. 187) Fortress Press, 1995
Wright, David P. Inventing God’s Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (p. 181) Oxford University Press, 2009
Yung Suk, Kim “Lex Talionis in Exod 21:22-25: Its Origin and Context” in Ben Zvi, Ehud (Ed.) Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures: Comprising the Contents of Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Vol. 3 (pp. 99-112) Gorgias Press, 2008
Neusner, Jacob A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (p. 40) McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000
Levine, Amy-Jill & Brettler, Marc Zvi The Jewish Annotated New Testament (p. 11) Oxford University Press, 2011
Well explained. Your interpretation is dead on. 🙌