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Turning the Other Cheek

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Say someone slaps you on the right cheek. How do they do that? With their left hand, right? The left hand was unclean.

Matthew NIV - Eye for Eye - “You have heard that it - Bible Gateway

It was not to be used for touching other people. This rule still stands in some cultures. This was a kind of slap of rebuke given to a social inferior. Anyone who struck a social equal that way was subject to a fine. The rule of law was important! Now, if someone struck you that way, and you invited them to strike the left cheek, you were inviting them to an open-handed blow.

It was not a rebuke to an inferior. It was a challenge to an equal. If you are their equal, the first blow was improper. If they are your social superior, the second blow would be.


  1. BibleGateway.
  2. Sadies Angel (An Ordinary Girl Book 1);
  3. Treatise on Classical Elasticity: Theory and Related Problems (Mathematical and Analytical Techniques with Applications to Engineering).
  4. Turning the other cheek.
  5. Días dorados/Bajo las sábanas (Las mejores sagas) (Spanish Edition).

How about if someone sues you for your shirt? They wore an inner garment and an outer garment. These have been translated as shirt and coat , but actually they were khitona , or tunic, and himation , or toga. Deuteronomy 24, verse 13, lays down the law that if someone gives you their coat — himation, toga — as a pledge, you must return it by nightfall so they can sleep in it. You give them the coat too. Oh, and if they have both your shirt and your coat, what are you wearing?

Which exposes you to shame — at their instigation — but also exposes them to shame for viewing it. How about that extra mile? They could be punished for making you go farther. So at the end of the mile you keep going. You can hand it over now.

When NOT to Turn the Other Cheek

So you do not return violence for violence, no. That would compound wrong on wrong. It would also make you lose.


  1. Ardmore. We Are Because of Others: The Story of Fée Halsted and Ardmore Ceramic Art;
  2. Turning the other cheek - Wikipedia?
  3. Defiance, Not Compliance: Turning the Other Cheek | CPJ.
  4. Turn the other cheek - Idioms by The Free Dictionary;
  5. turn the other cheek.

They could have you arrested for it. Instead, you turn the other cheek, go the extra mile.

Defiance, Not Compliance: Turning the Other Cheek

But, in its historical origins, that is also not meek acquiescence. Politeness lets injustices pass. But pushing politeness can expose them, too, without giving any excuse for further injustice. You just have to turn… cheeky. The phrase turn the other cheek is well ingrained in the language, of course, as is go the extra mile. It would be far too much to expect people to instantly change the usage to refer to a kind of meekness that presses the point and exposes the injustice. So, given this interpretation how would you translate the three sentences into plain, modern English?

Honestly, I think they — like so much of the Bible — require commentary, not just translation. I think analogues will be more available for people who are socially disadvantaged — Jesus was addressing an audience who were in a strict social hierarchy with others above them and Roman occupiers on top of everyone. So minority groups who are regularly subject to certain indignities will surely have clearer analogues available to them. Wow…thanks for your research and detail again! It gives me a new appreciation of the phrase and the reading.

Thanks — this is just the sort of material I treasure to spur my students to develop their critical thinking skills, most particularly in the context of a course that is a core component of the International Baccalaureate program — Theory of Knowledge. This TOK course has — at least, potentially — some of the same elements of intellectual subversion and challenge that you outline in your blog piece, although the IB institutional types might not relish or accept that perspective.

Nazarene Commentary Matthew 5: Blessed and legal commentaries Belgian Biblestudents - Belgische Bijbelstudenten. On the value of historical context facingthefireswithin.