<\/p>
Roland Worth provides a valuable treatment of the Sermon on the Mount by discussing the OT background to Jesus\u2019 teaching. His overall argument is that the antitheses of Jesus\u2019 sermon do not offer anything especially new but are \u201cfirmly rooted in Old Testament teaching.\u201d Jesus\u2019 \u201cI say\u201d is not a challenge to Moses but to \u201cpopular (or clerical distortions of his own day. It was not a case of Jesus versus Moses, but of Jesus versus traditional interpretation, something profoundly different.\u201d <\/p>\n
Worth\u2019s discussion of \u201cturning the cheek\u201d is especially helpful. As far as OT background, he points to Job 16:10; Lamentations 3:28-30; and Isaiah 50:6. But the most useful part of the discussion is Worth\u2019s claim that what Jesus has in view is not physical assault but insult. Jesus is not denying a right to self-defense, a right granted by Torah. Thus, \u201cwhen one takes this text and attempts to make Jesus lay down some ironclad rule of pacifism <\/i> , one is missing the point entirely. Whether to serve as a soldier is an important ethical decision but not one that this text directly discusses.\u201d Worth makes his case (following Walter Wink) from the details of Jesus\u2019 description. Assuming that someone is right-handed, a punch would strike his opponent on the left cheek rather than the right. Worth thus assumes that Jesus has in view a back-handed slap across the cheek. As Wink puts it, \u201cA backhand slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal.\u201d But the offer of the left cheek is not merely a matter of submitting to an unequal balance of power; offering the left cheek shifts the balance of power. Wink again: \u201cThis action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheeck is saying in effect, \u2018Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me . . . . You cannot demean me.\u201d Jesus doesn\u2019t advocate non-resistance, but a non-violent resistance that shifts the shame from the victim to the perpetrator. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roland Worth provides a valuable treatment of the Sermon on the Mount by discussing the OT background to Jesus\u2019 teaching. His overall argument is that the antitheses of Jesus\u2019 sermon do not offer anything especially new but are \u201cfirmly rooted in Old Testament teaching.\u201d Jesus\u2019 \u201cI say\u201d is not a challenge to Moses but to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt"],"yoast_head":"\n