Understanding Matthew 5:28 [updated]
Look up Matthew 5:28 in your own Bible before reading further. There’s a reason I’m not going to quote the verse yet either in my own translation or a Bible version. What I intend to demonstrate below is that some translations get this verse right and some do not--and the results may surprise many readers of This Lamp.
I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I'm tempted. And Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, “I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.” ... I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do--and I have done it--and God forgives me for it.
Note that Carter seemingly distinguishes between what he calls “deliberate sin” from this sin of adultery in his heart which he calls an “almost impossible standard.” Why is it an impossible standard? It’s difficult because fleeting thoughts pass through our minds, often without invitation. Whether these uninvited mental visitors are shunned or become welcomed guests is a separate but related matter. But what if I told you that Carter may have unnecessarily struggled with the belief that he was committing “adultery in his heart,” when he may not have been? What if many of us have struggled, confusing the temptation with the actual sin, simply because we were using a Bible with poor translation of this verse?
Understand in what follows, I am not advocating lessening what God calls sin in any degree. Rather, we need to be sure that we understand sin to be what it is and be careful not to add restrictions that the Bible never speaks of. And if we misunderstand sin because of translation of the text, then the translations need to be changed.
This was brought to my attention while reading the book (technically, I’m listening to the 18-hour unabridged audio version) The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. In part of the book (which I highly recommend in spite of an error I’ll explain in a moment), Willard offers a skillfully written exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount. He spends quite a bit of time on Matt 5:27-28 explaining the exact nature of Jesus’ words. On p. 165, Willard writes:
Therefore those translations of Matt 5:28 that say, “Everyone who looks at a woman and desires her,” or “everyone who looks at a woman with desire,” are terribly mistaken. They do much harm, especially to young people. For they totally change the meaning of the text and present “adultery in the heart” as something one cannot avoid, as something that just happens to people with no collusion of their will.
That on this reading to be tempted would be to sin should have been enough, by itself, to show that such translations are mistaken. No translation of scripture can be correct that contradicts the basic principles of biblical teaching as a whole.
The terminology of 5:28 is quite clear if we will but attend to it, and many translations do get it right. The Greek preposition pros and the dative case are used here. The wording refers to looking t a woman with the purpose of desiring her. That is, we desire to desire. We indulge and cultivate desiring because we enjoy fantasizing about sex with the one seen. Desiring sex is the purpose for which we are looking.
What Willard writes above makes sense on both a theological and practical level. However, in looking at the text itself, I had only one problem: I couldn’t find πρός/pros with a dative in Matt 5:28--
ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ.
The Greek word πρός/pros is a preposition initially defined in the BDAG lexicon as “expressing direction ‘on the side of’, ‘in the direction of’: w. gen. ‘from’, dat. ‘at’, or acc. (the most freq. usage in our lit.) ‘to.’” In Matt 5:28 πρός/pros relates to ἐπιθυμέω/epithumeo (translated as lust or sexual desire or simply desire in English translations). But, contrary to Willard, ἐπιθυμέω/epithumeo is not a dative. In fact, it’s an infinitive in the aorist tense. At the end of the verse, there’s a dative--καρδίᾳ/kardia (heart)--but no amount of creative sentence diagramming is going to relate πρός/pros to καρδίᾳ/kardia.
I emailed two folks about this issue: Wayne Leman, Bible translator extraordinaire and my original Greek teacher from 1992, Darrell Pursiful. I asked them both if I was simply missing something that was staring me in the face. But they confirmed what seems abundantly clear simply by looking at the text: πρός/pros is not with a dative in Matt 5:28. So is Willard simply wrong in regard to his whole argument, especially with what he said in the second paragraph I quoted above?
Well, by the time I emailed Darrell Pursiful, I had already confirmed Willard’s basic thesis in a couple of other sources, and Darrell affirmed what I had found.
My first hunch had simply been to look at commentaries on Matthew. But in the brief survey of five or six volumes, including some fairly technical resources such as the ICC and Word series, none really touched directly upon this issue. Looking in Accordance, I pulled up The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament. Here it was mentioned in reference to this verse that πρός/pros with the infinitive often expresses purpose.
I hit the Greek grammars, but did not find anything specific to this issue in Wallace or even basic grammars like Mounce. However, I did find what I was looking for in A. T. Robertson’s big grammar (once again proving that this grammar has never fully been “replaced” by any newer work). On p. 1003, Robertson writes, “In Mt. 5:28, πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι, either purpose or result is possible.” And on p. 1075, Robertson writes that the idiom πρὸς τό “was used by the ancients in much the same sense as εἰς τό and ἐπὶ τῷ, ‘looking to,’with a view to.’”
Darrell also pointed me to Robert Guelich’s book on the Sermon on the Mount, which although I had on my shelf, I had failed to look at when searching commentaries. Sure enough, Guelich writes on pp. 193-194:
The phrase τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν means literally “in order to desire having her (sexually).” The same very to desire to have (ἐπιθυμέω ) appears in the tenth commandment for “to covet” (Exo 20:17, LXX, and Deut 5:21, LXX). “To lust” in English connotes accurately the sensual overtones but lacks the accompanying thought of possession inherent in ἐπιθυμῆσαι.
So, what this comes down to is that Willard’s basic point is right even if he messed up his argument from the original languages. I can give him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he may have simply had a brief mental lapse and it wasn’t caught at time of publication. I have a print copy of the book as well which contains the same error (I reproduced his argument above using it), but I don’t know if more recent printings have corrected the mistake.
What this means on a practical level is that Jesus never said “looking at a woman with lust” was sinful, but rather “looking at a woman TO lust” or “looking at a woman FOR THE PURPOSE of lust” is equivalent to adultery in the heart. That is, the actual sin is found in looking at a woman with express purpose to lust after her or even possess her as Guelich points out. Jimmy Carter, myself, and perhaps even you have stressed over the passing thoughts, the temptations, thinking we had sinned when this was not the case. Certainly entertaining those thoughts, that second and perhaps third glance invited sin, but not the initial look and thought that goes through our minds. We always have the option of quickly looking away (or simply changing our Yahoo profile).
So here’s where it gets interesting: which translations get it right and which ones get it wrong?
I’m not going to even quote the ones that get it wrong. You can look them up for yourself, but here they are: TEV/GNT, REB, NRSV, CEV, NASB (1995 edition), NLT1, and NLTse.
The wording in the RSV, NIV, NJB, Message, and TNIV draws a middle ground (some form of “look lustfully” ), but are still not as explicit in regard to purpose and intent as the translations below which better reflect the meaning of Jesus’ words.
Here are the translations that more accurately render the purposeful intent in Jesus’ words:
“ego autem dico vobis quoniam omnis qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam iam moechatus est eam in corde suo” (Vulgate)
“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (KJV)
"Pero yo os digo que cualquiera que mira a una mujer para codiciarla, ya adulteró con ella en su corazón." (Reina-Valera)
“but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (NASB, 1971 edition)
“But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (NKJV)
“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (ESV)
“But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (HCSB)
“But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (NET)
Sources referenced:
Danker, Fredrick William, William Arndt, Walter Bauer, and F. W. Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2000. [Accordance edition used]
Guelich, Robert. The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1982.
Robertson, A. T. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934. [Accordance edition used]
Rogers Jr., Cleon L., and Cleon L. Rogers III. The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998. [Accordance edition used]
Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998.
Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments (just not your lustful thoughts).