Part Three: What Did Jesus Mean by “But I Say to You”?

Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5—7

Matthew 5:17–48

Mountains carry memories in Israel’s story. Moses climbed a mountain and received the Torah. In Matthew 5, Jesus climbs a mountain, sits down, and begins to teach. The resemblance is unmistakable. Matthew presents Jesus as a new Moses.

That image can lead us to think that Jesus replaces Moses. Moses gave Israel one law; Jesus now gives his followers another. When Jesus repeatedly says, “You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you,” he can sound like a new lawgiver correcting the old one.

Jesus’ own words resist that reading. Before giving any of his rulings, he declares that he has not come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. Not even the smallest letter will disappear. His followers must practice and teach the commandments. He then tells them that their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

Moses remains authoritative, but Moses is no longer the only authoritative figure on the mountain. Israel’s Messiah has arrived, and he claims the right to declare what faithfulness to Moses requires in the time of restoration. Matthew 5 places Moses’ Torah in the hands of the Messiah.

A Jewish debate about how to walk

Jewish teachers did more than repeat the commandments. They had to explain how those commandments should guide ordinary life. What counted as work on the Sabbath? When was divorce permitted? Which oaths were binding? How should someone respond to an injury? Who counted as the neighbor whom the Torah commanded Israel to love?

Jews often called this kind of practical interpretation halakhah. The word is connected with walking. Halakhah concerned how someone should walk according to God’s commandments.

In lived Jewish life, Torah could not be separated from its interpretation. The command to observe the Sabbath, for example, had to be translated into decisions about what counted as work. The command to love one’s neighbor raised questions about who the neighbor was and what love required. To keep Torah was therefore to keep Torah according to a particular halakhah.

That made disagreements about interpretation enormously important. A person might believe that he or she was observing Torah carefully and still be regarded by another Jewish group as breaking it. Different halakhic rulings produced different patterns of life, and each pattern made a claim about faithfulness to the God of Israel.

Halakhic debates therefore asked more than, “Which interpretation is correct?” They also asked, “Which community is truly walking according to God’s will?”

That is what is at stake in Matthew 5. Jesus challenges the halakhah associated with the scribes and Pharisees and gives his own rulings about murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and enemies. He is defining the way of life that should mark the community gathered around him.

The dispute concerns which interpretation faithfully expresses Moses’ Torah—and which community is living faithfully before God as Israel’s restoration arrives.

“You have heard . . . but I say”

“You have heard that it was said” introduces commandments as they had been received and interpreted. “But I say to you” announces Jesus’ ruling.

Jesus is not debating Moses. He is challenging interpretations of Moses that have narrowed a command, separated it from other parts of Torah, or neglected the mercy, justice, and faithfulness emphasized by the Prophets.

He begins with the commandment against murder:

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder.”

An interpretation might stop with the outward act: the person who has not killed anyone has kept the commandment. Jesus points to anger, contempt, and broken relationships.

He does this from within the Torah itself. Leviticus commands Israelites not to hate a brother or sister in their hearts. The same passage commands them to love their neighbors as themselves (Leviticus 19:17–18). Jesus reads “You shall not murder” alongside these instructions. Faithfulness requires more than refraining from murder. It seeks reconciliation and refuses to nurture the contempt from which violence grows.

Jesus follows the same method when he addresses adultery:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.”

He then speaks about looking at a woman in order to desire her. The Greek word translated “desire” is the word used in the Greek Torah for coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”

Jesus places two of the Ten Commandments beside one another. The prohibition against adultery is read through the prohibition against coveting. Moses’ Torah already reaches into the desires of the heart.

Paul Sloan draws attention to this connection in his important book Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism. As Sloan explains in an interview, Jesus’ words “are expressed with the vocabulary of the commandments themselves.” Jesus uses one Torah command to show how another should be kept. Sloan discusses his argument here.

Jesus is not replacing an outward law with a new religion of the heart. He is exposing an interpretation that has failed to read Moses fully.

Rulings for ordinary life

The same halakhic debate continues through the remaining sayings.

The Torah regulates divorce, but a certificate of divorce should not become an easy justification for casting aside a wife. The Torah commands truthful oaths, but carefully worded oaths should not become a means of avoiding truthfulness. “An eye for an eye” limits punishment, but it should not become permission for personal revenge.

Jesus’ final example makes the disagreement especially clear:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”

The Torah commands love for one’s neighbor. It never commands hatred of an enemy. It even instructs Israelites to return an enemy’s wandering animal and to help when an enemy’s donkey collapses beneath its load (Exodus 23:4–5).

“Hate your enemy” represents an interpretation of the boundaries of neighbor-love. Jesus rejects it and gives his own ruling: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

These rulings protect vulnerable people, restrain retaliation, demand truthful speech, and extend love beyond the boundaries others had drawn. They address subjects already governed by Moses’ Torah. The debate concerns what that Torah requires.

Reading Moses through the Prophets

Matthew has already shown his readers something about the righteousness Jesus teaches.

When Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant, he believes she has been unfaithful. Matthew calls Joseph “righteous.” Yet Joseph does not seek to expose her publicly. Before the angel tells him what has happened, Joseph decides to end the betrothal quietly.

Joseph’s righteousness appears in the way he handles Mary’s vulnerability. He takes the Torah seriously while choosing a course marked by mercy. Matthew introduces merciful Torah observance before Jesus ever begins to teach.

Jesus later makes that principle explicit by quoting the prophet Hosea twice:

I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

The Prophets did not lead Israel away from Moses. They confronted interpretations and practices that preserved a command while neglecting God’s purposes. They called Israel back to justice, mercy, faithfulness, and love for God and neighbor.

Jesus reads Moses through this prophetic lens. He asks what kind of relationships, people, and community the Torah seeks to form. His rulings move toward reconciliation, protection of the vulnerable, truthful speech, restrained retaliation, and mercy toward enemies.

Torah in the time of restoration

Jesus also speaks at a particular moment in Israel’s story. He has announced that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Israel’s promised restoration is arriving.

Sloan makes this eschatological setting central to his reading. Israel’s Scriptures looked forward to a time when God would restore his people, transform their hearts, and enable them to live faithfully. Jesus announces that this moment has arrived and teaches the people being restored how to walk according to the Torah.

Sloan’s book helps us see why Jesus’ teaching cannot be separated from his mission to Israel. I would place beside that emphasis another feature of Matthew’s Gospel: Jesus reads Torah through the Prophets. Moses supplies the commandments. The Prophets disclose the mercy, justice, and faithfulness toward which those commandments move. Jesus, as Messiah, gives the decisive ruling.

This makes “But I say to you” more than another contribution to an ongoing disagreement. Jesus presents himself as the final interpreter of Torah. “Final” does not mean that people will never again discuss or apply its commandments. It means that every later interpretation is measured by the Messiah’s interpretation.

Jesus is not a new lawgiver delivering a second Torah. He is the Messiah bringing the halakhic debate to its eschatological culmination. Moses remains authoritative, but Moses’ Torah is now in the hands of the Messiah.

Seeing what is happening

Jesus’ Jewishness allows us to see what is actually taking place on the mountain. A Jewish Messiah is challenging other Jewish interpretations of Moses. Jesus argues from Torah, reads Torah through the Prophets, and declares how Israel should walk in the time of restoration.

His rulings also form a community. The people gathered around Jesus will demonstrate their faithfulness to God by walking in Moses’ Torah as interpreted by the Messiah.

That is what Jesus is doing when he says, “But I say to you.”

In the next Dispatch, another halakhic dispute will bring Jesus, the Pharisees, ancestral tradition, purity, and the Torah to the same table. What was Jesus arguing about in Mark 7?