The Similar Sayings: Matthew 5:11 & Luke 6:22

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

This article is part of a series on the Jesus verses that are similar, but not the same, in different Gospels. The first article in this series is here.

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Todays’ article looks at the “Blessed are you when people insult/hate you” verses from Matthew and Luke. These two similar verses illustrate something very different than we have seen so far in these comparisons. They show us how dramatically Jesus could evolve his sayings over time.

The Gospels describe these verses being delivered at different times but in similar circumstances. Both are delivered during a series of verses we call the “beatitudes.” The one in Matthew comes at the end of the eight beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The one in Luke comes at the end of the three beatitudes in a similar sermon that Jesus gave in a “level place,” call it, the Sermon on the Plain. In the Luke version, the three beatitudes are followed by three “woes.”

From these two “sermons” and their differences, we can see that Jesus used many of the same lines, but often in different ways. We can also see that, over time, Jesus works on his sayings, improving their bite, humor, and memorability. The narrative indicates that the Matthew version, Matthew 5:11, was earlier and the Luke version, Luke 6:22, later in Jesus’s career. Here are the NIV versions of each:

Matthew 5:11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Luke 6:22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

These verse a lot of different words, but an overall similar structure and message, but why should we think of the Luke version as an evolution of the earlier one in Matthew?

Insult and Hate

The Greek verb translated as “insult” is the same in both verses. It is a very uncommon verb. It is only used by Jesus in these two verses and nowhere else. In Matthew, it is the first of three negative clauses. In Luke, it is the third of four negatives. The verb means "to insult," "criticize," “reproach,” and “mock.” The use of this uncommon word in both verses connects them as similar. Jesus used uncommon words more commonly later in his career.

This “insult” is replaced as the first negative in the Luke version with “hate.” This Greek verb is common in Jesus’s words and used several times in both “sermons,” but the Greek doesn't have the emotional intensity of the word “hate” in English. The word expresses a negative preference, perhaps more like “dislike.” See this article for more information.

Jesus used this word for “hate” several times in three other similar verses to express the idea that he is the cause of people’s hate:

Mark 13:13 Everyone will hate you because of me,
Luke 21:17 Everyone will hate you because of me.
Matthew 10:22 You will be hated by everyone because of me…

These short verses express a similar message to this verse, but Jesus clearly wanted to exaggerate this message. Exaggeration was one of his main form of humor. We see it in the progression here from Matthew to Luke, where the negative clauses grow from three to four.

Persecute and Exclude

The next two verbs are “persecute” (Matthew) and “exclude” (Luke). In Greek, these two verbs are more similar than they appear in English.

“Persecute” is from a Greek word that means "to pursue", "to chase", "to urge on," or "to drive." It comes closest to our idea of “hounding” someone. Jesus uses it only twelve times. "Exclude" is a verb that means "to mark off boundaries," and "to separate" in the sense of "to banish." Jesus uses in only three times.

Both verbs have the sense of excluding someone. So, Jesus moves from a more common word to a less common one over time. The use of uncommon words is another feature of his humor.

“Falsely Say”

The "falsely say” in Matthew is a poor translation of the Greek. The Greek word “say” is the common verb meaning "to speak" or "to say,” but the “falsely” is not an adverb. It is another Greek verb meaning "to cheat by lying," "to beguile," and "to cheat" or "disappoint" someone about something. In the middle form, it means "lying to themselves" or "cheating themselves." This is not an adverb describing how something is said, but an adjective describing Jesus's critics as “lying to themselves,” something that he says elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount that is lost in translation.

What they are saying to deceive themselves is “every worthless thing.” The word translated as “all” or “every” is the common Greek word. The word translated as “evil” means something more like “worthless.” The form is neuter, so "thing" can be added to it. Putting everything in its original form, the clause is “they say every worthless thing about you, lying to themselves.”

Improving the Ending

Jesus does most of his work here to spice up the ending in Luke. The bland “say” is replaced in Luke by a word that Jesus commonly uses for humor. It does not mean “reject.” It means “to toss out” or “to throw out.” It is usually translated as "cast out" in the Bible. See this article for more detail. It has the sense of getting rid of something like trash.

What is “tossed out" is “that name of yours.” The Greek word “name” can simply mean a "name" as it does in English, but it has more the sense of a person’s reputation and authority, as we say, "he is acting in the name of the president." See this article for more. “Tossing out” someone’s name is worse than simply saying worthless things about them. It is almost like shunning them.

Jesus clearly identifies himself as the cause of all these negative things happening to us, but in the Luke verse, he uses the provocative phrase of “the son of the man” (see this article). Thise phrase that indicates that the second verse was said after the Sermon on the Mount is the title, “the Son of the Man”. Jesus first used this title after the Sermon on the Mount.

A more literal translation of these two verses would be:

Matthew 5:11: Fortunate are you whenever they insult you and hound [you] and say every worthless thing against you, being deceived about me.

Luke 6:22: Fortunate are you whenever those people despise you, and whenever they cut you off and they insult you and toss out that name of yours as worthless on account of the Son of the man.

Notice how the second version is more exaggerated, and the problem is put on the more historic figure of “the son of the man” rather that the more personal “me.” It also uses more uncommon Greek words, but we cannot see that in English translation.