The Similar Sayings: Matthew 8:22 & Luke 20:18

"Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." & "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

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

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Todays’ article looks at the “let the dead bury their own dead” verses. Though this is the first article in this series, it was inspired by last week’s article, which also looked at two similar verses. Last week, the differences between the two verses were the use of more complicated words in Luke. Here, Luke’s version has the same words until we come to his different ending, one that is a completely new sentence.

Matthew 8:22 Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.
Luke 9:60 Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

The differences in context between the two are minor. Before these verses a man tells Jesus he wants to follow him where ever he goes. Jesus responds with his saying about foxes having dens and birds nests, but the son of the man having no place to rest his head. Then a man excuses himself from following Jesus immediately by saying that he must bury his father.

Did Jesus deliver two different but very similar lines to two different men after as similar dialogue? Or, is one version accurate and the other wrong? Do their differences reflect the level of accuracy of all of Jesus’s words in the Gospels? Before we can see if these questions have any weight, we must examine both the similarity and differences in these verses.

The Similarities

In Greek, the middle section of these two verses are identical, the same words in the same forms. They are also translated the same in modern Bibles, “let the dead bury their own dead.”

The verb translated as "let" primarily means "to let go," "leave," or "to send away." The verb is from a noun that means "letting go" or "release." It is in the form of a command. This word is usually translated as "leave", "forgive", "suffer," and "let" in the New Testament. This is the verb commonly translated as “forgive,” relating to the forgiving of “sins,” but that common translation is misleading (see this article for more). Here, this word commands the man to give permission to other people to bury his father.

“The dead” has many more potential meanings in Jesus’s words than they do in English because the adjective translated as “dead” means both dead and dying, and, when Jesus uses it, can refer to either the death of the body or the spirit. These various uses of “the dead” are discussed in a number of articles (here, here, and here), but its meaning in this verse is covered specifically in this earlier article. In this saying, Jesus contrasts the physically dead with the spiritually dead or the physically dead with the dying.

The word translated as “bury” means “entomb.” The Judeans of the time did not bury bodies in the ground as we do. They put them in caves for a period of time until only the bones were left. The bones were then cleaned and put into ossuaries.

Since Jesus describes both the father and those who should bury him as “the dead,” this verse plays on the dual meanings of the words. Jesus is saying that the living, the ones doing the burying, are “dead” or “dying” but not in the same way. Jesus knows more about these people than what is recorded in the Gospel. He is likely speaking from that knowledge.

It could be that both the physically dead father and his family are spiritually dead. The man asking permission to go may have become Jesus’s follower because he was dissatisfied with his home life. This follower may not just be making a choice about going to a funeral, but which way of life to follow: that of his father and his family or the one that Jesus is teaching. This is possibility why Jesus starts with “follow me.”

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