The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 13
Thirteenth Day
Hate, anger, insulting words: what is their punishment? — Matt. v. 21, 22
AFTER this beautiful preparation, giving such a fine idea of Christian justice, Jesus Christ begins to regulate our duty to our neighbour, and He teaches us how far we must avoid injuring him.
St John says that ' whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,’ [1] and Our Lord reputes him as such. He therefore says that it is not only by killing that we ' shall be in danger of the judgment,’ but also ' whosoever is angry with his brother ’; and that ' whosoever shall say Raca ’ — i.e., shall say an angry and contemptuous word — ' shall be in danger of the Council; but whosoever shall go so far as to say thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’ [2]
Here these three degrees of injury must be well weighed: — to get angry — to show one’s anger by some passionate expression — and to offer atrocious insults and treat one’s brother as a fool. They must further be compared with the three corresponding penalties: — the judgment, the Council, and the fire.
'The judgment’ means capital punishment, since, according to the ancients, it followed murder, which the Law punished infallibly by death. But Christ, in order to show how slight a thing is human justice compared to Divine, allots the penalty of ‘judgment’ — that is, the extreme punishment inflicted by human judgments — to the lowest degree of injury: to simple anger. He means by this that anger against a brother is in itself a sin worthy of death before God. Hence we must not doubt that a mortal sin is committed when anybody remains voluntarily estranged from his brother, which is the case when we keep up anger against him, because then anger is turned into hate. The only way by which we can avoid mortal sin when we have such feelings, is by fighting hard against the bad inclination; for, if we let it get mastery over the heart, charity is destroyed.
The second degree of punishment is ‘the Council,’ which expression refers to the higher Jewish tribunal that was above the one called the 'Judgment.’ In the lesser one private crimes, if necessary, were punished with death; but the Sanhedrin, or Supreme Council of the nation, was more severe, inasmuch as it judged crimes concerning the State, and the government and religion of God’s people: — and against it there was no appeal. To express the just chastisement of those who give way to the second degree of anger — i.e., of showing their hate by angry or contemptuous words — Jesus Christ places it within the power of what is most severe and inflexible amongst men, which is the extreme rigour of the sovereign National Council.
Then comes the last degree, which was to offer atrocious insults, such as to call one’s brother ' thou fool'; [3] and for this offence there was nothing human left by which to express the vengeance it deserves except a valley near Jerusalem, held as abominable, and called i the valley of corpses and cinders.’ It was there that, in the days when the people of God were given up to idolatry, the Israelites burnt their children in honour of the infamous idol Moloch, and where they then threw their cinders and half-burnt bodies.
Tradition further declared that the corpses of Sennacherib’s soldiers had been thrown there in a heap, so that the valley swarmed with worms that had come out of their corpses, which were also half burnt and marked with fire. This place was called ' the valley of the son of Ennom — or of Benennom —'; [4] whence, by change of B to G, we get Gehennom — Gehenna — Gehenne; by which word hell — the hell of the lost, with its devouring flames and gnawing worms — was afterwards expressed; of which our Saviour says that 'their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.’
It is, then, to this valley of corpses — also called the valley of death — that Jesus Christ compares the frightful punishment of those who treat their brethren as madmen and fools. If He decrees such a punishment for insults only, how must those be tormented who strike and kill? The Son of God does not even mention such, as not choosing to suppose that they could exist among His own people; but is content with leaving it to be inferred how acts of violence will be punished, when words alone are subject to such terrible rigour.
Let us, therefore, weigh carefully each of our words, since they are weighed with such exactness in the supreme judgment of God.