Matthew 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter finishes the long teaching Jesus gives on the mountain. He talks about judging others, about asking God for what you need, and about treating people the way you want to be treated. He then sets out a series of contrasts: the wide gate and the narrow one, good trees and bad trees, people who call him Lord and people who do what his Father wants, and two builders whose houses meet the same storm. It ends with the crowds reacting to how he taught.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Jesus commands not to judge.
   • The reason given for not judging is so that you will not be judged.
2. 7:2
   • With the judgment you judge, you will be judged.
   • With the measure you measure, it will be measured to you.
3. 7:3
   • Jesus asks why you look at the speck in your brother's eye.
   • Jesus asks why you do not notice the beam in your own eye.
4. 7:4
   • Jesus asks how you can say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye.'
   • There is a beam in your own eye while you say this.
5. 7:5
   • Jesus calls the person a hypocrite.
   • Jesus commands to first cast the beam out of your own eye.
   • After that you will see clearly to cast the speck out of your brother's eye.
6. 7:6
   • Do not give what is holy to dogs.
   • Do not throw your pearls before swine.
   • The reason is that they may trample them under their feet.
   • The reason is that they may turn and tear you.
7. 7:7
   • Ask, and it will be given to you.
   • Seek, and you will find.
   • Knock, and it will be opened to you.
8. 7:8
   • Everyone who asks receives.
   • The one who seeks finds.
   • To the one who knocks it will be opened.
9. 7:9
   • Jesus asks what man among you, if his son asks him for bread, would give him a stone.
   • The implied answer is that no such man would.
10. 7:10
    • Jesus asks whether, if the son asks for a fish, the man would give him a serpent.
    • The implied answer is that no such man would.
11. 7:11
    • Those addressed are evil.
    • Though evil, they know how to give good gifts to their children.
    • The Father of those addressed is in heaven.
    • How much more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.
12. 7:12
    • Whatever you would want men to do to you, do the same to them.
    • This is the law and the prophets.
13. 7:13
    • Jesus commands to enter through the narrow gate.
    • The gate that leads to destruction is wide.
    • The way that leads to destruction is broad.
    • Many are those who enter through it.
14. 7:14
    • The gate that leads to life is narrow.
    • The way that leads to life is constricted.
    • Few are those who find it.
15. 7:15
    • Beware of false prophets.
    • False prophets come to you in sheep's clothing.
    • Inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16. 7:16
    • You will know them by their fruits.
    • Jesus asks whether men gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.
    • The implied answer is that they do not.
17. 7:17
    • Every good tree produces good fruit.
    • A corrupt tree produces evil fruit.
18. 7:18
    • A good tree cannot produce evil fruit.
    • A corrupt tree cannot produce good fruit.
19. 7:19
    • Every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down.
    • Every tree that does not produce good fruit is thrown into the fire.
20. 7:20
    • Therefore you will know them by their fruits.
21. 7:21
    • Not everyone who says to Jesus, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven.
    • The one who does the will of Jesus' Father in heaven will enter.
    • Jesus calls God his Father.
    • Jesus' Father is in heaven.
22. 7:22
    • Many will say to Jesus on that day, 'Lord, Lord.'
    • They will ask whether they did not prophesy in his name.
    • They will ask whether they did not cast out demons in his name.
    • They will ask whether they did not do many mighty works in his name.
23. 7:23
    • Then Jesus will declare to them, 'I never knew you.'
    • Jesus will tell them to depart from him.
    • Jesus calls them workers of lawlessness.
24. 7:24
    • Everyone who hears these words of Jesus and does them will be likened to a wise man.
    • The wise man built his house on the rock.
25. 7:25
    • The rain came down.
    • The floods came.
    • The winds blew.
    • They beat against that house.
    • That house did not fall.
    • The reason it did not fall is that it had been founded on the rock.
26. 7:26
    • Everyone who hears these words of Jesus and does not do them will be likened to a foolish man.
    • The foolish man built his house on the sand.
27. 7:27
    • The rain came down.
    • The floods came.
    • The winds blew.
    • They beat against that house.
    • That house fell.
    • Its fall was great.
28. 7:28
    • Jesus finished these sayings.
    • The crowds were astonished at his teaching.
29. 7:29
    • Jesus taught them as one having authority.
    • He did not teach as their scribes taught.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

KJV "Judge not" translates a Greek verb that covers everything from forming an opinion to passing legal sentence; here the sense is condemning, not simply assessing. "That ye be not judged" is a way of saying God will judge, a common first-century way of speaking of God's action without naming him.

7:2

"Mete" is an old English verb meaning to measure out. The picture is a market transaction: grain scooped and sold by a measuring vessel, where the scoop the seller used on his customer is handed back and used on him.

7:3

A "mote" is a tiny speck of dust or chip of wood. A "beam" is a heavy squared timber of the kind that carries a roof. Both objects come from the woodworker's shop, and the whole force of the saying is the absurd difference in size.

7:5

"Hypocrite" was the ordinary Greek word for an actor on the stage, a man delivering lines that are not his own from behind a mask.

7:6

Dogs here are not pets but the half-wild scavengers that lived off village refuse. Pigs were unclean animals that no Jewish household kept. "That which is holy" most likely means meat from a sacrifice, which was reserved for the priests and their households and could never be thrown to animals.

7:7

"Ask," "seek" and "knock" stand in a Greek tense that carries the sense of continuing action: keep asking, keep looking, keep knocking, rather than trying once.

7:9

The small round barley loaves of the time looked much like the smooth stones lying about on the ground, which is what makes the swap a cruel joke rather than an honest mistake.

7:10

Some water creatures of the Sea of Galilee, eels in particular, look enough like snakes to make the pairing work. A snake was also an unclean creature that no one at the table would eat.

7:11

"How much more" is a standard form of Jewish argument, running from the smaller case to the greater: if the lesser thing is true, the greater is certainly true.

7:12

"The law and the prophets" was the ordinary name for the Hebrew scriptures, the five books of Moses together with the prophetic books. To say that a single rule is "the law and the prophets" is to say it is what the whole collection comes down to.

7:13

"Strait" in 1611 English means narrow or tightly constricted, as in a strait between two coasts or in dire straits. It has nothing to do with "straight." The gate and road are city images: a broad highway running up to a wide main gate, against a cramped side entrance.

7:14

"Strait" again means narrow, not straight. The Greek behind KJV "Because" is read two ways in the surviving copies: either "because narrow is the gate" or as an exclamation, "how narrow is the gate!"

7:15

"Ravening" means ravenous, tearing at prey. The sheep's clothing is a woolen or sheepskin garment; a rough hair cloak was the traditional dress of a prophet, so the picture also mocks the costume such men wore.

7:16

"Ye shall know them" means you will recognize them, pick them out. The comparison is about a convincing look from a distance: the buckthorn carries small dark berries that pass for grapes at a glance, and certain thistle heads roughly resemble figs.

7:17

"Corrupt" in 1611 English meant rotten or diseased, describing a tree that has gone bad in itself, rather than carrying the modern sense of a person taking bribes.

7:19

"Hewn down, and cast into the fire" repeats, word for word, what John the Baptist says earlier in Matthew (3:10). It was stock language for judgment.

7:21

"Lord" translates a Greek word whose range runs from a polite "sir," through the master of a household or a slave owner, to the title used for God in the Greek Old Testament. Saying it twice over was a form of urgent or emphatic address.

7:22

"That day" was a fixed expression for the day of God's judgment; no further identification was needed. "In thy name" means acting on someone's authority, the way an official acts in the king's name. KJV "devils" is simply older English for demons. "Wonderful works" translates a word meaning acts of power, that is, miracles.

7:23

"Profess" here means to declare openly and formally, not to claim something doubtful. "I never knew you" uses "know" in its sense of acknowledging someone as one's own, close to the wording Jewish teachers used to put a person outside the community. "Ye that work iniquity" renders a phrase meaning workers of lawlessness, and echoes Psalm 6:8.

7:24

In that country a builder either dug down through the loose surface to strike bedrock, which was slow and expensive, or saved the labor and built straight onto the level floor of a dry valley.

7:25

The valley floors of the region are dry through the summer and carry torrents of water in the winter rains, sometimes within minutes of a storm miles away. KJV "the floods came" means exactly this kind of flash torrent, not a slow rise of water.

7:28

"Doctrine" in 1611 English means simply teaching, without the modern sense of a fixed system of beliefs. The phrase "when Jesus had ended these sayings" is a formula Matthew repeats at the close of each of the five large blocks of teaching in his book.

7:29

Scribes were the professional experts in the Law, trained to copy, interpret and teach it, and they were the recognized teachers of the community. Their method was to support a ruling by citing earlier authorities, so a teacher who pronounced on his own say-so was doing something conspicuous.