The chapter
Simply Two Sabbath arguments open the chapter: disciples picking grain, and a man with a withered hand healed in front of people watching for exactly that. Jesus then spends a whole night on a mountain praying, and in the morning picks twelve. He comes down to a level place and teaches: four blessings, four matching curses, and then a long stretch about loving enemies, not judging, and doing what you hear rather than only calling him Lord.
Context This is the sermon that everyone half knows, and it is not the one they half know. Matthew 5:1 puts it on a mountain; verse 17 here has him come DOWN and stand on a level place. Matthew 5:3 to 12 has nine sentences beginning BLESSED and no woes at all. This one has four blessings and four woes, counted, and the woes are the blessings turned over one by one: poor against rich, hungry against full, weeping against laughing, hated against well spoken of. The blessings are also addressed to the room. Matthew says blessed are THE poor in spirit; verse 20 says blessed are YOU who are poor, with nothing added.
Verses 1-11
Simply The disciples rub heads of grain in their hands on the Sabbath and are challenged. Jesus answers with the time David ate the bread only priests were allowed, and says the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath a man with a withered right hand is in the synagogue, and the scribes watch to see whether Jesus will heal, so that they can accuse him. He tells the man to stand where everyone can see, asks whether the Sabbath is for doing good or harm, and heals him. They are furious and start discussing what to do about him.
Context Verse 6 says the withered hand was the RIGHT one, which no other account of this scene says, and it is the kind of detail this book keeps adding. The question at verse 9 is not the question he was asked. He was being watched over whether healing is work; he answers about whether the day is for saving life or destroying it, which moves the argument onto ground the watchers cannot answer on. Verse 8 also says he knew what they were thinking before the healing, so the scene is set up deliberately: he tells the man to stand in the middle, where nothing can be missed.
Verses 12-19
Simply He goes up the mountain and prays all night. In the morning he calls his disciples and picks twelve of them, and the text names all twelve. Then he comes down and stands on level ground with a big crowd from Judea, Jerusalem and the coast around Tyre and Sidon, and everyone tries to touch him.
Context The list at verses 14 to 16 can be set beside the other two, which are in this app. Mark 3:18 and Matthew 10:3 both name Thaddaeus; verse 16 has JUDAS THE SON OF JAMES instead, in the same position, and then Judas Iscariot after him. Everything else in the three lists is the same set of names in slightly different order. This file states the difference and does not resolve it, because deciding whether one man had two names is a historical question and not something the text answers. The all-night prayer at verse 12 is this book's addition too: it prays before every large decision, and the choosing of the twelve is the first of them.
Verses 20-26
Simply He looks at his disciples and says: you who are poor are blessed, because the Kingdom is yours; you who are hungry will be filled; you who are weeping will laugh; you who are hated for his sake should jump for joy. Then he turns it over. Woe to you who are rich, because you have had your comfort already; woe to you who are full, who laugh, and who are spoken well of, because that is what their ancestors said about the false prophets.
Context These seven verses are the sharpest economic language in the four Gospels, and nothing in them is spiritualised. The poor are poor, the hungry are hungry, and the rich are told they have already been paid. Whether the sentences are consolation or threat depends entirely on which side of them the reader is standing, and the text does not soften that. It is worth reading verse 24 next to 1:53, where the same reversal is sung before he is born: the hungry filled with good things, the rich sent away empty. The book says the same thing twice, once in a song and once to people's faces.
Verses 27-49
Simply Love your enemies, do good to people who hate you, and pray for people who mistreat you. If someone hits one cheek, offer the other; give to everyone who asks. Loving people who love you back earns nothing, because anyone does that. Be merciful the way your Father is. Do not judge, do not condemn, and give, because you will be measured with the measure you use. Take the plank out of your own eye first. And the person who hears him and acts is like a man who dug down and built on rock; the one who hears and does nothing built on soil, and the house fell.
Context Verse 36 is where this sermon differs from its parallel in one word, and the word matters. Matthew 5:48 ends the same run with BE PERFECT, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Here it is BE MERCIFUL, as your Father is merciful. Both can be opened in this app. The two houses at the end are also built differently: Matthew 7:24 to 27 sets rock against sand and sends rain, floods and wind, while verse 48 has a man DIG DEEP to reach rock and sends a river against the house. The difference is what the builder did rather than what he found. And verse 48 does not give the same reason in every edition for why the house stood. Eight of the thirteen say it was FOUNDED ON THE ROCK; five say instead that it was WELL BUILT, and they are Segond 1910, the Bible libre, the Riveduta 1927, the Petrus Canisiusvertaling and the Vietnamese 1934. Four of those five are the same editions that group together at John 6:11; the fifth is not, which is why they are named here rather than called a family. The two French editions do not divide here: Segond says the house was WELL BUILT and the Bible libre says SOLIDLY BUILT, so a French reader in either one is not given the rock as the reason, although eight of the thirteen editions are.