And if thy hand serve as a snare to thee, cut it off it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having thy two hands to go away into hell, into the fire unquenchable;
These words follow the Lord's warning about causing one of His little ones to stumble. He now turns from the harm we do to others to what trips us up in ourselves. The language is violent. Does He mean a real knife? And how can the loss of a hand be the better option?
The action is physical. What the Lord asks for is not. One writer says so plainly, and points to what is at stake:
Clearly the physical act is only a way of describing, in strong terms, a spiritual cutting off and throwing away. Spare nothing that traps you, even if it seemed as close and as necessary as the hand, the foot, or the eye. Eternity is at stake, and so is a judgment no one can escape — a judgment that spares nothing contrary to God.
There is a practical reason too. Cutting off the limb would not remove the problem.
In these words the Lord is not calling for self-harm or a life of harsh self-denial. The Creator will never demand that His creature mutilate the body he has received from Himself. Even if someone plucked out both his eyes, the lust would still remain in his heart. Instead, the Lord takes the teaching further, to the question of self-judgment.
Mark lists hand, then foot, then eye. One writer links that order to service:
In Mark the hand, the foot and the eye come in that order, because here the point of view is service: what a person does, where he goes, and last, what he sees.
So the hand stands for what you do. The same writer works this out for the foot and the hand:
If the foot goes in the wrong direction, use the sharp knife: I must judge it without mercy. Anyone who never learns self-judgment will be cast into hell, into unquenchable fire. The same holds for the hand, which stands for actions. If a person never judges what his hand does, the end is the awful fire of hell.
A hand is not an optional extra. The Lord names something you would call necessary, and He refuses the excuse that follows from it:
Better to sacrifice what might seem most necessary than to give yourself up to the sure penalty of sin. Men plead necessity to excuse what they know keeps stirring them to sin. God's law allows no excuse of that kind.
The verse weighs two outcomes: whole and lost, or crippled and alive.
Whatever it costs us, if an eye makes us sin, we must pluck it out. If a hand does, we must cut it off. In a word, we must give up the most valuable thing there is. An eternity of blessing with Christ is better than keeping a right hand and ending in eternal torment, "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."
The word behind "hell" here is Gehenna. For the first hearers it named a real place:
Gehenna is the Greek form of two Hebrew words meaning "valley of Hinnom." It was the place near Jerusalem where the Jews made their children pass through fire to false gods. Later it became a defiled place. A fire burned there all the time, which made it a fitting picture of the place of eternal punishment.
Some readers take the worm and the fire as pictures rather than literal things. One writer allows that, then presses what the pictures must mean:
There is no need to argue with anyone who says this is figurative language. What I want to press on you all is that the conditions it describes last. The undying worm and the unquenchable fire mean nothing if the people who suffer them ever escape their terrible power.
The refrain lands on more than the person being warned:
The refrain "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" falls on a troubled conscience like the bell that tolls a condemned man to his death. May it stir up in us who believe an unusual earnestness for perishing souls!
- Knife — The cutting is spiritual, not surgical. Blinding yourself would leave the desire in place. The Lord asks for self-judgment.
- Hand — In Mark's order the hand is what you do, the foot where you go, the eye what you look at. Judge each one where it traps you.
- Necessity — The Lord names a limb you cannot spare. That closes the excuse that life needs the very thing you will not give up.
- Trade — Crippled and alive beats whole and lost. Eternity with Christ outweighs anything you keep and carry into hell.
- Fire — Gehenna was a real burning valley outside Jerusalem. It pictures a judgment that never runs out. That should make believers earnest for those still heading there.
[where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched].
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.