Adultery and Desire
The Tenth Commandment Via the Seventh
You have heard that it was spoken, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27–28.
If there is one area of Jesus’s teachings that elicits varied and emotionally charged responses in our culture, it is sexual morality.
To one extreme are those often referred to as prudes—they take the biblical commands seriously and call those who don’t reprobate. To the other side are those who explain everything away with “that was then this is now. Love tolerates all sexual expression; there are no limits.” Jesus himself would be a prude in their estimation.
But to include Jesus with the “prudes” misses a more fundamental level of his teachings.
If we only place Jesus’s teachings on the sexual morality spectrum, then we miss the entire thrust of what he teaches.
His focus was not on sexual (im)morality, but desire.
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Sexual immorality in whatever form it takes is only a symptom of desire, not equivalent to it.
When we gain even the barest understanding of this concept, then Jesus’s teachings apply to all of life, not just sex.
You shall not commit adultery
Jesus began this section of the Sermon by exactly quoting another of the Ten Commandments, the seventh, normally translated “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:13/Deuteronomy 5:17). “Commit adultery” is the common translation of one Greek word moicheuō and the Hebrew word nʾaf.
Virtually all of the translations of Matthew 5:27 have “Do not commit adultery,” though one has the converse “Be faithful in marriage” (CEV), while another has “Do not be guilty of adultery” (ICB), and still another “You shall not do sex sins” (NLV). While the CEV is true, it downplays the command as a prohibition. The ICB is simply confusing: How is it possible to commit adultery and not be guilty of it? Finally the NLV has wrongly generalized adultery to sexual sin.
The term for adultery in both Greek and Hebrew portrays a married person entering into an unfaithful relationship with another person (married or not—I guess married would be double adultery).
The prohibition specifically has to do with the act of unfaithfulness in a marriage.
It assumes marriage between a man and a woman.
It assumes that God intended for a married man and woman to remain faithful to one another in the covenant of marriage.
It assumes that the man or the woman can break that covenant via unfaithfulness, but in so doing they are breaking themselves against the character of the always faithful God—marriage itself mirrors God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel (and of Christ to the Church).
Outside of marriage there is technically no adultery, though there are many areas of life that mimic it. In those cases, betrayal is a word often used.
Here in the Sermon, Jesus took the seventh commandment to a different level, just like he did with the command “Do not murder.”
In this case he showed that the seventh commandment was only a species of the tenth commandment.
And by doing so, he showed that technical adultery is only a symptom of a far greater problem, the problem of desire.
The Tenth Commandment
The traditional short translation of the tenth commandment is “Do not covet.” But the actual command in Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21 is way longer: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; you shall not covet your neighbor’s house or field or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Deut. 5:21). It is a wide ranging commandment that encompasses all the possessions of the neighbor.
There is a problem though.
Even though “covet” is the traditional translation of the tenth commandment, the term in Hebrew (chamad) and Greek (epithēmeō) is normally translated with the verb “desire” (which a few translations do use: CEB, Darby, GNT, GW, NOG, NLV, YLT). “You shall not desire.”
The Greek term epithēmeō is the same word Jesus used in Matthew 5:28: “But I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman to desire (epithēmēsai) her has committed adultery in his heart.”
But now we have another translation issue.
Like “covet” in place of “desire” in the tenth commandment, in Matthew 5:28 the vast majority of translations render epithēmeō as “lust” rather than desire or covet! A few use desire, or want, but the major ones (ESV, KJV, NKJV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, etc.) use “lust” or “lustfully” (and only Wycliffe used “covet”). Further, most turn the verb “to desire” into a noun “lust” or an adverb “lustfully.”
In using lust they miss the entire point of what Jesus is saying.
“Lust” in our society is typically that base fleshly passion for having lewd relations with another. I guess I could say “I lust after his truck,” but people would probably think I am weird.
I have never seen the tenth commandment translated, “Thou shalt not lust.”
And there is a good reason—people do not equate lust with covetousness.
“Desire” is the more neutral term that includes both, though I would delete lust as a viable option in Matthew 5:28. Using lust obscures Jesus’s message.
The key to understanding Matthew 5:27–28 is the actual connection and comparison with the tenth commandment. The Greek version of Exodus 20:17/Deut 5:21 says “Do not desire your neighbor’s woman (ouk epithymēseis tēn gynaika tou plēsion sou).” “Desire” and “woman” of the tenth commandment are the same two words that Jesus uses in Matthew 5:28. “Woman” (gynē) is the same word as “wife” in Greek.
When Jesus said “if anyone looks at a woman to desire her,” he referred to the desire to possess what belonged to another. Though possessing another’s wife could include sex, the purpose of Jesus’s statement was wanting—desiring—what another person possessed.
The Jews listening would have immediately connected what Jesus said with the tenth commandment and Jesus’s connection of the tenth to the seventh. In Jewish culture, a female either belonged to her father or to her husband; when the word for woman was used, the assumption was a wife instead of a daughter.
Adultery is the breaking of two commandments.
There were (and are) many avenues for lust and sex, and in other places Jesus lists porneia—sexual immorality—as a sin (and just a few verses later as a cause for divorce), but his intention here is to focus on desire for that which another person has.
Interim Conclusion
For Jesus, sex was not the issue, but wanting a woman that belonged to someone else.
Instead of focusing on the consummation of adultery—the end of a long process—Jesus went to the beginning of the process, the actual looking and desiring the wife of his neighbor. That looking and desiring is breaking the tenth commandment.
Just as murder does not happen without some pre-existing condition such as anger, the final act of adultery is preceded by an inordinate decision of the heart.
The tenth commandment is the prohibition of the inordinate decision.
If a person never broke the tenth commandment, he or she would never break the seventh (or likely the sixth or the eighth or the ninth).
Desire is the first step that leads to murder, adultery, stealing, and lying.
In my next post, I will attempt to define desire. Only in so doing can we understand the verses to follow on plucking the eye, cutting off the hand, or even divorce.
Observations on the Greek Text
Ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη· οὐ μοιχεύσεις. 28 ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ.
1. πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν This is a construction consisting of a preposition πρὸς + an articular infinitive τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι + an accusative direct object αὐτὴν. This particular one with πρὸς expresses purpose: “for the purpose of desiring her” or simply “to desire her.”