Texts in Conversation
In Matthew, Jesus speaks of weeping and gnashing teeth to describe the fate of the unrighteous, based on Jewish tradition. Isaiah describes death as punishment and later works like Judith turn this into scenes of final judgment with fire and suffering.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Judith 16:17
Deuterocanon
16 For all sacrifice is little for a sweet savor, and all the fat is very little for a whole burnt offering to you; but he who fears the Lord is great continually. 17 “Woe to the nations who rise up against my race! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment and put fire and worms in their flesh; and they will weep and feel their pain forever.” 18 Now when they came to Jerusalem, they worshiped God. When the people were purified, they offered their whole burnt offerings, their free will offerings, and their gifts. 19 Judith dedicated all Holofernes’ stuff, which the people had given her, and gave the canopy, which she had taken for herself out of his bedchamber, for a gift to the Lord.
Date: 100 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Matthew 24:51
New Testament
47 I tell you the truth, the master will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But if that evil slave should say to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he begins to beat his fellow slaves and to eat and drink with drunkards, 50 then the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not foresee, 51 and will cut him in two, and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Date: 70–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... “The day of judgment” and its abbreviated stand-ins, “the judgment” and “that day,” envisage the eschatological assize: Matthew 10:15; Luke 10:12 (Q); Matthew 11:22, 24; 12:36; Luke 10:14 (Q); so too the Johannine sayings concerning “the last day”: John 6:39–40, 44, 54; 11:24. In Second Temple Judaism, “the day of judgment,” which does not occur in the Hebrew Bible or the LXX, had become a synonym for “the day of the Lord,” understood as the eschatological trial that will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. (See, for example, 1 Enoch 10:12; 100:4; Jubilees 4:19; Judith 16:17; Testament of Levi 1:1; 4 Ezra 12:34) ... [Compare] Zoroastrian pictures of hell (e.g., Yasna 31:20), there are references to “the outer darkness” (Matthew 22:13; 25:30; Greek Apocalypse of Ezra 4:37; Testament of Jacob 5:9) and to “the weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:51b; compare Sibylline Oracles 2:305–6; 8:104–5, 231, 350) ..."
Dale C. Allison Jr., Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 34–35.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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