Texts in Conversation
Jesus in Matthew 7 teaches that the way you judge someone else will be used to judge you in return, a teaching also found in the Aramaic translation of Isaiah in Targum Jonathan. Both likely draw on a shared Aramaic tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 7:2
New Testament
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive. 3 Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while there is a beam in your own? 5 You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Jonathan Isaiah 27:8
Targum
5 If they would lay hold on the words of my Torah, peace would be made with them; from now on peace would be made with them. 6 They will be gathered from the midst of their captivity and return to their country; there children will be born to the house of Jacob; those of the house of Israel will be fruitful and multiply, and their children’s children will fill the face of the world.” 7 Has He struck him (Judah and Israel) as He struck those who struck him? Or is he (Judah and Israel) slain according to the slaughter of those who are slain by Him (by God)? 8 With the measure with which you measured, they will measure to you; you sent them out and oppressed them. He devised a word against them; He prevailed against them in the day of wrath.
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Notes and References
"... 'With the measure you were measuring with they will measure you' appears in Targum Isaiah 27:8; a saying of Jesus' is strikingly similar: "In the measure you measure it shall be measured you" (Matthew 7:2; Mark 4:24). The measure in Targum Isaiah, however, is applied to a single figure, the oppressor of Jacob rather than to a general group, as in Jesus' saying. A Similar aphorism, crafted in the third person, was common in rabbinic literature (see, e.g., b. Sotah 8b and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 38:25), so we have here a proverb in Aramaic that Jesus and a meturgeman of Isaiah both happened to use. This is a case in which, despite close verbal agreement, no case for dependence can be made one way or another ..."
Chilton, Bruce
"From Aramaic Paraphrase to Greek Testament" in Evans, Craig A. (ed.) From Prophecy to Testament: The Function of the Old Testament in the New
(pp. 23-43) Hendrickson Publishers, 2004
* 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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