Texts in Conversation
Job worries his children may have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, treating an inner thought as a real offense. Jesus echoes this in Matthew 5 when he says that looking at someone with desire is already adultery in the heart.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Job 1:5
Hebrew Bible
4 Now his sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one in turn, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and to drink with them. 5 When the days of their feasting were finished, Job would send for them and sanctify them; he would get up early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s customary practice. 6 Now the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord—and Satan also arrived among them.
Matthew 5:28
New Testament
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell.
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Notes and References
... Job’s speech (which Bernhard Duhm thought surpassed the Torah and the prophets in ethical profundity) includes such unusual features as self-examination, and an awareness that even a glance can be sinful, which some may tend to associate with the Sermon on the Mount (e.g. Matthew 5:27–8; compare also Job 1:5, where Job fears that his sons may have cursed God ‘in their hearts’). The ethical issues surveyed do not include specifically Jewish features such as sacrifice or dietary laws, but only matters relevant to all humanity. This may be expected in a wisdom book, but it may surprise some readers given the fairly late date of the book, since there has been a (largely Christian) perception that ethical insight ‘declined’ (i.e. became more inward-looking) in this period as against the high and universal moral insights of the prophets. Job 31:13–15 stresses the equality of all, slave as well as free, and derives this from their common source in God’s creative act ...
* 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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