Therefore if your hand or your foot offend you, cut them off, and cast them from you: it is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed,
rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
Read Chapter 18
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
And if thy hand, or thy foot These comparisons are to make us sensible, that we must quit and renounce what is most dear to us, sooner than remain in the occasions of offending God. (Witham)
These words more properly mean our relatives and friends, who are united to us as closely as the different members of the body. This he had touched upon before, yet he again repeats it, for nothing is so pernicious, nothing so dangerous, as the company and conversation of the dissolute. Connections of friendship and affinity, are sometimes more powerful in inclining us to good or evil, than open compulsion. On this account Christ, with great earnestness, commands us to cut with those most near and dear to us, when they are to us the immediate occasions of scandal. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lx.)
He is not saying this about human limbs. Far from it. This is said about friends, about relatives, whom we regard in the rank of necessary limbs. Jesus also said this earlier, and now he says it again. For nothing is so harmful as bad company. For what relationship cannot do, often friendship can do, both for harm and for benefit. So he orders us with great emphasis to cut off those who are harmful to us, implying that these are people who supply temptations to sin. Do you see how he checks the future damage from temptations? First he predicts that they will happen, so that no one should be lazy, but everyone should be awake expecting them. Then he predicts that the evils will be very great. For Jesus did not simply say, “Woe to the world for temptations to sin,” but showed their great damage. For when he says, “But woe to that man by whom temptation comes,” he indicates a great punishment. He does not only mention this, but he increases the fear by adding a comparison. And he supplie...
He is not saying these things of limbs; far from it; but of friends, of relations, whom we regard in the rank of necessary members. This He had both said further back, and now He says it. For nothing is so hurtful as bad company. For what things compulsion cannot, friendship can often effect, both for hurt, and for profit. Wherefore with much earnestness He commands us to cut off them that hurt us, intimating these that bring the offenses.
Do you see how He has put away the mischief that would result from the offenses? By foretelling that there surely will be offenses, so that they might find no one in a state of carelessness, but that looking for them men might be watchful. By showing the evils to be great (for He would not have said without purpose, Woe to the world because of the offenses, but to show that great is the mischief therefrom), by lamenting again in stronger terms over him that brings them in. For the saying, But woe to that man, was that of one showing that great was...
