Turn the Other Cheek?
By Sandra Aviv
Few teachings of Jesus are as well known (or as frequently misunderstood) as his command to “turn the other cheek.” In popular imagination, the phrase often suggests passivity: silent endurance, moral resignation, or unquestioning submission to oppression. Yet when Jesus’ words are read in their first-century linguistic and social context, a far more precise and demanding instruction emerges. Rather than calling for surrender, Jesus offers a response to injustice that refuses both humiliation and violent retaliation.
The saying appears in the Sermon on the Mount: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:39)
At first glance, the statement seems absolute. Yet this instruction does not stand alone. It appears within a series of antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus supplements received legal formulations with his own teaching: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you.” In this case, Jesus responds directly to the Torah’s principle of proportional justice (later labeled in Roman legal language as lex talionis) summarized as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
In the Hebrew Scriptures, this principle functioned not as a license for revenge, but as a legal limit on retaliation, ensuring that punishment remained proportionate. Jesus’ teaching does not abolish this concern for justice. Rather, he moves beyond the legal framework of measured retaliation and addresses personal response to wrongdoing. The contrast signals a shift away from calculative reciprocity toward a different mode of engagement, which Jesus then illustrates through concrete, everyday examples.
Matthew’s language in this section is unusually specific, and those details matter. The verb he uses for “strike” is rhapizein (ῥαπίζειν). In Koine Greek, this verb does not describe a violent assault or a punch. Instead, it refers to a slap, often understood as an act of insult or humiliation. The same verb appears elsewhere in the Gospels in contexts of mockery and derision, including during Jesus’ trial, where he is slapped as part of his public shaming, as described in Matthew 26:67, Mark 14:65, and John 18:22.
This linguistic choice already narrows the scenario. Jesus is not addressing bodily injury, but an act meant to degrade, belittle, or assert dominance.
Matthew further specifies that the blow lands on the right cheek, a detail not preserved in Luke’s parallel account. In a predominantly right-handed society, striking the right cheek would normally involve a backhanded slap. In the ancient Mediterranean world, this gesture carried a clear social meaning. A backhanded slap was not how one fought an equal; it was how one insulted someone perceived as inferior, such as a servant, subordinate, or socially marginalized person.
This understanding is supported by sources outside the New Testament. Jewish historians of the period describe public striking under Roman authority as a means of humiliation and social control. Josephus, for example, recounts instances in which Roman officials ordered public beatings not as legal punishment, but as deliberate acts of degradation and intimidation (Jewish War 2.14.9; 2.15.1; Antiquities 20.8.5). A similar distinction appears in Jewish legal tradition. The Mishnah, in Bava Qamma 8:6, assigns different penalties for various forms of striking, treating a slap as a serious act of public humiliation, distinct from injury caused by a fist or weapon.
The meaning of Jesus’ instruction, “Do not resist an evildoer” (μὴ ἀντιστῆναι τῷ πονηρῷ), has been widely discussed in scholarship. The verb antistēnai can denote forceful or violent resistance, particularly in military or legal contexts, but it can also be read more broadly as opposition or resistance in general. As a result, scholars debate whether Jesus intends to prohibit violent retaliation specifically or resistance altogether. What is clear from the immediate context, however, is that Jesus does not speak in abstractions. He follows this instruction with concrete examples: being slapped on the cheek, sued for one’s cloak, compelled to carry a burden for a Roman soldier, and pressured by those who demand assistance. Each case involves coercion, humiliation, or exploitation within everyday social and legal realities, not situations of physical assault. The interpretation of Jesus’ command must therefore be shaped not by the verb in isolation, but by the scenarios through which he explains it.
When Jesus instructs his listener to “turn the other cheek,” he is not asking them to accept humiliation as deserved. Instead, he describes a response that disrupts the act of degradation itself. Turning the other cheek refuses to cooperate with the social script of dominance and shame. It neither returns violence nor absorbs insult as final.
The aggressor is confronted with a choice: escalate the encounter into a different category of action or abandon the attempt to humiliate. Either way, the original act of dominance is exposed rather than completed.
This reading aligns with Jesus’ broader teaching throughout the Gospels. He confronts unjust authority, challenges religious hypocrisy, and openly names exploitation and abuse of power. What Jesus consistently rejects is retaliation that mirrors injustice.
At the same time, the Gospels also present a deliberate limit to resistance. Jesus himself does not resist arrest or execution, even when unjustly condemned. In Matthew’s narrative, this restraint is not portrayed as weakness, but as purposeful submission to a larger divine vocation. Jesus refuses violent defense in Gethsemane and accepts the consequences of imperial power without retaliation. This tension complicates any reading of “turn the other cheek” as a strategy of social “activism” alone. The saying cannot be reduced either to passive endurance or to calculated resistance. Instead, Matthew presents a pattern in which injustice is named, dignity is preserved, and violence is refused, even when refusal leads to suffering.
Over time, “turn the other cheek” came to be read outside its historical and linguistic context. Detached from the realities of Roman-occupied Judea and the social language of honor and shame, the phrase was flattened into a general call for passivity. Yet in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ words are anything but passive.
The earliest followers of Jesus appear to have lived out this teaching primarily as non-retaliation rather than organized resistance. In Paul’s letters, believers are repeatedly urged not to repay evil for evil, but to endure injustice without vengeance, entrusting judgment to God (e.g., Romans 12:17–19). At the same time, Paul does not glorify abuse or deny the reality of wrongdoing; he names injustice clearly and, when necessary, appeals to legal authority rather than responding with violence (Acts 16:37–39; 22:25). Early Christian communities thus practiced a posture of restraint and witness under pressure, marked by refusal of retaliation rather than by active confrontation or armed resistance.
Early Christian interpreters already recognized the tension in Jesus’ teaching. While figures such as Origen and Tertullian emphasized non-retaliation as central to Christian ethics, later thinkers like Augustine distinguished between inward disposition and outward action, reading the command as a rejection of vengeance rather than a mandate for passivity. From the beginning, the saying was understood as morally demanding, not simplistic.
Jesus’ words call for restraint without submission, courage without violence, and moral clarity in the face of insult. He does not teach his followers to disappear under injustice, but to stand without becoming what they oppose. Understanding the original meaning of Jesus’ teaching does not weaken its challenge. Turning the other cheek is not about giving up dignity, but about refusing to let humiliation define the truth. It is not surrender, but a deliberate, disciplined refusal to answer injustice on its own terms.
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