⭐WEB · Matthew 5:37
What does Matthew 5:37 mean?
"But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ Whatever is more than these is of the evil one."
— Matthew 5:37 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
but I tell you, don’t swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God;
nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
Neither shall you swear by your head, for you can’t make one hair white or black.
But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ Whatever is more than these is of the evil one.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’
But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
If anyone sues you to take away your coat, let him have your cloak also.
Explanation
Matthew 5:37 says, in plain terms, that a follower of Jesus should be a person whose word can be trusted at face value. When you say yes, that should simply mean yes; when you say no, it should simply mean no. You shouldn't need to dress up your statements with oaths, elaborate promises, or appeals to something sacred in order to make people believe you. Anything beyond a plain, honest yes or no—any need to swear, embellish, or add weighty guarantees to your speech—springs from something corrupt, whether that's translated as "the evil one" or more generally as "evil."
This verse comes from the Sermon on the Mount, part of a section (Matthew 5:33-37) where Jesus is addressing the practice of oath-taking. In first-century Jewish culture, people would swear oaths by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem, or by their own heads to lend credibility to their promises, especially when the reliability of their word was in question. There was also a legalistic culture developing around which oaths were binding and which weren't—swearing by the temple might be treated as less binding than swearing by the gold of the temple, for instance. Jesus, addressing a Jewish audience familiar with the Law of Moses, cuts through this entire system. He's not primarily giving a new law about vocabulary; he's exposing the deeper problem: the practice of swearing oaths exists because people's ordinary speech has become unreliable.
Theologically, this teaching reflects Jesus's pattern throughout the Sermon on the Mount of pushing past external rule-
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