“But I Say unto You…”, A Second Look at Lusting after a Woman

Ye have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery. ²⁸But I say unto you, that every one who looks upon a woman to lust after her has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27–28, Darby Translation

The word “lust” to most read­ers of that verse prob­a­bly car­ries with it the idea of “strong sex­ual desire.” And as a noun, “lust” cer­tainly does mean that, among other things. How­ever, as a verb, which is how it is used in the above verse, the word “lust” means some­thing much sim­pler: to have a strong desire or a crav­ing for some­thing. Plea­sure (sex­ual or oth­er­wise) is merely the implied ends of lust­ing, not the means thereof. (Why else would some­one crave some­thing if not for plea­sure of one sort or another?)

And so it is in the Greek. “To lust after” is a trans­la­tion of the word ἐπιθυμέω, which car­ries a very sim­ple mean­ing accord­ing to Strong’s: “to set the heart upon, i.e., long for (right­fully or otherwise).”

The word — in Greek and Eng­lish — is not inher­ently sex­ual, so we must not sim­ply assume it. Stick with “desire to have” as a work­ing def­i­n­i­tion for the time being.

So thus far, sub­sti­tut­ing the mean­ing for the word, the above pas­sage looks like this, mod­i­fied words emphasized:

Ye have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery. ²⁸But I say unto you, that every one who looks upon a woman to desire to have her has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27–28, Darby Translation

Matthew 5:28 is often used to declare that any “sex­ual thoughts” about a woman is equiv­a­lent to com­mit­ting adul­tery, and so it is a sin. But such is not the case, for “sex­ual thoughts” aren’t a part of this verse. Stop­ping with our meaning-for-word inter­pre­ta­tion we just quoted, we are left with a prob­lem: If it is adul­tery to desire a woman, how on Earth is any­one ever sup­posed to get mar­ried? surely “adul­tery in the heart” isn’t the birth of marriage‽

To answer that ques­tion, we must look at the con­text of this desir­ing: “Thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery,” the sev­enth com­mand­ment. What is adultery?

The word “adul­tery” both times it is used in the quoted pas­sage comes from the Greek word μοιχάω, which sim­ply means “to com­mit adul­tery.” For fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion, we must look at the word from which μοιχάω is derived: μοιχός, which “denotes one ‘who has unlaw­ful inter­course with the spouse of another.’”

So let’s do another meaning-for-word swap, and again all mod­i­fied words are emphasized:

Ye have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt not com­mit hav­ing unlaw­ful inter­course with the spouse of another. ²⁸But I say unto you, that every one who looks upon a woman to desire to have her has already com­mit­ted hav­ing unlaw­ful inter­course with the spouse of another with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27–28, Darby Translation

What Jesus does is reveal the link between the sev­enth com­mand­ment and the tenth (“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male ser­vant, or his female ser­vant, or his ox, or his don­key, or any­thing that is your neighbor’s” Exo­dus 20:17).

In other words, if you covet your neighbor’s wife, then you have already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her. We all know that much.

But what doesn’t this verse say?

This verse does not teach that if you “lust” after an unmar­ried woman that you com­mit adul­tery with her. It could per­haps be said that it is okay to desire (or “lust after,” if you pre­fer) an unmar­ried woman, for if you do not desire her, how will you marry her?

Paul would seem to agree with that in 1 Corinthi­ans 7 when he teaches that rather than burn­ing with pas­sion caused by absti­nence, you should marry.

We’re often taught that lust is bad. And cer­tainly, lust­ing (cov­et­ing) after any­thing which is already spo­ken for is bad. But it seems to me that an overex­tend­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of our pri­mary pas­sage in Matthew has led to a lot of prud­ish­ness within the churches when it comes to sex­u­al­ity. We’re taught that it’s bad and can only lead to bad things. All the while the Song of Solomon, an explicit love song of two star-crossed lovers who (and cor­rect me if I’m wrong) were not even mar­ried yet, sits right in the mid­dle of the Scrip­tures taunt­ing every­thing we think we know about holi­ness and sex.