Turn the Other Cheek: What Jesus Actually Meant
Jesus' command to turn the other cheek refers to a specific Jewish cultural insult — a backhand strike from a superior. Three modern readings (Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, MacArthur) and what the saying actually meant in first-century Judea.
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Turn the Other Cheek: What Jesus Actually Meant
"Turn the other cheek" is Jesus' instruction in not to answer a blow by striking back. On one widely cited reading, it also refuses the inferior place the blow was meant to assign.
The short answer. When Jesus said "turn the other cheek" in , he was not commanding passive acceptance of every blow. On the reading the scholar Walter Wink made widely known, the phrase refers to a specific cultural insult in first-century Judea: a right-handed backhand strike, used by superiors against inferiors. To "turn the other cheek" was to refuse the social script of the insult — not to accept abuse, but to refuse to play the inferior in the exchange.
The phrase "turn the other cheek" is one of the most-quoted teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and one of the most-misunderstood. The misunderstanding has a name: when read as a universal command to passive non-resistance, it produces either despair (the standard cannot be met) or dilution (the standard is reread until it can be).
The Jewish cultural context recovers the verse's actual meaning. So does reading the verse with the other examples that follow it in . This article walks through both.
Why does Jesus say the right cheek?
On Walter Wink's reading, Jesus names the right cheek because a right-handed person striking another person's right cheek has to use the back of the hand. Wink set this out in Engaging the Powers (1992). In first-century Judea, he argued, a backhand strike was a cultural insult, not a normal fight blow. Social superiors used it against inferiors (master to slave, husband to wife, Roman to Jew, parent to child). On his reading the strike communicated: you are beneath me, and I am marking your face to prove it.
On Wink's reading, to "turn the other cheek" (that is, the left cheek) left the striker two choices. He could use his open palm, which was the gesture of a fight between equals, or he could decline to strike at all. The teaching is not passive acceptance. It is a refusal to play the inferior in the social script of the insult.
Calvin does not read the verse this way. In his commentary on the passage he agrees that it does not forbid all self-protection. "Though Christ does not permit his people to repel violence by violence, yet he does not forbid them to endeavor to avoid an unjust attack." But he hears no refusal of an insult in it. For Calvin the saying is training in endurance for a life of "many injuries in uninterrupted succession". Christ, he says, "wishes them to be trained by this example to meek submission, that by suffering they may learn to be patient." The backhand reading is a modern one, and here it parts company with the Reformer.
Wink's reading is consistent with Jesus' own response when struck during his trial. In , a temple officer strikes him, and Jesus does not "turn the other cheek" passively. He challenges the striker: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" He refuses the dignity-insult by refusing to be silent under it. He does not strike back; he does not surrender either.
What did Jesus mean by turn the other cheek?
Jesus meant that when someone uses coercive power against you, you answer by giving more than was demanded rather than by fighting back in kind. The teaching belongs to a sequence of four examples in , all about the believer's response to coercive power. The four are: the cheek strike (verse 39), the lawsuit for a coat (verse 40), the forced mile (verse 41), and the request for a loan (verse 42).
Each example follows that logic. The cheek-turning gives the second cheek. The cloak-giving gives the coat too. The forced mile becomes the second mile.
Matthew Henry hears the insult in the verse. The blow on the cheek, he writes in his commentary on , "is not only a hurt, but an affront and indignity." He counts three cases rather than four (the cheek, the coat and the mile), and his counsel is patient yielding: "instead of avenging that injury, prepare for another, and bear it patiently." What makes that bearable, for Henry, is where the account is settled: "our recompence is in Christ's hands, who will reward us with eternal glory for the shame we thus patiently endure."
Henry's last line makes the saying intelligible, though he stops at patience and the freedom it grounds reaches further than he takes it. A believer whose recompense is in Christ's hands does not depend on the wrong-doer for his dignity, and so is free to give more than coercion demands. Without that freedom, "turn the other cheek" reads as a command to passive abuse. With it, the saying becomes what it actually is: a refusal to live by the dignity-economy of an honor-shame culture.
Three readings of — Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, MacArthur
Three modern readings have shaped how the verse is heard today.
Tolstoy (in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894) read the verse as a literal command to absolute non-resistance to evil. For Tolstoy, Christ's teaching ruled out all violence, all self-defense, all legal redress. The state, the army, and the courts were all incompatible with the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy's reading produced Tolstoyan pacifism and, downstream, influenced Gandhi's satyagraha.
Bonhoeffer (in The Cost of Discipleship, 1937) read the verse against the rising Nazi state. Bonhoeffer rejected both Tolstoyan absolute non-resistance and the cheap-grace dilution that read the verse as merely "be nice." For Bonhoeffer, the cheek-turning was a costly refusal of the world's economy of force — not a refusal of all resistance, but a refusal of resistance-in-kind. Bonhoeffer himself participated in the conspiracy against Hitler, and was executed for it. His reading allowed for active resistance to evil while refusing the world's logic of escalation.
MacArthur (in his Sermon on the Mount expositions) reads the verse within Jesus' broader critique of the Pharisees' application of the lex talionis ("eye for an eye"). The Old Testament law of equal retribution was civil law for the courts, not a license for private revenge; the Pharisees had turned it into a personal right. Jesus is correcting the Pharisaical misuse: in personal relationships, the believer refuses the cycle of retaliation. MacArthur affirms self-defense and just civil response while rejecting personal vengeance.
The three readings differ on the political scope of the command. Does it apply to states, to soldiers, to ordinary believers? They converge on the personal logic: the believer does not live by the world's dignity-economy of strike and strike-back.
Frequently asked questions about turn the other cheek
What does it mean to turn the other cheek in the Bible?
To turn the other cheek means to refuse the social script of an insult or coercive demand. On Walter Wink's widely cited reading, in first-century Jewish culture a backhand strike to the right cheek was a dignity-insult between unequals. Turning the other cheek forced the striker to either treat the struck person as an equal or back down — it was a refusal of inferior status, not passive acceptance of abuse.
Did Jesus mean turn the other cheek literally?
Jesus' own response to being struck during his trial () suggests the saying is not a command to passive silence. Jesus did not strike back, but he did challenge the striker. The literal interpretation (passive acceptance of every blow) is hard to square with Jesus' own example.
What is the cultural context of turn the other cheek?
A right-handed person striking another person's right cheek has to use the back of the hand. Walter Wink argued that in first-century Judea backhand strikes were used by superiors against inferiors. Turning the other cheek required the striker to either use an open-palm strike (the gesture between equals) or back down — refusing the dignity-insult without striking back.
What is the meaning of ?
belongs to a sequence of four examples (verses 39-42) about the believer's response to coercive power. Each example follows the same pattern: do not fight back in kind, but give more than was demanded. The teaching frees the believer from the world's dignity-economy without commanding passive acceptance of injustice.
Related reading
- What are God's promises about justice? — the kingdom ethic Jesus described
- Browse all questions about Christian living — what Jesus meant by turn the other cheek, and other questions about Christian ethics
- Browse all questions about ethics — Q&A on Christian ethics
