Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 5:24

"leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." — Matthew 5:24 (ASV)

Leave there your gift — The words describe an act that would appear to people as a breach of liturgical propriety. To leave the gift and the priest, with the act of sacrifice unfinished, would be strange and startling. Yet our Lord teaches that this would be better than sacrificing with the sense of a wrong unconfessed and unatoned for, and, à fortiori, better than the deeper evil of not being ready to forgive. The Talmud gives a curious rule to which the words may allude: “If a man is on the point of offering the Passover and remembers that there is any leaven left in the house, let him return to his house, and remove it, and then come and finish the Passover” (Pesachim, f. 49). What the scribes laid down as a duty regarding the “leaven of bread,” our Lord applies to the leaven of malice and wickedness.

Be reconciled — It is not enough to see this only as a command to remove ill-will and enmity from our own minds, though that is, of course, implied. There must also be a confession of wrong and the endeavor to make amends, to bring about reconciliation or atonement as far as it lies with us.