Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 8:22

"But Jesus saith unto him, Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead." — Matthew 8:22 (ASV)

Let the dead bury their dead — The point of this half-epigrammatic, half-proverbial saying lies in the contrast between the two meanings of the word “dead.” It means: “Let those who have no spiritual life linger in the circle of outward routine duties, and sacrifice the highest spiritual possibilities of their nature to their fulfillment. Those who are really living will do the work to which their Master calls them, and leave the lower conventional duties to be done or left undone as the events of their life dictate.”

We can be sure there was something in the disciple’s inward state that called for the sternness of this rebuke. He had been called to a living work, but he was resting in a dead one.