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Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are with him in the way; lest perhaps the prosecutor deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison.
Verse Takeaways
1
Settle Disputes Quickly
Jesus uses the practical example of a lawsuit to teach a powerful lesson. Commentators like Charles Spurgeon note that it's often wiser to accept "a lean settlement" than to pursue a "fat lawsuit." The core message is to be eager for peace and seek swift, amicable resolutions to conflicts, even if it means conceding a point. This practical wisdom avoids the escalating costs—financial, emotional, and relational—of prolonged strife.
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Book Overview
Matthew
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13
18th Century
Presbyterian
Agree with your adversary quickly. This is still an illustration of the sixth commandment. To be in hostility, to go to law, to be litigio…
Agree with (ισθ ευνοων). A present periphrastic active imperative. The verb is from ευνοος (friendly, kindly disposed). "Mak up wi…
19th Century
Anglican
Agree with your adversary — The imagery changes and returns to that of human courts, which we encountered in Matthew 5:22. The per…
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Baptist
While you are in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you b…
Jesus again urges haste to settle matters with an offended adversary while still “with him on the way” to court. In the ancient world debtors were …
16th Century
Protestant
Be agreed with your adversary. Christ appears to go further, and to exhort to reconciliation not only those who have injured their brother…
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17th Century
Reformed Baptist
Agree with your adversary quickly These words are not to be understood in an allegorical sense, as if "the adversary…
The Jewish teachers had taught that nothing except actual murder was forbidden by the sixth commandment. In this way, they explained away its spiri…
13th Century
Catholic
For I tell you, that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees. Above, the Lord showed that …