The sword motif in Matthew 10:34

Abstract

In Matthew 10:34 Jesus utters a very difficult saying. He claims that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword. The form of this saying does not trace back to the historical Jesus; it is the product of Matthew's redaction of a Q passage which is found in a more original form in Luke 12:51. What did the evangelist mean when he wrote that Jesus brought a sword? In the Hebrew scriptures the sword was a common symbol for the judgement and punishment of God, and in later times it represented a number of themes associated with the eschaton. It is argued in this study that Matthew, who was fully immersed in the apocalyptic-eschatological traditions of his day, probably used the sword motif in Matthew 10:34 to symbolise a number of important eschatological events.