“turn the other cheek”

The full passage

Matthew 5:38-42 (BSB):

38 You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.” 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Note that verse 39 specifies the right cheek (Greek: τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα, tēn dexian siagona). The right cheek detail is preserved in every major English translation. It is also widely overlooked in popular citation of the verse.

The mechanics of a right-cheek strike

In a right-handed culture — which the first-century Mediterranean world was, given social and religious taboos around the left hand — a blow to the right cheek of the person facing you cannot easily be a forehand punch with the right fist. Try it: your right fist naturally lands on the left cheek of someone facing you.

A blow to the right cheek of someone facing you, with the right hand, almost requires a backhand. The back of the right hand sweeping right-to-left lands on the right cheek of the person facing you.

The backhand strike was, in first-century Mediterranean honour-shame culture, a specific social act: the way a superior struck an inferior. Masters backhanded slaves. Men backhanded women. Romans backhanded provincials. The forehand punch was the blow between equals — the kind of strike that opens combat between men of comparable status.

What turning the other cheek does

The aggressor has just delivered a humiliating backhand to the right cheek. The person struck now turns the left cheek toward the aggressor. The aggressor faces a choice:

• Strike the left cheek with a backhand — but to do this with the right hand requires an awkward, weak swing. The backhand is now physically difficult.
• Strike the left cheek with a forehand fist — but this is the blow between equals, and to use it is to acknowledge the recipient as a social equal, capable of being attacked as a man rather than humiliated as an inferior.
• Walk away — admitting the inability to humiliate further.

Each option costs the aggressor something. Turning the other cheek does not invite further humiliation; it reveals that the original blow has failed to humiliate, and forces the aggressor either to escalate (by treating the recipient as an equal) or retreat.

The reading was developed at length in the late twentieth century by the New Testament scholar Walter Wink in Engaging the Powers (1992) and Jesus and Nonviolent Resistance (1986). Wink’s reading is now widely cited in academic Sermon-on-the-Mount commentary, though it remains one reading among several.

What the surrounding verses are doing

The same passage continues with two further illustrations:

• The tunic and cloak (v. 40) — In Greco-Roman law, suing someone for their chitōn (inner garment, tunic) was the move of an aggressor demanding payment from a debtor with very little. Verse 40 says: hand over the himation (outer cloak) as well. In Jewish law (Exodus 22:26-27), the cloak was protected — it could not be permanently taken because it was the poor man’s blanket. To hand it over was to expose oneself to the cold and to publicly reveal the aggressor as someone who had stripped a debtor naked.
• The second mile (v. 41) — Roman soldiers had legal authority to compel a provincial to carry their pack one mile. The law specified the limit. To carry it a second mile was to violate the law on the soldier’s behalf — an act of voluntary excess that put the soldier in a delicate position.

In each of the three illustrations — cheek, cloak, mile — the response goes beyond compliance into a form of action that exposes the aggressor or refuses the social meaning of the original demand. None of them is straightforward passivity.

What the verse does not say

The verse addresses a specific kind of situation — the dishonouring blow, the abusive lawsuit, the imposed labour. It does not address combat between equals, war between nations, defence of a third party, or self-defence in mortal danger. The application of “turn the other cheek” to all these situations is an extension from the specific to the general — an extension various Christian traditions have made differently.

Some traditions (Anabaptist, Quaker, parts of Catholic social teaching) read the passage as a foundational principle of nonviolence applicable to all situations. Others read it more narrowly. The text speaks to a particular cluster of social situations and leaves the broader application open.

Original-language note

The Greek siagōn (σιαγών) means jaw or cheek. It is not a special word; it does not carry insult-specific meaning on its own. The cultural meaning is supplied by the surrounding context — ten dexian (the right one) and the verbal action rhapizō (to slap, strike) — and by the first-century social conventions in which a backhand to the right cheek was a recognisable, specific act.

For the broader passage in context, see the Sermon on the Mount entry.