TRANSLATION MATTHEW 18:6

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who trust in me to fall down, it would be good for him to have a donkey-turned millstone hung from his neck and be plunged in the ocean depths. Grief to the world, these causes of falling down! It is necessary that such causes come about, but grief to the human being through whom they come!

If your hand or your foot causes you to fall down, cut it off and throw it away from you! It is better for you to enter into Life maimed or lame, than with two hands and two feet to be thrown into the everlasting fire. And if your eye causes you to fall down, pluck it out and throw it away from you! It is better for you to enter one-eyed into Life than with two eyes to be thrown into the rubbish pit of fire.

Be very careful not to despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that their messengers in heaven continually look upon the face of my father who is in heaven.

Many commentators apply the Greek ‘mikroi’, little ones, to the powerless people who trust in Jesus, say, in Matthew’s assembly; but it seems to me that the primary reference is to children and then by metaphorical transfer to believers of low social status. The appalling history of child abuse in the Christian church makes such an interpretation relevant.

We can again note that just as all the good news comes from Jesus, so does all the bad news. There is no avoiding the passionate anger in this passage, and the sternness. of Jesus’ therapy: get rid of any trait or habit that makes you fall from your true being as a child of God. Modern psychiatry it is not!

Most versions of the bible translate the Greek ‘mulos onikos’ simply as millstone. But onikos means ‘of, or belonging to, a donkey.” The upper, larger millstones were often turned by a donkey, whose neck was connected to it. Jesus imagines the offender’s neck being connected instead. There is a glimpse of (savage) humour here.

Because the world is free of God’s compulsion, “causes of falling down” will arise through human evil, but God’s permissiveness is no excuse.

Yes, of course, the examples of hand, foot and eye are metaphorical but are meant to indicate seriousness. The lopped-off element will be a painful loss. Modern believers are taught to mock St Origen who, it is said, misunderstood this command, and tried to emasculate himself. Of course, what we don’t know is what kind of evil his genitals tempted the saint to do.

The fire is also metaphorical deriving from the fires of the Jerusalem rubbish pit, Gehenna.

The beautiful idea that the little ones have angels in heaven with favoured access to God, is meaningful whether we think of them as guardian angels in the traditional way, or as their spiritual messengers (angelos = messenger) in the heavenly court.

In the magical realism of Matthew, Jesus is the Great One, who can do miracles. Here, and elsewhere in the Gospel Matthew shows him taking the side of the littlest and the least.