Tim Mackie

It's super cool.

But the word mercy there in Hebrew is chesed, loyal love.

And it gets translated in the Septuagint.

as eleos, or mercy, which is a major theme in the Gospel of Matthew, that Jesus is constantly talking about God's mercy, how good is life for the merciful, for they will be shown mercy, that's in the Beatitudes.

Mercy is a huge theme in Matthew, and at the conclusion of Matthew, when he really lays into the Pharisees, what he says is, man, you guys are so good at tithing and giving a tenth,

of all your crops, even your tiny little herb bushes you give a tenth of, but you have abandoned the heavier matters of the Torah, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

So in Jesus' view, the commands are like surface manifestations of all these different ways you could apply the heavier matters, the heavier values.

And in Jesus' mind, justice, mercy, and faithfulness are the values of the moral universe.

That's the wisdom that you gain.

Yes.

Justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

And then in another place, he'll just say, love.

Love God, love your neighbor.

When someone says, what's the greatest command?

So this was very common in Jesus' culture.

And Jesus is engaged in this process of reading the laws as wisdom, pointing to a deeper set of values that he can say were three, justice, mercy, faithfulness, or even as one, love.

But it's built into the commands.

This isn't Jesus innovating.

He's just carrying forward this tradition of love.

seeing all the commands as facets of a diamond pointing to a common core.