Matthew Chapter 8 verse 22 Holy Bible
But Jesus saith unto him, Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead.
read chapter 8 in ASV
But Jesus said to him, Come after me; and let the dead take care of their dead.
read chapter 8 in BBE
But Jesus said to him, Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.
read chapter 8 in DARBY
But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.
read chapter 8 in KJV
read chapter 8 in WBT
But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead."
read chapter 8 in WEB
and Jesus said to him, `Follow me, and suffer the dead to bury their own dead.'
read chapter 8 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 22. - But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let; Revised Version, leave. Yet the thought of leaving seems here merged in that of permitting (cf. Matthew 23:14; Mark 5:37; Mark 10:14). The dead (Revised Version, to) bury their (Revised Version, own) dead (τοὺς ἑαυτῶν νεκρούς). The paradox was self-interpreting. Let the spiritually dead have to do with death; dead men belong in a special sense to them. Observe that there was no danger of his father remaining unburied. Christ means that there are times when his service admits of no postponement, however sacred the conflicting duty. His followers must on such occasions be very Nazarites (Numbers 6:7) or high priests (Leviticus 21:11). St. Luke adds, "But go thou, and publish abroad the kingdom of God," and adds a third similar case.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(22) Let the dead bury their dead.--The point of the half-epigrammatic, half-proverbial saying, lies in the contrast between the two meanings of the word "dead." "Let those who have no spiritual life linger in the circle of outward routine duties, and sacrifice the highest spiritual possibilities of their nature to their fulfilment. Those who are really living will do the work to which their Master calls them, and leave the lower conventional duties to be done or left undone as the events of their life shall order." Something there was, we may be sure, in the inward state of the disciple which called for the sternness of the rebuke. He had been called to a living work: he was resting in a dead one.
