Matthew 7:11

Matthew 7:11 is the eleventh verse of the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse summarizes the preceding metaphors in favour of prayer.

Text

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts

unto your children, how much more shall your Father which

is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

The World English Bible translates the passage as:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts

to your children, how much more will your Father who

is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 7:11

Interpretation

The previous two verses presented a pair of observations which showed how a human father would not callously mistreat his own child. This verse extends the same observations to God's response to prayer. If a flawed human father looks out for his own child, then there is no reason to doubt that the perfectly good God will not have the best interest of his followers in heart.

According to this verse, Jesus calls his hearers Greek: Πονηροὶ, poneroi, "evil". Jesus was here speaking to his disciples, and others who had chosen to follow him, far from the most reprehensible part of society. The text is unambiguous, the word here translated as evil is the same one routinely used to describe Satan himself. Heinrich Meyer suggests that the meaning is that his hearers, "as compared with God, are morally evil".^[1] and Harold Fowler also suggests that Jesus might simply mean that all humans are evil when compared to the perfection of God. ^[2]

Jesus here presents no arguments for man's evil nature: he appears to take it as a "given". This is true throughout the New Testament, the essentially evil nature of humanity is simply assumed. Theologian Eduard Schweizer notes that this passage is somewhat hopeful, as even the inherently evil man will in some situations almost always do good.^[3]

God will give good things to those who ask him. In Luke's Gospel, the parallel text has God giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask,^[4] but David Hill suggests that Matthew's wording is likely to have been closer to the original.^[5] The reference to good things might be linked to the idea that God will only give good gifts, that if you ask for something that will end up harming you God will not provide it. Ulrich Luz disagrees with this view, and argues that this reading would contradict the thrust of this group of verses.^[6]

References