Matthew 5:18

Matthew 5:18 is the eighteenth verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just reported that he came not to destroy the law, but fulfil it. In this verse this claim is reinforced.

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

The World English Bible translates the passage as:

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 5:18

The opening "for truly I say to you," which can also be translated as "amen I say to you," is the first occurrence of one of the author of Matthew's favourite turns of phrase. Boring notes that it occurs thirty-two more times in the Gospel.Schweizer states that it was a typical statement among Koine Greek speaking Jews, but could also have sometimes been used by Aramaic speakers like Jesus.

This verse is the origin of two common English expressions. In Greek the word translated as jot in the KJV is iota, and "not one iota" is used to refer to something with not even the smallest change. The expression "dotting the Is and crossing the Ts", meaning paying attention to detail or putting the final touches on something, also has its origin in this verse.

Jesus probably would have been speaking about the Aramaic alphabet, see Aramaic of Jesus, and scholars have long tried to guess what would originally have been referred to by this phrase. Iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, and was often left out by transcribers, however, since only capitals were used at the time the Greek New Testament was written (Ι), it probably represents the Aramaic yodh (י) which is the smallest letter of the Aramaic alphabet, and like iota it was frequently forgotten. Lachs notes that this expression only works with the Aramaic alphabet or square script, and not the Ancient Hebrew alphabet. This is historically consistent as the Aramaic script had largely displaced the ancient one by this period.

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