Matthew 25:42 · World English Bible
Matthew 25:42 Meaning For I Was Hungry
for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink;
What does Matthew 25:42 mean?
Āhāra: Nutriment Every living being stands on food. The King on the throne places himself among the hungry, and hunger levels beggar and judge alike, asking the same question in any mouth.
From the Buddhism reading below.
Matthew 25:42 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Buddhism
BUDDHISM
Buddhism
Āhāra: Nutriment Every living being stands on food. The King on the throne places himself among the hungry, and hunger levels beggar and judge alike, asking the same question in any mouth. Bread and water hold a body in existence hour by hour, so a hand that withholds them withholds the life underneath.
Karuṇā: Compassion Compassion is the stir in the chest at pain standing right in front of you. A thirsty man was there and nothing in these people moved. A cup of water costs nothing to someone who has water, so the refusal was settled long before the cup, in the moment the sight arrived and landed on nothing.
Macchariya: Stinginess Stinginess clamps the hand shut over what could be shared. "You gave me no drink" points at a jar with water still in it, since nobody accuses an empty-handed man of withholding. The grip feels like safety, which is why it stays closed even around a cup that would never have been missed.
Dāna: Giving Giving is the first practice the Buddha set in front of ordinary householders, and it starts exactly here: a plate handed over, a cup poured. It asks no ceremony and no temple, only the distance between your hands and someone's mouth. Warm feeling that stays indoors leaves the stranger hungry, and the accounting at the end asks what left your hands.
Dakkhiṇeyya: One worthy of a gift A worthy recipient is the field in which a gift takes root. These people looked at a hungry stranger, priced him at nothing, and now hear the King name that stranger as himself. Worthiness cannot be read off a face or a set of clothes, so the safe practice treats every open hand as the highest field there is.
Kamma: Intentional action and its fruit Kamma is intention, and intention ripens. Nothing was done here, and still something was chosen: the eye caught the hungry man and the mind turned away, and that turn is the seed. The sentence being read out is not a punishment dropped from above; it is the harvest of a thousand small turnings away, each one quick enough to feel like nothing at the time.
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Live Matthew 25:42 today
- Catch one turn away today. The ask you scrolled past, the message you left unread because answering costs something. Go back and do the small version of it now.
- When someone close to you needs something you plainly have, time, a ride, the money, give it without the long calculation about whether they deserve it.
- On a bad day when you feel too thin to give anything, give the cheapest real thing anyway: hold the door, let the car in, say thank you to the person at the register like you mean it.
What is sitting in your hands right now that someone near you needs?
The same truth in other traditions
Rig Veda 10.117
The wealth of the generous never runs dry, while the one who eats alone finds no one beside them when they need it. Hunger was never meant to be the way a person dies.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Do not say you will attend to it when you have time, because you may never have time. The duty is not yours to finish, and you are also not free to walk away from it.
Stoicism · Seneca
The miser guards a full jar and lives like a man with nothing. What is hoarded stops serving anyone, the owner included.
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