Verse of the day · August 26
What does "take no thought for the morrow" actually mean?
Halfway through the verse, tomorrow becomes a person with worries of its own.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Matthew 6:34
Three times in ten verses the same command comes back. The words stand at verse twenty-five, again at thirty-one, and once more here to close it. The repetition is not idle: precept upon precept, line upon line, little enough against a sin that so easily besets us. The promise standing behind the command is modest — food and a covering. He never said they shall be feasted, but that verily they shall be fed.
In modern English, take no thought sounds like an instruction to stop thinking about tomorrow. Matthew Henry runs the three together and puts the Greek beside the last of them, which is this one — mē merimnate, be not in care. Anxious care is one rendering, no anxiety another; the Revision drops the old wording entirely — have no anxiety about to-morrow. What the word forbids is a disquieting, tormenting thought, which hurries the mind here and there and hangs it in suspense, breaks the sleep, and hinders a man's enjoyment of himself, of his friends, and of what God has already given him. Beneath it sits a second: a distrustful, unbelieving thought, the inordinate care for time to come and fear of wanting that springs from disbelief of the promises.
There is a thought concerning the things of this life that is not merely lawful but a duty, and the word is the same. It carries Paul's care of the churches and Timothy's care for the state of souls. Present provision has to be worked for by lawful means or a man tempts God: diligent in his calling, prudent in proportioning his expenses to what he has, praying for daily bread, and asking relief of those able to give it if all else fails. It does not forbid a prudent foresight, and preparation accordingly, but a perplexing solicitude, a prepossession of difficulties and calamities which may perhaps never come, or may be easily borne if they do.
The morrow in the middle clause is a person. John Gill names the figure, a prosopopoeia: tomorrow brought in as somebody sufficiently thoughtful and careful for its own necessaries. It does not say the morrow will take care of itself, B. W. Johnson writes; it says the morrow will bring its own cares, anxieties and troubles. Every day comes with fresh wants and troubles of its own, which is why loading two days of care onto one is ill-advised: to anticipate is only to double them.
Nothing in the last clause promises that tomorrow will be clear. What it says is that today has evil enough in it already. Gill hears Proverbs behind the opening command — boast not of thyself tomorrow — and sets beside it a Talmud saying nearer to Christ's words: do not distress thyself with tomorrow's affliction, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth; perhaps tomorrow may not be, and you will be found distressing yourself for a time that is nothing to you. The last clause he finds in the Talmud too — sufficient for distress is the present time — with the gloss on it: sufficient for the vexation it is, that men should grieve for it at the time it comes upon them. JFB call it an admirable practical maxim, and reckon its English better in our version than in almost any other.
Whether a man lives to see the day is wholly uncertain. He cannot promise or assure himself that he shall have a morrow, Gill says, and it is great weakness and folly to be anxiously thoughtful about it. And if it does arrive, the trouble carried across early has not been spent by the carrying: it belongs to another day, and will be never the lighter when it comes.
What arrives with a day is not only its trouble. If wants and troubles are renewed with the day, Henry writes, aids and provisions are renewed likewise — compassions new every morning, a Friend who is their arm every morning, fresh supplies given out daily according as the business of every day requires. Albert Barnes says it of the morrow itself: it will have anxieties and cares of its own, and it will also bring the proper provision for those cares, God being the same Father then as today. The daily measure is deliberate: it keeps the people who live on it in constant dependence.
The evil is real, and it comes out in daily portions. So does the strength for it: tomorrow's strength is for tomorrow's work and tomorrow's burden. Pull tomorrow's trouble into this morning and it is no lighter for the journey; it will still be standing there when its own day comes, carried twice by then. Providence ordered the load to be borne by parcels. A man who ties them into one and lifts it has not been given a harder life. He has made one.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Albert Barnes and B. W. Johnson.
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