<p>5:28&nbsp;<em>But I say to you, that everyone that looks on a woman-&nbsp;</em>Bathsheba was &quot;very beautiful to&nbsp;<em>look upon</em>&quot; (2 Sam. 11:2). And David did just that. Our Lord surely had his eye on that passage when he spoke about him that &quot;<em>looketh on</em>&nbsp;a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already&quot; (Mt. 5:28). Jubilees 4:15,22, a commonly known book in Judaism at the Lord's time, claimed that the sons of God of Gen 6.2 were Angels who fell because they lusted with their eyes after &quot;the daughters of men&quot;. As so often in the Bible, wrong ideas are alluded to and corrected. It was not that Angels sinned by lustful looks leading to adultery- this language is reapplied to us as humans.&nbsp;Looking on a woman lustfully is also the language of Job 31:1: &quot;I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?&quot;. Job recognized that if he did so, this would be the same as actually committing the deed. He says he will not look lustfully on a maid because &quot;Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the&nbsp;<em>workers</em>&nbsp;of iniquity?&quot; (Job 31:3). Thus Job's understanding that a lustful look in the heart was working iniquity was at the basis of Christ's teaching.</p>
<p><em>Lusting for her</em>- Gk. 'to set the heart upon'. The Lord is not speaking about involuntary turning of the eyes to simply look at a woman.</p>
<p><em>Has already committed adultery with her in his heart</em>- Gk. 'even now'. The suggestion is that the adultery is going to happen in real physical terms, but it happened before God at the time of fantasizing it. It seems to me that the sense of the Greek here implies that an act of actually physically committed fornication will always begin with lust for the act in the heart. This is not to say that sexual fantasy is OK and only actually performing it is sinful. But the sense of 'even now' would appear to mean that this is not what the Lord is teaching here. He is saying that acts of fornication are actually committed ahead of the act- within the human heart. Sexual fantasy about forbidden partners would surely be outlawed by the many NT commands about spiritual mindedness- e.g. &quot;Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God&quot; (2 Cor. 7:1).</p>