Donald Trump was asked about his favorite Bible verse in a Thursday radio interview, and he responded by citing an Old Testament law that Jesus specifically repudiated.
In the interview on news radio WHAM-1180 in Rochester, New York, host Bob Lonsberry asked Mr. Trump whether there was “a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life, sir?”
Mr. Trump responded with a Mosaic law rule an “eye for an eye,” mentioned in several books, most prominently Exodus 21, Buzzfeed reported.
“Well, I think many. I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us … we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”
Unfortunately, an “eye for an eye” is one of the few Mosaic Law verses that Jesus singled out in the Sermon on the Mount as overcome, by the New Covenant that His death and resurrection would seal.
“You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other,” Jesus says in the famous sermon Matthew 5.
This is not the first time, Mr. Trump, who has suggested the IRS has been auditing him because he is such a strong Christian, has fallen on his face in efforts to appeal to Christians in the Republican Party base.
In a speech at Liberty University, he said that the evangelical school’s slogan was from “Two Corinthians,” rather than the near-universal spoken conventions of “Second Corinthians” or “the Second Letter of [St.] Paul to the Corinthians.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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