“Raca”
Matthew 5:22
Foreign wordSettledJesus
Anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' will be subject to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be subject to the fire of hell. (Matthew 5:22 BSB)
* Aramaic, roughly 'empty-head'; a slur on a person's worth.
What it sounds like today
A strange, untranslated word most modern readers slide right past.
The cultural key
Reqa is Aramaic for 'empty one,' roughly 'airhead': a contempt-slur about someone's worth. Jesus builds an escalating ladder: anger in the heart → contempt spoken (Raca, liable to the Sanhedrin, the high court) → 'fool' (morē), liable to Gehenna itself. The escalation is deliberately extreme: no earthly court ever tried name-calling.
Recovered meaning
Contempt is murder's seed. Jesus drags what the law couldn't prosecute, the sneer and the slur, before the highest court, because dismissing a person's worth is where killing begins.