“I have come not to bring peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”* Obviously Jesus is not preaching hatred and division as such, but he means to state in the most radical form that spiritual development is away from incest and toward the capacity to love the neighbor and stranger. The members of “a man’s own household will be his foes” in truth if he is still bound to them.
