Matthew 10:14

Matthew 10:14 is the fourteenth verse in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.

Content

In the original Greek according to Westcott-Hort, this verse is:
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:
The New [International Version] translates the passage as:

Analysis

Both Luke and Mark add, "for a testimony against them". Lapide puts forth three possible reasons for shaking off of the dust: 1) To show their labour in reaching the city, and yet that "it had profited them nothing." 2) To declare even the dust, as impious, because of the unworthy inhabitants, and so "signifying a curse on them", wanting nothing to do with them. 3) As a witness "for the day of judgment against their unbelief and wickedness."

Commentary from the Church Fathers

Rabanus Maurus: "Otherwise; The feet of the disciples signify the labour and progress of preaching. The dust which covers them is the lightness of earthly thoughts, from which even the greatest doctors cannot be free; their anxiety for their hearers involves them in cares for their prosperity, and in passing through the ways of this world, they gather the dust of the earth they tread upon. They then who have despised the teaching of these doctors, turn upon themselves all the toils and dangers and anxieties of the Apostles as a witness to their damnation. And lest it should seem a slight thing not to receive the Apostles, He adds, Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city."
Jerome: "Also they shake off the dust as a testimony of the Apostles’ toil, that in preaching the Gospel they had come even so far, or as a token that from those that rejected the Gospel they would accept nothing, not even the necessaries of life."