The Fourth Commandment: Turn the Other Cheek

The Fourth Commandment: Turn the Other Cheek is the fourth of five laws that Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, during the climactic spiritual awakening of the novel, extracts from the Sermon on the Mount as the only rational basis for human society. It directly contradicts the entire apparatus of criminal law, punishment, and vengeance that Nekhludoff has witnessed in the courts, prisons, and halting stations of Siberia, and it provides him with a concrete, actionable alternative to the system he has come to abhor.

Origin and Content of the Commandment

The commandment is drawn from Matthew 5:38-42, which Nekhludoff reads in the Gospel of Matthew that the English traveler gave him as a souvenir. The text he encounters states that man should not only not demand an eye for an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should forgive an offense and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service others demand of him. This is the fourth of five laws Nekhludoff identifies: the first forbids anger and murder, the second forbids adultery and lust, the third forbids oaths, and the fifth commands love of enemies. Together they form what he calls the "Kingdom of Heaven on Earth."

Nekhludoff's Realization of Its Meaning

Reading this commandment in the small hours of the night after Kryltzoff's death and his final interview with Katerina Maslova, Nekhludoff experiences a revelation. He had read these words many times before but had passed them by unnoticed; now they appear as simple, clear, practical laws whose implementation would establish perfectly new and surprising conditions of social life. The violence that had filled him with indignation—the floggings, the sunstroke deaths of convicts, the imprisonment of innocent peasants, the separation of families—would cease of itself. The commandment directly answers the question that had tormented him throughout his journey: whether he was mad to see what others did not, or whether those who inflicted such suffering were mad. The answer is that no man has the right to punish another because all are sinners themselves.

Application to the Problem of Punishment

The commandment provides the solution to the problem that had obsessed Nekhludoff since his first day on the jury: why do men lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill others when they are themselves just like those they torment? The usual objection—that without punishment society would collapse—no longer confuses him. He sees that punishment does not lessen crime or improve the criminal; on the contrary, the prisons and halting stations systematically produce depravity, spreading it broadcast among the population. The only reasonable thing to do is to leave off doing things that are not only useless but harmful, immoral, and cruel. The commandment to turn the other cheek is not an impossible ideal but a practical law: if men would obey it, the Kingdom of Heaven would be established on earth.

Connection to the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

Nekhludoff's understanding of the commandment is deepened by the parable of the servant who owed ten thousand talents and was forgiven, but then refused to forgive a fellow-servant who owed him a hundred pence. The lord's question—"Shouldst not thou also have mercy on thy fellow-servant as I had mercy on thee?"—becomes the key to everything. Nekhludoff realizes that the only certain means of salvation from the terrible evil he has witnessed is that men should always acknowledge themselves to be sinning against God, and therefore unable to punish or correct others. The commandment to forgive seventy times seven is not a sentimental gesture but the structural principle of a just society.

Significance in Nekhludoff's Transformation

This commandment, more than any other single text, completes Nekhludoff's moral revolution. He had already decided to give away his land, to follow Maslova to Siberia, and to confess his guilt publicly. But those decisions had been haunted by doubt and by the temptation to return to his old life. The Fourth Commandment gives him a framework that makes sense of all his actions and resolves the contradictions that had tormented him. He sees that the business of his life is not yet finished: scarcely has he completed one task when another has commenced. The commandment does not promise happiness or ease; it demands a continual, active forgiveness that has no limit. Yet this demand, far from crushing him, fills him with rapture such as he has long not felt, as if after long days of weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom.