Passage

Matthew 10.28

Book: Matthew · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Verse

ASV:

"28. And be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28, ASV)

WEB:

"28. Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna." (Matthew 10:28, WEB)

KJV:

"28. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28, KJV)

YLT:

"28. 'And be not afraid of those killing the body, and are not able to kill the soul, but fear rather Him who is able both soul and body to destroy in gehenna." (Matthew 10:28, YLT)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV:

"26. Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. 27. What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the house-tops. 28. And be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 29. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father: 30. but the very hairs of your head are all numbered." (Matthew 10:26-30, ASV)

WEB:

"26. Therefore don’t be afraid of them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed; and hidden that will not be known. 27. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim on the housetops. 28. Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. 29. “Aren’t two sparrows sold for an assarion coin? Not one of them falls on the ground apart from your Father’s will, 30. but the very hairs of your head are all numbered." (Matthew 10:26-30, WEB)

KJV:

"26. Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. 27. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. 28. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 29. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 30. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered." (Matthew 10:26-30, KJV)

YLT:

"26. 'Ye may not, therefore, fear them, for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, and hid, that shall not be known; 27. that which I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light, and that which you hear at the ear, proclaim on the house-tops. 28. 'And be not afraid of those killing the body, and are not able to kill the soul, but fear rather Him who is able both soul and body to destroy in gehenna. 29. 'Are not two sparrows sold for an assar? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father; 30. and of you, even the hairs of the head are all numbered;" (Matthew 10:26-30, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Jesus, in the Missionary Discourse (Matthew 10) commissioning the Twelve to preach the kingdom
Audience: the Twelve disciples being sent out to Galilean villages, and by extension, all subsequent Christian missionaries facing persecution
Location: Galilee, c. AD 28-29 (mid-public ministry)
Time period: events c. AD 28-29; composed c. AD 60-80
Narrative context: the don't-fear-persecution section of the missionary discourse (10:26-31). Jesus has just told the Twelve that they will face flogging in synagogues (v. 17), betrayal by family (v. 21), universal hatred (v. 22), and persecution from city to city (v. 23). The natural response is fear. Jesus addresses this with three "fear not" statements (vv. 26, 28, 31). Verse 28 contains the central theological argument: human persecutors can only kill the body; only God can destroy both soul and body. Fear God, not man. The argument grounds Christian courage in eschatological perspective: martyrdom is a temporary cost; eternal judgment is a permanent reality; therefore the fear-calibration must be God-ward not man-ward.

Theological reading

Matthew 10:28 is the principal NT proof-text for body-soul dualism + literal hell + properly-ordered fear. The verse compresses three theologically loaded claims into one sentence: (a) humans are not merely material, there is a soul (psychē) distinct from the body (sōma); (b) human persecutors have authority only over the body; (c) God alone has authority to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna (the unique hell-vocabulary). The verse is foundational for Christian anthropology, Christian eschatology, and Christian martyrdom-theology.

Body-soul dualism

The verse is one of the clearest NT statements of body-soul anthropological dualism, the position that human beings are composed of distinguishable material (body) and immaterial (soul) parts. The persecutor's killing-the-body does not kill-the-soul; therefore the soul is separable from and outlives the body. The verse forecloses pure-physicalist readings of Christian anthropology that deny the soul as a distinct entity.

The verse anchors the NDE-evidence + soul-existence argument-cluster developed in the LIVE notes (cf. ). The argument runs: Christianity, alone among major worldviews, predicts that consciousness survives bodily death (because the soul outlives the body); near-death-experience and verified-out-of-body phenomena confirm this prediction; therefore Christian anthropology is empirically supported. See Soul Survival Argument and Mind, Soul, Consciousness.

Gehenna, the unique hell-vocabulary

The Greek geenna (γέεννα), anglicized as Gehenna, is the NT's most loaded hell-vocabulary. The term derives from Gē-Hinnom (the Valley of Hinnom), the steep ravine south of Jerusalem where child-sacrifice to Molech had taken place (2 Kings 23:10; Jer 7:31). In second-temple Judaism the term came to denote the final-judgment place of the wicked (cf. 1 Enoch 27; 4 Ezra 7).

Gehenna appears 12 times in the NT, 11 times on Jesus's lips. Jesus is the principal NT-source for the hell-doctrine. The Christian-orthodox doctrine of hell is not a Pauline invention or patristic over-development; it is the explicit teaching of Jesus Himself. See Hell and Eternal Punishment for the multi-position synthesis (eternal-conscious-torment vs annihilationism vs purgatorial-universalism).

"Destroy", eternal-conscious-torment or annihilation?

The verse uses apolesai (ἀπολέσαι), from apollumi, "to destroy, ruin, lose." The verb's range of meaning is wide:

Eternal-conscious-torment reading (the historic / majority Christian position; cf. Aquinas, Calvin, the Westminster Confession): destroy means ruin permanently in the sense of unending conscious suffering. The biblical descriptions of hell as fire (Matt 25:41), worm (Mark 9:48), darkness (Matt 8:12), and exclusion (Matt 25:30) point to ongoing experience, not extinction.
Annihilationist reading (minority Christian position, defended by John Stott, Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes): destroy means terminate existence. The wicked are not eternally tormented but eternally gone, the second death is the cessation of being, not unending suffering.

Both readings can argue from Matt 10:28 itself; the verb supports either. The fuller eschatological picture (Matt 25; Rev 14:9-11; Rev 20:10-15) is what disambiguates. See Hell and Eternal Punishment for the multi-position discussion.

Who is to be feared?

The text says "fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." The reference is debated:

God reading (majority position, including Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, modern Reformed and Catholic exegetes): the One to be feared is God. Only God has the eschatological-judgment authority to destroy both soul and body in hell. The verse is calling for properly-ordered fear of God, reverent awe that displaces fear of man.
Satan reading (minority, adopted by some modern interpreters): the One to be feared could be Satan, the deceiver who can drag souls into hell with him. This reading struggles with the broader Matthean theology (Satan is consistently the adversary to be resisted, not the one to be feared in proper-fear sense; cf. James 4:7).

The majority reading is the proper-fear-of-God reading. The verse calls Christians to the right fear-calibration: not fear of man (limited; bodily-only) but fear of God (eternal; soul-and-body).

Patristic and Reformed reading

John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 34, c. AD 390): the verse establishes the eschatological perspective Christians must hold under persecution. The martyr's confidence is grounded in the truth that temporary bodily death does not touch the soul, while ultimate judgment is in God's hand alone.

Augustine (City of God 21.9-11): the verse is one of the central proof-texts for the doctrine of eternal punishment. Augustine treats destroy as eternal-conscious-suffering rather than cessation; he marshals the verse alongside Matt 25:46 (eternal punishment vs eternal life, same word aiōnion) and the Revelation hell-descriptions.

John Calvin (Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists on Matt 10:28): the verse calibrates the Christian's fears. To fear God rightly is to be liberated from fear of man wrongly. Calvin treats the eschatological dimension as the ground of pastoral exhortation to courage under persecution.

Apologetic and pastoral deployment

The verse is the foundation for multiple apologetic and pastoral arguments:

Defense of body-soul dualism against physicalist anthropology, see Mind, Soul, Consciousness and the NDE-evidence cluster.
Defense of the literal-hell doctrine against universalist-only readings, the verse explicitly distinguishes the destruction-in-hell outcome from the not-destroyed outcome, implying real possibility of either.
Pastoral courage under persecution, the verse is the principal exhortation-text for Christians facing martyrdom-threat. The modern martyrs of the 20th-21st centuries (Coptic Christians in Egypt; underground house-church in China; Nigerian Christians under Boko Haram) embody the verse's call to properly-ordered fear.
Evangelistic deployment as the Closing Conversations §3 Eternity-Frame opener, the verse confronts the mortality-and-judgment reality that secular worldviews can't address. The fear-of-God calibration becomes the entry-point for the gospel-of-grace.

Apparent counter: God of love + hell

A perennial apologetic challenge: how does a God of love send people to hell? The Christian response:

God does not send people to hell; hell is what people who reject God receive when they receive what they freely chose. C. S. Lewis's Great Divorce image: the doors of hell are locked from the inside.
Love and justice are not opposed but unified. God's love for the victims of evil requires judgment of the perpetrators of evil. The eschatological judgment is the moral-resolution of human history.
Hell is the natural-conclusion of a life lived in rejection of God. If God is the source of life, joy, light, meaning, then to reject God is to choose the absence-of-life, joylessness, darkness, meaninglessness. Hell is the eternal extension of that choice.

See Hell and Eternal Punishment and Problem of Evil for the fuller apologetic framing.

Trinitarian / Oneness reading

The verse's fear God applies to the one God whether read in Trinitarian or Oneness frame. The eschatological-judgment authority belongs to the one true God. The Trinitarian reads the verse as referring to the Father (with the Son co-acting as judge per John 5:22-23, 27; Acts 17:31); the Oneness reader takes the one God's judgment-authority as the one judgment-act of God in His full identity. Either way, the verse calls for properly-ordered fear. See Trinity vs Oneness vs Modalism vs Arianism.

Canonical-theological connections

Luke 12:4-5, Lukan parallel
Matthew 25:31-46, sheep-and-goats final-judgment scene
Matthew 25:46, "these shall go away into everlasting punishment"
Mark 9:43-48, Gehenna + worm-that-dieth-not + fire-not-quenched
Revelation 20:10-15, lake-of-fire eschatological judgment
2 Corinthians 5:1-10, bodily-death + presence-with-the-Lord + judgment-seat
Philippians 1:21-23, "to die is gain" + departure-to-be-with-Christ
Hebrews 9:27, "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment"
Ecclesiastes 12:7, OT body-soul dualism ("the dust returns... and the spirit returns unto God")

Key words

G1067 - geenna, geenna (Strong's G1067). Also appears in: Matthew 5.21-22, Matthew 23, James 3.6.
G4983 - soma, soma (Strong's G4983). Also appears in: Matthew 6.25-26, Matthew 27.59-60, Mark 14.
G5590 - psyche, psyche (Strong's G5590). Also appears in: Matthew 6.25-26, Matthew 10.37-39, Matthew 16.24-25.