Our Lord Jesus christ told one of his disciples who wanted to go and bury his father before following him( Jesus)- Follow me and let the dead bury their dead. Mattew 8 vs 22. Please what 'let the dead bury their dead ' mean. I need your contributions please as the spirit of God gives you understanding

shullygirl: Our Lord Jesus christ told one of his disciples who wanted to go and bury his father before following him( Jesus)- Follow me and let the dead bury their dead. Mattew 8 vs 22. Please what 'let the dead bury their dead ' mean. I need your contributions please as the spirit of God gives you understanding

His point was just that the person's excuse was lame.

"Don't neglect the high spiritual calling I've given you; let the spiritually dead attend to the routine tasks of life."

Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead.

@OP:

Don't forget, Jesus (even at a highly dangerous risk) went to see Lazarus' family when he died. (John 11:1-16)

Also, here is what a Jewish theologian said about the matter, from an angle of Jewish tradition:

Meyers, Eric (1971) Jewish Ossuaries: Reburial and Rebirth. Rome: Biblical Institute.
culled from pages 80-85

After a body was placed in a burial cave, it was left to decompose. The family mourned for seven days. This initial mourning period was followed by a less intense 30-day period of mourning, called shloshim. However, the entire mourning period was not fully over until the flesh of the deceased had decomposed, usually about a year later.

The Jerusalem Talmud states: When the flesh had wasted away, the bones were collected and placed in chests (ossuaries). On that day (the son) mourned, but the following day he was glad, because his forebears rested from judgment. The final act of mourning, the gathering of the bones into a bone box called an ossuary, was called ossilegium, or secondary burial. According to the Rabbinic sources, the decomposition of the flesh atoned for the sins of the dead person (a kind of purgatory) and the final stage of this process was gathering the bones and placing them in an ossuary. Jesus confronts this contrary theology. Only faith in Christ's redemptive work on the cross can atone for sin, not rotting flesh or any other work or merit of our own (Heb. 9:22, 26; Acts 4:12; Eph. 2:8, 9). Jesus may have rebuked the disciple rather harshly because they were following the corrupted practice of secondary burial.

The Gospels record two incidents where disciples approached the Lord to request a leave of absence from following Him. The first request is recorded in Matthew 8. Jesus was about to take the Twelve across the Sea of Galilee to the Decapolis city of Gadara. Chronologically, this trip is the first recorded journey of Jesus to minister in Gentile territory. Maybe the disciple hesitated, probably because he did not want to go to those Gentiles so he made an excuse: Let me first go and bury my father.

He most likely appealed to the Jewish burial practice of ossilegium, or secondary burial, which would remove him from following the Lord for up to eleven months. Jesus saw this as an excuse not to minister to the Gentiles. As a result He rebuked him with a statement of irony and challenged the disciple to follow Him.

Tanx every1 am really learning

@shullygirl You're welcome Glad to be of help.