Out of the heart is emphasized in Greek, as may be concluded from the position which it occupies in the sentence order of Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation.
Translators normally render heart very much as they did in verse 18.
For out of the heart come … sometimes has to be restructured. Examples include “For it is in the heart that evil thoughts, murder … have their origin,” “For it is the heart that evil thoughts … come from,” and “For evil thoughts, murder … all come from the heart.” But it is important to retain the emphasis on out of the heart.
These sins which come from a person’s heart are listed as nouns in the text. However, in many languages it will be more natural to list them as verbs. An example is “For it is what is in a person’s heart that makes him think evil, murder … and speak evil about others.” Other languages will find it natural to reverse the order of the verse, as with “For when a person thinks evil, murders … and speaks evil of other people, he does those things because of what is in his heart.”
The list of sins that defile a person is shorter in Matthew than in Mark (7.21-23). After the first one (evil thoughts) the rest of the sins mentioned follow the order in which they are forbidden according to the Ten Commandments (Exo 20.13-16).
Good News Translation has interpreted evil thoughts to be the thing which leads to the other sins, and other translators may find this restructuring useful also. Most, however, simply list it as one of the sins that defile a person.
Murder is not the same as “killing” but refers specifically to killing that is not condoned by society. Thus, killing in warfare or executions ordered by a court are not included.
Fornication is the same word translated “unchastity” in 5.32; see comment there. The noun may be used of any sort of illicit sexual intercourse; Good News Translation has “other immoral things.”
In many cultures the distinction between adultery and fornication is not the same as in the Bible, where the latter refers to sexual misconduct in general, and the former to cases where a married woman is involved. Quite often there is one term in a language which covers general sexual misconduct. It is also common for there to be a general word for such illicit behavior between people who are married to someone else. For translators in languages where either of these situations prevails, one solution is to use that general word or expression for rendering fornication, and the same word for adultery but with the added phrase “with a married woman.” However, in a listing of sins like this one here, it is not necessary to make the distinction so rigidly, and many translators will simply use the general term that covers both words of the text, or do something similar to Good News Translation.
False witness (so also New American Bible) is translated as a verb in Good News Translation: (“lie”), as are the other sins in the list; New Jerusalem Bible and New English Bible have “perjury”; Barclay has “lies about other people.” The only other occurrence of the noun in the New Testament is in 26.59, where it is used as a technical legal term; however, the related verb, used also in a technical sense in 26.60, is employed with a nontechnical meaning in 1 Corinthians 15.15.
Slander (so also New Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible; Good News Translation “slander others”) is transliterated “blasphemy” by New American Bible. Although in other contexts the word may more naturally mean “slander against God” or “blasphemy,” the present context is strongly in favor of the meaning “slander against others,” as is suggested both by the place which it occupies in the overall list and by the observation that it immediately follows false witness. Elsewhere in Matthew (12.31; 26.65) it is used of slander against God.
The usual translation of slander is “say bad things about other people.” In some languages a phrase such as “ruin the name of other people” is the closest equivalent.
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .