When He uses a phrase in common use at the time, you understand its meaning. If you're an actor getting ready to go on stage and I tell you to break a leg, do I mean I think you should really take a baseball bat to your own leg? No. If, OTOH, I tell you to perform flawlessly and impress the crowd, I mean exactly that. His contemporaries understood what He was talking about because we didn't see a rash of people maiming themselves, thinking they were following Jesus.
You can't have it both ways. By the same reasoning every
intelligent Jewish person who heard Jesus speak would have known the vernacular meaning of giving sight to the blind, raising the dead, the lame walking, etc.
Even Jesus himself confirmed that he was using figures of speech, (Jn 16:25) after all that nutty talk about coming down from heaven, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, "A time is coming,
indeed it is already here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and all who listen will come to life" etc., etc.
So there it is.
Listen, I have no interest in convincing you about anything, however wrong you are. You can worship a trinity till the day you die, again. I don't care. I am speaking with you for the benefit of others standing around, watching.
At this rate, between you and ding, even the most dedicated atheist will come to understand what scripture is talking about after seeing the astonishing and disturbing reality of what the authors called Divine condemnation.
Thanks to you two uncircumcised dickheads. So go on and lie in the name of God and desecrate the words of Jesus till kingdom come. I'm sure that you think there will be lots of presents waiting for you in heaven. Damn.
My hands have been washed clean.