From the comment section at EPJ, an interesting insight into Jesus’ advice to “turn the other cheek,” a real problem for me, as I see that it usually leads to “getting it in the neck”:

“Cowardice is scarcely a term one associates with Jesus. Either he failed to make himself clear, or we have misunderstood him. There is plenty of cause to believe the latter.

Jesus is not forbidding self-defense here, only the use of violence. Nor is he legitimating the abandonment of nonviolence in order to defend the neighbor. He is rather showing us a way that can be used by individuals or large movements to intervene on behalf of justice for our neighbors–nonviolently.

The classical interpretation of Matt 5:38-42//Luke 6:29-30 suggests two, and only two, possibilities for action in the face of evil: fight or flight. Either we resist evil, or we do not resist it.

Jesus seemingly says that we are not to resist it; so, it would appear, he commands us to be docile, inert, compliant, to abandon all desire for justice, to allow the oppressor to walk all over us. “Turn the other cheek” is taken to enjoin becoming a doormat for Jesus, to be trampled without protest. “Give your undergarment as well” has encouraged people to go limp in the face of injustice and hand over the last thing they own. “Going the second mile” has been turned into a platitude meaning nothing more than “extend yourself.”

Rather than encourage the oppressed to counteract their oppressors, these revolutionary statements have been transformed into injunctions to collude in one’s own despoiling.

But that interpretation excluded a third alternative: active nonviolent resistance. The word translated “resist” is itself problematic; what translators have failed to note is how frequently anthistenai is used as a military term.

Resistance implies “counteractive aggression,” a response to hostilities initiated by someone else.

Liddell-Scott defines anthistemi as to “set against esp. in battle, withstand.”

Ephesians 6:13 is exemplary of its military usage: “Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand [antistenai, literally, to draw up battle ranks against the enemy] in the evil day, and having done all, to stand [stenai, literally, to close ranks and continue to fight].”

The term is used in the LXX primarily for armed resistance in military encounters (44 out of 71 times).

Josephus uses anthistemi for violent struggle 15 out of 17 times, Philo 4 out of 10.

Jesus’ answer is set against the backdrop of the burning question of forcible resistance to Rome. In that context, “resistance” could have only one meaning: lethal violence.

Stasis, the noun form of stenai, means “a stand,” in the military sense of facing off against an enemy.

By extension it came to mean a “party formed for seditious purposes; sedition, revolt.” The NRSV translates stasis in Mark 15:7 as “insurrection” (so also Luke 23:19, 25), in Acts 19:40 as “rioting,” and in Acts 23:10 as “violent dissension.”

In short, antistenai means more in Matt. 5:39a than simply to “stand against” or “resist.”

It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection.

Jesus is not encouraging submission to evil; that would run counter to everything he did and said.

He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition. Perhaps most importantly, he cautions us against being made over into the very evil we oppose by adopting its methods and spirit. He is saying, in effect, Do not mirror evil; do not become the very thing you hate.

The best translation is the Scholars Version: “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” “

That last part bears repeating (TL;DR version): “Do not mirror evil; do not become the very thing you hate.”