We would be making a sad mistake if we interpreted Jesus' answer to Peter in a literal sense, as if he were giving an exact number of times to forgive someone who wrongs us. Peter did indeed suggest the number seven, thinking perhaps that since seven was "a sacred number" it would suffice. Jesus exaggerated Peter's number to seventy times seven.

Exaggeration seems to have been a Jewish technique of teaching in order to capture attention and to suggest that we have to have a different mind-set if we are to understand God's dealings with us. Remember Jesus' saying that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Taking Jesus' phrase literally leads to endless and useless speculation and misses the point, His exaggeration, tinged with a certain mischievous humour, stresses the point that overdependence on riches will prove an almost insurmountable object to entering the Kingdom of heaven. So, too, trying to be exactly calculating in the matter of forgiveness is ludicrous: God does not calculate in forgiving us, for God is not a book-keeper. Our forgiveness of each other must be Godlike, generous and loving, free from any kind of human smallness of heart.