"Turn the other cheek...."
Jesus’ audience would likely have had firsthand experience with being degraded and treated as an inferior, including being cuffed with the backhand by a social superior, including Roman soldiers occupying first century Palestine. The typical options in the face of this violence were cowering submission or violent retaliation, which likely would have been suicidal. To maintain one’s position and offer one’s left cheek creates in the cultural and political context of the time a dilemma for the oppressor.
By turning the cheek, the servant or the leper or the homeless person or the child makes it impossible for the master to use the backhand: his nose is in the way…
The Jew was forbidden to use his or her left hand. It was only used for touching things deemed "unclean."
The left cheek now offers a perfect target for a blow with the right fist; but only equals fought with fists, as we know from Jewish sources, and the last thing the master wishes to do is to establish this underling’s equality.
This act of defiance renders the master incapable of asserting his dominance in this relationship … By turning the cheek, then, the"“inferior" is saying, "I’m a human being, just like you. I refuse to be humiliated any longer. I am your equal. I won’t take it anymore."