The third passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Mt 5:2-12, Lk 6:20-23, and Th 54:1, 68:1, 69:1-2.
This week’s passage from the Sefer Yeshua is perhaps the most well-known, and most well-loved of all the sets of Yeshua’s sayings, because of the hope it gives us in a better future.
Modern writers and ordinary people have tried to gauge the individual meanings of the verses, but to appreciate these sayings fully, you need to understand a few things about the Aramaic language, as well as Jewish religious literature. Without a little knowledge in these areas, most interpretation is mere guesswork. The fact that an Aramaic substrate can be discerned in these sayings, in my view is one major plus-point towards their authenticity – that they were originally spoken in Aramaic. I have therefore translated these verses with known Aramaic idioms in mind.
3. 1Yeshua` taught his followers and said to them,
2’Blessed are the humble in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are the meek, because they shall inherit the Land.
3Blessed are they who mourn, because they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they who weep, because they shall laugh.
4Blessed are the merciful, because they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
because they shall be shown into the presence of God.
5Blessed are they who hunger, because they shall be well fed.
Blessed are they who thirst, because they shall be satisfied.
6Blessed are they who create peace, because they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for striving after justice,
because the kingdom of God is theirs.
7Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you,
and say all kinds of evil things against you, just because you’re my followers.
8Rejoice! Dance for joy! Because remember, your reward in heaven is great;
because in the same way they persecuted the Prophets who came before us.’
The background
In both Matthew and Luke, these Beatitudes form part of a sermon. Many commentators liken it to a kind of spiritual manifesto of Yeshua. In Matthew, it is delivered on a mount or hill, and in Luke, it is delivered in an open plain. Both are delivered to enormous crowds.
However, we need to bear in mind that in those days, large gatherings would have been viewed with great suspicion – in the Galilee, they would have been broken up by Herod Antipas’s soldiers, and in Judea, large gatherings were regularly broken up by the Roman authorities. Antipas may have been more tolerant of crowds than the Romans in Judea (after all, John the Baptist preached to crowds in the Galilee, but did Antipas become less so after John)? Josephus tells us that the Romans were suspicious of large crowds, and broke them up as being potential gatherings of insurgents. I don’t think that any of the gospel writers knew this, which is one of the many reasons why scholars think that none of the gospel writers were brought up or lived in the Holy Land.
Secondly, the version of the sermon in Luke is much, much shorter; the two versions only have the Beatitudes, the saying on loving one’s enemies, and the saying on not judging others in common. Luke’s version is only 29 verses, whereas Matthew’s version goes on for 3 whole chapters. The material that is included in Matthew is spread out throughout the Gospel of Luke; the material that is delivered in just one long sermon on a mountain in Matthew, is split up into numerous other occasions and circumstances in Luke.
What can be said with these factors in mind therefore, is that we don’t know the circumstances when the Beatitudes were delivered, or indeed where they were delivered. It’s unlikely that they were delivered to crowds of thousands, given the political environment of the time. Hundreds, maybe, thousands, no.
It is more likely that Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount was lifted directly as a block from the Q-Gospel (the common source of sayings that both Matthew and Luke drew from). From reconstructions of this Q-Gospel, we can surmise that Matthew simply lifted the first couple of dozen teachings from it, and fictionalised its setting.
As for the beatitudes specifically, we might imagine that Yeshua was preaching to a gathering of local followers, who were perhaps the poorest and the most under-appreciated in his home-region of the Galilee. Yeshua was sitting on a rock maybe, delivering his uplifting words as they were seated around him on the ground, listening to his teachings.
The Social background to the Beatitudes
From the previous passage of the Parable of the Great Wedding Feast, we learned that the most eager to attend the feast were the poor, the disabled and the outcasts of society. Given the content of the Beatitudes, those most eager to listen to them would have been the poor and the downcast of society – those who otherwise felt that they had no stake in the present material world; this is the connecting theme between the two passages. What Yeshua’s Beatitudes gave these people was hope in God’s Kingdom – in what God’s Kingdom had the potential to be like, once God’s laws were restored and put into practice. The downcast would be raised up and be happy under God’s restored Sovereignty.
Each beatitude is a paradoxical reversal of what is expected, much like Isaiah chapter 11. There, the life of God’s future Kingdom is described, and it is the opposite of what one would normally expect – sheep and goats are safe with leopards, cows and lions eat grass together, and young children have nothing to fear from snakes.
The structure of the Beatitudes
The main thing to notice from their literary structure, is that the verses come in pairs (’couplets’). This is typical of Jewish poetry. It is not necessarily that lines rhyme (although they sometimes do), but rather that the ideas they contain match up with each other. That is why Jewish poetry, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic, translates so well into other languages. One line is followed immediately afterwards by another one, which states the same or a similar idea in a slightly different way.
Why are they framed as ‘Beatitudes’?
As you know, these sayings of Yeshua are commonly called ‘The Beatitudes’. This means, ‘The Blessings’. However, in the Beatitudes, ‘blessed’ doesn’t mean ‘blest’; there’s no actual ‘blessing’ taking place.
The word normally translated as ‘blessed’ in most English language bibles, renders the New Testament Greek makarioi (fortunate, happy). In the Aramaic, this would have been tobey. In Hebrew translations, the word used to render this is ashrey. Both these words suggest being fortunate or happy.
In English, we only call them ‘blessings’, because the Old English word for happiness was bliss. ‘Blessed’ (pronounced as bless-ėd, not blest) in Old English was geblissod, which means, ‘fortunate’ or ‘made happy’. The Beatitudes are therefore a list of reasons for the poor and the downcast to be happy, and call themselves fortunate, because of what God is going to do for them in the coming Kingdom, when God’s ways and laws are restored.
Verse by Verse – First couplet: the Humble / the Meek
The first verse, for example, ‘Blessed are the humble in spirit’ is ‘tobeyhon enwanin be-ruha’ (literally: fortunate-they humble in-spirit). The word tobey can mean happy, blessed, or fortunate. The line can alternatively be translated as ‘How fortunate are the humble in spirit’.
Most English bibles translate this line as ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’. This results in a very misleading image. The phrase ‘poor in spirit’ means nothing in English or any other language, despite generations of theologians trying to make it mean something. True, the Aramaic word enwan can mean ‘abjectly poor’ (in the sense of not having any money whatsoever), but it can also mean ‘humble’. This is the intended, idiomatic meaning suggested by the context – and the one which makes the most sense. It is the humble in spirit who are the true citizens of the kingdom of God; the saying itself is nothing to do with poverty.
Parallels to Yeshua’s beatitudes in the Hebrew Bible
Now, many of these verses have parallels in the Torah and the Prophets; Yeshua’s sayings did not come out of a void. As well as showing the less fortunate what they can expect in God’s Kingdom, Yeshua was showing them that God was keeping God’s promises – promises which could all be found in the Bible:
Verse 3:2a ‘Blessed are the humble in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of God’: compare this with Proverbs 16:19 – ‘It is better to be humble in spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud’. The proverb throws some light on this verse. Since the humble in spirit will not be after wealth (they won’t want to ‘divide the spoil’), Yeshua is saying that they will therefore have no difficulty finding the kingdom of God.
The second half of the couplet, verse 3:2b, says, ‘Blessed are the meek, because they shall inherit the Land’: compare this with Psalms 37:11 – ‘the meek will inherit the Land, and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity’. In the psalm, the Land (not the earth) refers to the Land of Israel – the poor and the meek, not the mighty or powerful, will inherit the Land of Israel. In Yeshua’s day, the poor were basically landless (the opposite of what God intended with the original distribution of the Land among the various tribes). In Yeshua’s times, it was the rich elite who owned and exploited all the land, and the poor were landless.
Furthermore, the wicked – that is, the selfish, the greedy, the power-hungry – expend their energy trying to overthrow the righteous, but in the end, it is all for nothing, because they shall wither away, while the meek inherit the Land, which God swore to Abraham and his descendants forever as their inheritance.
Second couplet: those who Mourn / those who Weep
3:3a ‘Blessed are they who mourn, because they shall be comforted’: compare this with Job 5:11 – ‘those who mourn will be lifted to safety’; also Isaiah 61:2, where the words and message of God will ‘comfort all who mourn’. God does not abandon those who mourn through misfortune or grief, although they might be tempted to think so. Instead, God stays by them always, supporting them until they are healed. Those who mourn now, in God’s Kingdom will have ample reason to rejoice. The Kingdom of God belongs to people such as these, because their fortunes will be reversed.
3:3b ‘Blessed are they who weep, because they shall laugh’: This verse forms a couplet with the verse that precedes it. Yeshua knows that many of the people in his day can only see bad times ahead, but Yeshua knows the messages of the prophets who have gone before him – that they foresaw how sorrow would be turned into joy (e.g. Isaiah 35:10, “the ransomed of YHVH shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away”)
Third Couplet: the Merciful / the Pure in Heart
3:4a ‘Blessed are the merciful, because they shall obtain mercy’: compare Proverbs 11:17 – ‘the merciful person is requited with good’. Those who show mercy will receive mercy, but the unmerciful cannot expect to receive the things they deny others.
3:4b ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, because they shall see God’. The beautiful imagery of the original Aramaic is lost in English. The Aramaic literally says, ‘How fortunate are they who have a good eye, for they shall see God’. In Aramaic, to ‘have a good eye’ means to be unselfish or generous, hence ‘pure in heart’. The Aramaic word for face, also has a figurative meaning of ‘presence’, especially when speaking of someone important.
Ps 24:6 says, “Such is the company of those who seek God, who seek the face [ = presence] of the God of Jacob”.
When you are allowed to ‘see the face of the king’, this means that you are allowed to ‘be received into the presence of the king’. The phrase is an Aramaic idiom. Therefore, ‘to see the face of God’ means ‘to be received into the presence of God’. This is one of the heavenly rewards of those who are unselfish (‘pure in heart’). There is nothing mysterious in this saying – it has nothing to do with a so-called ‘beatific vision’; it is simply a play on words in Aramaic, and Yeshua is saying that the unselfish will be able to experience and draw near to God – to ‘see’ God.
Fourth Couplet: those who Hunger / those who Thirst
3:5a & b – ‘Blessed are they who hunger, because they shall be well fed. Blessed are they who thirst, because they shall be satisfied’. Similarly, Ps 107:9 says, ‘For God satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry God fills with good things.’ God will fulfil and keep God’s promises.
Fifth Couplet: Those who create Peace / those who strive for Justice
3:6a ‘Blessed are they who create peace, because they shall be called the children of God’. Those who create good things are imitating their Creator, and are therefore called God’s children (a child of God does what God does – the Aramaic implies this). Peacemakers – those who create peace – are children of God, because they do what God does.
In addition, in Aramaic, ‘peace’ is more than just the absence of conflict. It implies health, wholeness, soundness, safety and security. The creators of shlama – peace – are doing more than ending conflict; they promote prosperous welfare and security.
3:6b ‘Blessed are they who pursue virtue simply for what it is, because theirs is the kingdom of God’. The Aramaic is: ‘How fortunate are they who pursue righteousness for its own sake’. Those who work towards virtue for genuine selfless reasons, for the sake of righteousness itself, are good examples of what the kingdom of God is like (in contrast to those who practise piety only to have others admire them).
Closing verses: the Insulted / the Persecuted
Yeshua has been speaking to his followers, relaying to them the hopes of the Kingdom. He has been lifting their spirits by telling them that their present lowly condition will be reversed in God’s Kingdom. However, now he reminds them that the price of following him will not always be easy.
Being a Follower of Yeshua will not always be a bed of roses. Adopting the values of God’s Kingdom will make us stand out as something different. People don’t always like what is different, especially those who don’t like God’s ways and values. Sometimes we will be insulted, derided, slandered and persecuted by those who wish us hate or harm. But we will be in good company, because the prophets (and their followers) were persecuted before us, in days of old.
The paradoxical joy is not in the suffering of being persecuted, but rather in the outcome: Our reward in heaven will be great. Some people with a martyr-complex will find joy in the very act of being persecuted itself, but that is not supposed to be what God intends. Our consolation is the reward that God gives us at the end in heaven. Whatever God gives us, will far outweigh anything we have suffered through on earth.
Summary
Yeshua’s words reflect the simple yet profound Galilean piety of his environment. He teaches hope in the life that can be had when God’s ways are restored in our present life (in God’s present Kingdom), and in the reward that we can have in heaven. He doesn’t speak in the haughty language of sages or philosophers. He speaks in language that ordinary people can understand and grasp. He drew on the rich background of his language and culture, and constructed towers of wisdom that would endure forever.