GENTLY NOW . . .

 

Makarioi hoi praeis, hoti autoi klèronomèsousin tèn gèn: ”Fortunate are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.”

 

In his television series (later a book) “Civilisation” Lord Clark wrote “We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct: five to one his answer will be "kindness." It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series. If you had asked St. Francis what mattered in life, he would, we know, have answered "chastity, obedience and poverty"; if you had asked Dante or Michelangelo, they might have answered "disdain of baseness and injustice"; if you had asked Goethe, he would have said "to live in the whole and the beautiful." But kindness, never. Our ancestors didn't use the word, and they did not greatly value the quality — except perhaps insofar as they valued compassion.”

 

I used to agree with this, and think that it was perhaps the Victorians who made the change; and broadly I still do. But there is a precedent, and I believe it is in the Third Beatitude. It is usually remembered, because of the Authorised Version, as saying that “Blessed are the meek”, and that translation has caused untold harm. “Meek” is not an adjective most people sense as positive or attractive: it conjures up images of a donkey bowing under a rain of blows from a cruel master’s stick; of oppressed or tyrannised people too passive to rebel; of Nietszche’s characterisation of Christianity as “slave morality”. But if we look at the Greek praos, the meanings given are subtly different. Of things, it is “soft, mild” as in a mild breeze; of animals, it is “gentle, tame” as of a horse not restive; of persons, it is “mild, gentle, meek” – in a case in Herodotus, of one who has been toweringly angry and subsides into being praos again. 

 

So I think it would be much better to translate its use in the Beatitude as “gentle” or “kind”, thus providing a precedent for that long-underrated value mentioned by Lord Clark. The praeis, then, are the “dear hearts and gentle people” that Bing Crosby sang (nostalgically) about as living in his home town in Idaho. And who, indeed, live everywhere, though they are only very rarely in the news. And being gentle, they are of course often taken advantage of, trodden upon, ignored, looked down on, sneered at, the butt of those (like Nietzsche) with “stronger, tougher” values. 

 

They also live, though, in all our memories. Almost all of us remember one or more truly gentle persons we knew when we were young. And we are certainly right in that, because the young have an unerring feeling for true gentleness in adults. And later we remember amusing posters calling for “random acts of kindness” which resonated because we had known such acts, and perhaps even from time to time performed them. 

 

Now, why are the gentle fortunate? Because, says Yeshua in a breathtaking sweep, “they shall inherit the earth”, no less. The planet, the whole kit and caboodle. Inherit it, as heirs; take possession of it, as the Children of Israel took possession of Canaan; be given it,  be left it, take possession of it, own it. And, my children, this is the new Law. This is the new Torah. The earth will no longer belong to the strong, the mighty, the superrich, the One Percent, the strongmen and dictators, the Führers and the corporations. It will belong to the gentle, the kind. In a way, this continues the First Beatitude, in its reversal of the values we take for granted. The basileia, the kingly rule, of Heaven will belong to the Beggars of the Spirit, while the earth will belong to the Gentle, the Kind. 

 

And while the Greek leaves it at that, the English translators added a twist that Yeshua himself might have approved: they changed “will” to “shall”. Now those of us old enough to remember prescriptive grammar recall that “shall” can mean a simple future only in the first person, singular or plural: in the third person, as here, “shall” combines future with imperative in a uniquely compact way. So, faced with the new Law, we should not simply wait for it to happen, but get on with making it so, in every small way we can.