Rereading some old posts on the Beatitudes, I thought that they should be available again, as a single text. It's a longish post, but perhaps coherent enough to be worth it. Feel free to copy if wanted.
One is always a little shy of writing about something like the Sermon on the Mount, knowing there is nothing one can say that has not been said several thousand times by better men than oneself. This, however, we are reliably told, is no reason not to do it anyway, as that was then, this is now, and those who read this may not have read the others. So, greatly daring, we rush in where angels have frequently feared to tread or even peek.
I want to begin, as Yeshua did, with the Poor in Spirit. We do not know what he said in Aramaic, but whoever translated the shorthand notes of ‘Matthew the Exciseman’ into clear if clumsy Greek said it thus: ‘Makarioi hoi ptōchoi tōi pneumati, hoti autōn hè basileia tōn ouranōn.’ Let’s try to parse this. Makarios (some us are old enough to remember a Greek political bishop of that name) means ‘fortunate, lucky’ more than religiously ‘blessed’: but St Jerome clearly thought this unworthy of both the speaker and the occasion and translated it asBeati; and all English translators from Wyclif on followed him. A ptōchos in ordinary Greek is a beggar: here, though, it is at once metaphorised by being followed by ‘in the spirit’ (spiritus/pneuma/ruach, the great noun of which the meaning runs from Him Who brooded over the primeval waters in Genesis to the breath that comes out of our nose or mouth. So it does not necessarily limit itself to the beggar in rags at the gate: a rich man may well be ptōchos tōi pneumati.
Considering that these people, whoever they are, are fortunate, because theirs is the rule of the heavens, it seems important to find out who and what they are. How is one poor, a beggar, in spirit? To start with the highest: one cannot imagine that the Heavens will be ruled by those who have little of the Holy Spirit. Poor, perhaps, in divine inspiration? Perhaps. And, in a year of Covid-19, there are of course many who are poor in breath and hooked up to respirators; but those surely also are not meant. (If I sound deliberately obtuse it is because I’m trying to recover the way this must have read to those original readers who were not already converted.) The consensus among theologians is that those who are meant are those who are spiritually poor, and especially who are so in their own estimation: those who know that they have few resources and that they are dependent on the Father for literally everything. It is those who have that kind of humility, and therefore that kind of instinctive trusting dependence on the Father, who – beggars as they feel themselves to be – are fortunate, He reassures them. Why? Because theirs is – to them rightfully belongs – the basileia, the kingship, the rule, of the heavens. (ouranos in daily Greek was the sky, the vault of heaven, but also the heaven of the deities, a heaven which in the Old Testament’s Psalm 96/7 had become plural.)
Goodness. The last shall be first, indeed. At least, those who see themselves as the last, those who do not think much of their powers, those who are, in fact, ‘as little children’, utterly dependent on their parent and content to be so because living in complete unquestioned trust. Those who, as Yeshua puts it later on in the same discourse, do not take thought for the morrow, but take each day as the Father sends it. Those who, like the Samaritan trader, interrupt their business trip when they chance upon a bleeding robbery-victim, take him to the nearest pub, tell the landlord to see to him, promise to pay all costs on the return journey, and go on to their destination. Those who, working in a hospital, do not think much about being saintly but just do their job and say a prayer while doing it. Those who, without metaphysics or other philosophy, can see that ‘heaven and earth are full of Thy glory’ because they are so little occupied with their career plan that they have eyes to spot glory, divinity, in all the tiny nooks and crannies where it lodges.
They are makarioi. Already here on earth, because being what they are they are happier than others: not given to bitching, kvetching, grouching, glooming, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. And this happiness, this good fortune, this makaria, follows them to heaven. To heaven where, true to the ancient Athenian wisdom that governance should be given only to those who do not desire it, they will be placed in charge. It is a comfort to think that Heaven will be ruled by the simple, the einfach, the onefold, those for whom one Father, whose Will they happily do from day to day, is enough.
Now, who are they? Referred to here as a class, they might appear to us as people with a specific gift. Poverty of spirit: well, A has it, B doesn’t. Like blue eyes, or an inborn talent for mathematics. But the whole trend of the Sermon is not that way. The Sermon is the new Torah. The fulfilled, not the abolished, Torah. The Torah fulfilled in inwardness. So it is filled with what we should learn, learn to do, learn to understand, learn to become, as was the old Torah: see Psalm 119, which is a lingering love-song to that old Torah. Hence the ptōchoi tōi pneumati, those lucky, fortunate people, those makarioi, are Us. They are what we could be. What we should be. What we may be, if we learn not to be too clever or too ambitious or too rebellious for our own good.
II
Makarioi hoi penthountes, hoti autoi paraklèthèsontai. ‘Fortunate are they that mourn: for they shall be consoled.’
Very different from the first Beatitude, this one. It refers, not to the nature or character of the fortunate ones, but to a condition arising from a specific situation.
The situation involving the verb pentheō is usually death; and the root of the consoling verb is the same as that of the Paraclete: the Defender sent to help us when we are the prisoner at the bar: the Holy Spirit. This may help us understand what is meant. All of us are mortal; hence all of us except the loneliest will at some time be mourners. Mourning is not the same as grief: it is a reaction to grief. Psychologists speak of the ‘work of mourning’ – a task that needs to be undertaken and accomplished before life can go on. And in traditional societies it is a very outwardly-evident work, undertaken collectively by family, friends and acquaintances; visible and audible in wearing black (or, in the Far East, white) and keening or wailing, in keeping vigil, in sitting Shiva: a work of the community of which the deceased was a part. This is added to, and partly absorbs, the individual grief of the nearest and dearest, thus already providing a level of consolation: a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved or at least reduced.
Beyond this comes the Paraklètos. Why, here, a Defender? A friend summoned to help us in court? In the modern, psychological sense because guilt is always a part of mourning. We feel we could have, should have, been closer, more supporting, more positive, a better friend, lover, spouse to the deceased. In mourning, a part of us is always the prisoner at the bar. And the Judge is He ‘in whose sight no man living is justified’ (Ps. 143:2). As always, for now, He is silent, which only increases our apprehension. Someone once wrote that Hell is the confirmation of all our worst thoughts about ourselves as definitively true.
But here comes the Defender. As invisible to earthly eyes as the Judge, he wraps himself around us and brings to remembrance all that is good in us, and notably the fact that we have been bought back – at a high price. Bought back: ‘redeemed’, like a pledge, or a hostage. And bought back by that other Person of the Trinity: the Judge’s own Son. If we were worth buying back, redeeming, by him at the cost of his own life, and if we recognise and accept that, then surely, says the Defender, we are free? Free, and consoled. For moreover, those for whom we mourned are now in the direct presence and care of Him who loves them as He loves us.
A final word: prayers for the departed. Benedict XVI said: “praying for one’s departed loved ones is a far too immediate urge to be suppressed; it is a most beautiful manifestation of solidarity, love and assistance, reaching beyond the barrier of death. The happiness or unhappiness of a person dear to me, who has now crossed to the other shore, depends in part on whether I remember or forget him or her; he or she does not stop needing my love.” Whatever the detailed theology, this (typically for JR) allows and encourages us simply to follow our impulse; remembering the Second Collect for Evensong, which reminds us that “all holy desires”, as well as all good counsels and all just works, proceed from the Triune God.
‘Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted’ says the Authorised Version. And perhaps here that version of makarioi is truly a good one.
III
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’ Kenneth 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 Nietzsche’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.
IV
‘Fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be fed.’
Makarioi hoi peinōntes kai dipsōntes tèn dikaiosunèn, hoti autoi chortasthèsontai.
In our time, in Western societies, those who ‘hunger and thirst for justice’ tend to be those we see on television demonstrating in the streets for a righteous cause, usually on behalf of some group of people less fortunate. But in simpler societies, the people indicated in this sentence are the downtrodden, the oppressed, the cheated themselves, hungering and thirsting for justice. And the ’justice’ referred to here is not ‘social justice’ but downright legal justice as meted out by a righteous judge. We get a picture of the situations meant when we read the Psalms. Time and again we meet references to false witnesses, to the poor being robbed of what little they have, of unjust judges and neighbourhood tyrants: the overall picture is more that of some Neapolitan slum with its slumlords and its judges in the pocket of the Mafia. Here it is the poor who are the victims and who hunger and thirst for equitable justice, for honest judges, for witnesses who will tell the truth. They do not ask for charity; all they want and need is for decent institutions manned by decent people who will award them what they are entitled to. And this need goes right to the bone. It is not something that it would be nice to have: it is as necessary as the most basic food and drink.
The victims are turned out of their meagre lodgings, they are impoverished by being forced – sometimes at sword- or gun-point – to pay the vig on a desperate loan, they are jailed for stealing food for their children. So, in the Psalms that are so often the background, the score, the text for Yeshua’s words and actions, they cry to the heavens: ‘Up, Lord, do something!’ ‘Lord, judge thou my cause: thou seest that I am innocent!’ And all too often, nothing happens, the heavens do not open, the oppressors are not struck by lightning.
This, I think, is the background to this Beatitude. In the Reign of God that is now beginning; under the new Torah, the new Law that will go further than the old because it is a Law of Inwardness; the poor who hungerand thirst for justice, for righteousness, for simple decency, will be fed. Again, this metaphor of feeding is so often met in the Psalms -- ‘my soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness’ (Ps 63:5) – and in the closely-related Isaiah: ‘And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.’ (Is. 25:6) For those who often go hungry, in a world where the rich are fat and the poor mere skin and bones, the promise of being fed, well fed, richly fed, is a pleasure and a joy.
Now: why and how ‘will’ this happen under the new Law? Is it a promise for some unimaginable time in the future, to be realised in one great sweep by a distant Saviour? Is Yeshua’s audience being promised ‘pie in the sky’? I think we should read it differently. The basileia tou Theou, the regnum Dei, the Kingship (not ‘Kingdom’!) of God is that of the Meshiach; the Meshiach in question is Yeshua; therefore, it is here and now. On the other hand, it has to be realised by humans. So the key is the new Torah of Inwardness. What will feed the hungry is the fact that a judge who believes in Yeshua and ‘follows his words’ cannot give unjust judgements; a man who believes in Yeshua, if he is called as a witness, cannot give false testimony; a landlord who believes in Yeshua cannot cheat or brutally evict a tenant family. Once again, what is spoken here is the description of a situation that has not hitherto been brought about but that will be – and in the English translation shall, must be – brought about.
V
Fortunate are the merciful, for they shall experience mercy in return.
Makarioi hoi eleèmones, hoti autoi eleèthèsontai.
The Greek text translates with eleos the Hebrew chesèd (ch as in ‘loch’), one of the three words that could become English ‘mercy’. In one sense it can mean ‘kindness’, but not, like praios, as a character trait but rather as a form of action. Chesed is taking care of someone else’s need: Jonathan protects David from Saul in an act of chesed. It is always seen as reciprocal: someone who receives chesed from another is expected to return it.
So this Beatitude does not really introduce something new or unexpected, but rather reminds the audience of the way conventional relationships ought to be. It is really a form of ‘do as you would be done by’. And yet it goes beyond that also. God shows chesed to his people, both collectively, as the people of Israel whom he feeds in the wilderness, and individually in persons such as Abraham, Jacob, David and Job. For human beings it is of course impossible to return this to the Father himself; but He expects them in return to show it to others. So there may well also in this Beatitude be a sense that those who are merciful to others may receive the mercy of the Father, just as in the Lord’s Prayer those who forgive others’ debts to them may receive the forgiveness of their own debts to the Father.
In Psalm 85/86:11, ‘Mercy and truth are met together’, it is chesed that is joined to emet; and the ‘truth’ that is also characteristic of the Father is not so much ‘truth’ in the sense of conformity to a factual norm as ‘truth’ in the sense of faithfulness, of being ‘true’ to a loved one, one’s lord, or one’s country. So if that is joined to chesed, it means that Fidelity is joined to Care.
It is both interesting and useful to pursue these words a little, because the English word ‘mercy’ has a connotation of opposition to ‘justice’ which in this case is not present. Our ‘mercy’ is usually closer to ‘compassion’, which translates the Hebrew racham/rachamim. The latter is word that does not imply as much reciprocity as does chesed: its root is linked to the Hebrew word for ‘womb’, hence the otherwise curious English term ‘the bowels of compassion’. So in the case of the fifth Beatitude, one might almost translate the text as ‘Fortunate are those who care, for they shall experience care in return’. And one should always remember that this does not refer merely, or even especially, to human interactions only, but to the very real Care and aid we children receive from our Father in heaven, and which we must pass on.
VI
Fortunate are the clean in heart, because they shall see God.
Makarioi hoi katharoi tèi kardiai, hoti autoi ton theon opsontai.
This Beatitude seems simple. Katharos means, at bottom, simply ‘clean’ but goes on to a host of further kinds of cleanliness: ‘purified’ as in water or grain, ‘free of pollution’, ‘free of additions’. And it quickly goes on to the human, where it can mean ‘free of debt’, ‘free of defilement’, ‘honourable’ and even, as for a priest, ‘ceremonially pure’. Kardia is the heart, the seat of feelings and passions, but also the inclination, desire or purpose, and the kardia of wood is its core or pith. And opsontai is the future of horaō, which means ‘to see or behold’.
So just as those who are poor in spirit will inherit the earth, so those whose heart is clean, pure, free of pollution, honourable, will see God. Simple.
Yet the Gospel of Yochanan, John, says ‘No one has seen God at any time’. (John 1:18) Has there never been one who is pure in heart? If this were so, the Beatitude would not be a joyous promise but at worst a savage criticism and at best a Yeshuan hyperbole, like ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ Surely this is not what is meant here.
I suspect that we have to ponder and probe the seeing. We know that here on earth we see ‘as through a glass, darkly’, and that sin, the lack of love, can make us blind to many things. We also know that in such a condition grace may help us: ‘I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.’ Note that we do not help ourselves: Christianity is not like Buddhism, a constant activity of scrupulous self-help to eliminate the dross, to make oneself pure. We are dependent, even for our daily bread. Only grace can make us pure, only the Spirit, the pneuma, the ruach, can make us katharoi. What we can do, what we need desperately to do, is to clear away the junk blocking the doors and windows, and to open them as wide as we can to let the pneuma (which is breath, wind, and spirit) in.
And when we do that, when He, that third person of the Trinity, does enter, when the wind blows where it listeth in our soul, then it brings with it the sun: the sun that is also the Son, and the glorious sun that is the emblem of the Father. And then we see God. Not with the eyes of our lurching, rebellious body, perhaps; but with the inward eye that is the bliss, not only of solitude but of faith.
(One should perhaps also consider here the astonishing saying that ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ [John 14:9]. If you add this to the present Beatitude, then perhaps the pure in heart are those who recognise Yeshua for what he is: ‘before Abraham was, I AM’ [John 8:58] – God Himself. Overwhelming.)
VII
Fortunate those who make peace, because they shall be called sons of God.
Makarioi hoi eirènopoioi, hoti huioi theou klèthèsontai.
The peacemakers are not difficult to understand. The Greek word is exactly the same, composed of ‘peace’ (hence the name ‘Irene’) and ‘makers’ (the same root as ‘poesy’ and ‘poet’). However, their connection with the ‘sons of God’ is a little trickier, especially if one sticks to the Greek. If one goes through to the Hebrew, though, some clarity emerges. First of all, the original peacemaker is God. In the important Amidah prayer, the ending is ‘He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace for us and for all Israel. Now say, Amen.’ This authoritative, divine making of peace makes Him oseh shalom; but it is of course not easily imitable by fallible humans.
The human way of making peace is what is meant in Psalm 34:14, which says ‘seek peace, and ensue (pursue) it.’ And ‘peacemakers’ in that sense are rodfei shalom. And the full quotation tells how this may be done: ‘Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.’ And in the Mishnah tractate Avot, Rabbi Hillel says ‘Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and bringing them close to the Torah.’ (m.Avot 1:12) Why Aaron? In another version of Avot, Avot de Rebbe Natan, this is explained in a, for us, very useful way:
‘So, too, when two men had quarreled with each other, Aaron would go and sit down with one of them and say to him: ‘My son, mark what thy fellow is saying! He beats his breast and tears his clothing, saying, ‘Woe unto me! how shall I lift my eyes and look upon my fellow! I am ashamed before him, for I it is who treated him foully.’ ‘ He would sit with him until he had removed all rancor from his heart, and then Aaron would go and sit with the other one and say to him: ‘My son, mark what thy fellow is saying! He beats his breast and tears his clothing, saying, ‘Woe unto me! how shall I lift my eyes and look upon my fellow! I am ashamed before him, for I it is who treated him foully.’ ‘ He would sit with him until he had removed all rancor from his heart. And when the two men met each other, they would embrace and kiss each other. That is why (of Aaron’s death) it is said, They wept for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel (Num. 20:29)’
So now we can understand much better what Yeshua meant with this fundamentally simple, but huge, saying. Those who pursue peace can make peace; and when they make peace, as Aaron did, they shall be called ‘sons of God’. They will, by making peace among men, do what God does. Now, does that make them the equals of the Meshiach, who is the Son? Uncertain; but I find it significant that ‘they shall be called sons of God’. In other words, they will be regarded by others of their human kind as almost divine, so precious is the making of peace.
In the Latin oratio that is the original for the Second Collect of Anglican Matins, God is called auctor pacis et amator, which Cranmer expanded to ‘author of peace and lover of concord’. God makes peace, and loves peace when humans make it. So those who do are fortunate, indeed ‘Blessed’.
VIII
Makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunès, hoti autōn estin hè basileia tōn ouranōn.
Fortunate are they who are persecuted because of righteousness, because theirs is the kingship of the heavens.
Interestingly, the second part of this sentence is an exact copy of that in the first Beatitude: the kingship of heaven there belonged to the beggars in spirit, here to those who are persecuted for their righteous, or just, behaviour. So either these two share the heavenly reign, or they are the same people; or, conceivably, there is poetry and hyperbole at work here. For later on, in Matthew 14:19, he says of the little children that ‘the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’.
There is no confusion about the words. Basileia means ‘kingdom’ in the sense of the office, not the geography – so ‘kingship, dominion, reign’. The heaven, or heavens, is/are the seat of divinity. So if this basileia is variously attributed to the poor in sprit, the righteous victims of persecution, and ‘such as’ little children, it is the thought, not the words, that needs to be teased out. Let us try to imagine that it might refer to the same people. Who would they be?
We have seen that the ptōchoi tōi pneumati are likely to be those who in their love for the Father tend to be simple, uncomplicated; and in fact the expression that instinctively occurred to me was ‘as children’ who trust their parent without complication. So the first and the third indications of who is referred to here agree.
But what about the persecution?
Why are they being persecuted? hekenen dikaiosunès: for the sake of – the translations say ‘righteousness’ but the noun can also mean ‘justice’ of ‘(the things of) the law’. They are being persecuted (the verb can also mean ‘prosecuted’) for the sake of, because of, justice – being just, being righteous. They practice that which, in an earlier Beatitude, people hungered and thirsted for. And for doing so, they are persecuted. By whom? The answer is not given, but there are plenty of examples in the New Testament (and in the Old, for that matter). It might be the religious authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees, the High Priests, who after all were on the way to persecuting Him for the very same reason; it might be the Romans, whose persecution of Christians reached a paroxysm under Diocletian and Galerius (303-311 AD), but who persecuted them for nonconformity to new Romanising edicts: among the Christians themselves, such nonconformity may well have been considered ‘righteous’.
So what it amounts to is that the simple, the innocent, the poor in spirit are those who know instinctively how to react to the Father’s love, and who therefore are likely to be victims of the kind of authority that demands obedience over any other behaviour, and punishes those who obey a different lordship: ‘my basileia is not of this world’ says Yeshua to Pilatus (John 18:36).
What we see happening at this point in the Sermon on the Mount is the movement away from the declaration of good fortune to those of a certain nature or those in a certain condition, and toward a similar declaration toward those to whom certain grim realities are happening. Yeshua is modulating toward the incipient, and in future overwhelming, pattern of opposition that He will undergo first, and that awaits His followers afterwards. We see here the seeds of the martyrs’ blessedness.
IX
Fortunate are you, when they reproach you and persecute you and say all wickedness about you, lying, because of me. Be joyful and rejoice exceedingly, because your reward is great in heaven; for so did they reproach the prophets before you.
Makarioi este hotan oneidōsin humas kai diōxōsin kai eipōsin pan ponèron kath’umōn pseudomenoi heneken emou. Chairete kai agalliasthe, hoti ho mismos humōn polus en tois ouranois: outōs gar ediōxan tous prophètas tous pro humōn.
This final Beatitude elaborates the previous one, and confirms the movement away from character traits towards events and behaviour. The fortunate are no longer ‘they’ but ‘you’; and the persecution is made more specific. Meanings of the verb diōkō can range from ‘pursue’ as a deer in the hunt, via ‘prosecute’ in the courts to ‘persecute’, so that the place where the lies and the reproaches are uttered may well be the courts, where followers of the Meshiach might be charged with blasphemy in a Jewish tribunal or with nonconformity in a Roman one.
EMET HATORAH
It may, now, be time to put the nine Beatitudes together and consider them as one Torah, or teaching. (Note that it is given to his disciples, not to the multitude.)
The first element is the ninefold anaphora of makarioi. It translates the Hebrew ashrei which, because it opens in anaphora (from Psalm 84:5-6) the central daily Jewish prayer, has given to that prayer its name. As so often, Yeshua’s teaching is very close to the Book of Psalms.
Secondly, each example of the makarioi’s fortunate condition is a reward, mostly for enduring what seems unfortunate in an earthly human context – with the exception of being pure in heart. In this way they form part of the central Christian paradox: the last shall be first. The Meshiach and his teaching deliberately disrupt and overturn a great deal of received wisdom. So far from being the new King David, arriving with an army to liberate Israel from Rome by chasing out the occupiers, this unlikely Saviour is an itinerant rabbi in Galil-haGoyim, ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, not really thoroughly Jewish at all, who wanders around with a dozen talmidim, ‘disciples’, pupils, and whose teaching is as disconcerting as it is paradoxical. How can he be the Meshiach? How can he liberate Israel? Well, his idea is that Israel needs liberating from sin more than from Rome; and that such liberation applies as much to the ‘nations’, the Goyim, as to the Chosen People.
The makarioi themselves fall into two categories. There are those who have certain characteristics, and there are those to whom certain things happen. The first are the poor in spirit, the gentle, the caring, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers; the second are those who mourn, those who hunger for justice, and those who are persecuted, especially those persecuted because of Him. The former are cited as examples of a way to be and to live; the latter are cited to show that the miseries of humanity are seen and recompensed by the Father.
A picture emerges. The new Torah shows the makarioi, the fortunate, the new Chosen, as being not of a tribe but of a kind: not warlords, not brave fighters, not conquerors, not even prophets: they are simple in the best sense, one-fold, not multiple; their love for, and obedience to, the Father is uncomplicated and unquestioning; they care for and help the unfortunate, not sentimentally but effectively; they heal the wounds of conflict in their surroundings; and they avoid what, and whom, they know to be evil. Very simple, and un-glamorous. Yet as such, they will be – they are -- Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven; and they will see God, they will rule in Heaven. And when things go pear-shaped, when their loved ones die or when they are pursued, persecuted, prosecuted, and sometimes tortured and executed, they will be given consolation, they will receive a Paraclete, a Spirit to defend them, they will be granted joy and in turn astonish those who see them. And they pray, constantly, like the Meshiach Himself.
One does, finally, see St Jerome’s point. For such people, in such a relation to their loving Father, ashrei, makarioi, may perhaps indeed be translated as ‘Blessed’.
For the Torah and Mishnah citations, I am indebted to the website Emet haTorah at www.emethatorah.com .
