OUCH!

 

Mè dōte to hagion tois kusin mède balète tous margaritas humōn emprosthen tōn choirōn mèpote katapatèsousin autous en tois posin autōn, kai straphentes hrèxōsin humas.

 

 ⁶ `Do may not give [that which is] holy to the dogs, nor throw your pearls to /before the swine, or they may trample them among their feet, and turn and rip you.

 

A curious interlude in the Sermon on the Mount. It seems quite separate from the surrounding sayings, which is perhaps evidence that the Sermon was not noted down as one continuous sequence but compiled from scattered jottings. 

 

What is the point Yeshua is making here? Who are the dogs, who are the swine, and are they the same? If they are, the second saying is a restatement of the first, in a manner familiar to us from the Psalms. 

            One theory is that they are goyim, non-Jews, unbelievers: when the Samaritan woman appealed to Yeshua, his first response was to say that he was sent to help Israel, and that one does not give the children’s food to the dogs. The dogs, here, the kunes in the Greek, are of course not pets like ours: they are at best hounds for hunting, at worst semi-feral scavengers: the word, used of humans, was a term of clear opprobrium. The hagion, that which is holy, might be interpreted as a Temple offering of meat or other food, deposited upon an altar. To throw it to the dogs is an act of desecration.

            The swine here might be domestic pigs, but in view of the final verb which means “to wound grievously” I suspect it refers rather to a boar, as well as to the dogs.[1] Why one would be tempted to throw down pearls before a pig or a boar is not made clear, but the image is obviously constructed out of one element of something precious and another element of something unclean (all pigs were unclean) as well as dangerous. 

            The image, then, is clear and relatively uncomplicated. What about the tenor, though? The simplest explanation is an injunction not to give the Torah to infidels, who not only will not appreciate it and will not be able to be nourished by it but who, so far from thanking you, may in return gore and savage you. And yet the upshot of Yeshua’s teaching, both here in the Sermon and elsewhere, is that the Gentiles are part of the new Israel, and as such both merit and need the new, completed Torah. 

            This creates a real and pressing problem. One solution is perhaps the following: the dogs and the swine might not be known to be such beforehand, but might prove to be so by their reaction to the holy and the pearls. In which case the injunction is a call to discernment. Be careful, think carefully, about the persons to whom you may preach the new Torah that is the eu-angelion. Because if you misjudge them, not only will it not help them but it may put you in danger. And given the fact that Christianity is in our time the most persecuted religion in the world, such an injunction can be said still to be topical.

            

[The majority of commentaries I have read see no problem here at all, because they see it as a text for the modern world – example: do not open a boxing-match with prayers; do not hang a crucifix in a night-club. There may be something in that, but it does not interest me: I want to try to understand what Yeshua said and what his hearers (thought they) heard.]

Image: a drawing by Pieter Brueghel Jr (1564-1638), from a series on Flemish proverbs. The Flemish proverbial version is "Do not throw roses before swine".

              

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[1] Many commentaries see this as a Jewish inverted parallellism, reading it as “Do not give what is holy to dogs who will rend you; do not toss pearls before pigs who will trample them underfoot.”

GETTING CLOBBERED AND SUMMING UP

Egyptian Christians cleaning up after their chapel was looted and burned in 2013

"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.

 

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 peacemakers, and the pure in heart; 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 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’. 

Samuel Palmer, 'Coming from Evening Church' (1830)

FACING STONES, CLAWS, AND TEETH

 

Fortunate are they who are persecuted because of righteousness, because theirs is the kingship of the heavens.

Makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunès, hoti autōn estin hè basileia tōn ouranōn.

 

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. 

 

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 beginning, 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.

Image: Execution by wild beasts (Ziten mosaic ca. AD 200)