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The most famous sermon of Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7. It starts with a series of statements defining the kind of people he calls “blessed” in the kingdom of God. But he didn’t come up with these categories out of thin air. Here we are going to look at these “Beatitudes,” and how Jesus drew on the Psalms and Proverbs of the Old Testament to formulate this list of Kingdom characteristics. We will find that these qualities are many sides of the same polyhedron (please excuse the geometry joke). And that polyhedron is humility.
Jesus Teaches on the Mountain
When he returned to his Galilean ministry of preaching and healing, after his prayer breaks, Matthew says that “great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan” (Matthew 4:25). When Jesus saw these crowds following him, “he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them” (Matthew 5:1-2).
In Matthew’s narrative, he highlighted the fact that Jesus taught on the mountain to make a point: Jesus is the greater Moses, the new lawgiver. This retelling of Israel’s story is a very important part of the gospel story. Matthew wants readers to know that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament (see Matthew 5:17-20).
Jesus opened his mouth and spoke many proverbial sayings that all start with, “Blessed are…”
While these exact sayings are new, their spirit is not. As we go through the sayings of Jesus, I am learning that almost nothing he says is truly new. Of course, there are many new applications to his hearers, and we do see Jesus making new interpretations, but all of his teachings are based on, and flow from, the Scriptures he read, the Word of God.
How to be Happy
The term “blessed” shows up many times in the Old Testament. It means “happy.” In other words, Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with a series of proverbial statements that explain how to be happy. Jesus used a form of the Greek word makarios, but in Hebrew there is an equivalent word, esher. This word appears 45 times in the Old Testament, and its highest concentration is in the Psalms and Proverbs. These two books alone use it 34 times.1 Twenty-three of these uses in the Psalms, along with all 8 in the Proverbs, describe the state of a person who exhibits a virtue of some kind. The most common of these is “trusting in the Lord.”
This sort of poetic language was familiar to Jesus’ audience. They heard the Psalms prayed as a part of temple liturgy, and they regularly heard the Scriptures read and taught in synagogues. So when Jesus started on, they picked up on what he was doing. Jesus called their attention back to the source and heart of his teaching, the Hebrew Bible.
So much of our modern cultural dialogue surrounds doing the things that will make us happy. The fact that Jesus began his most famous sermon talking about happiness just makes sense to modern people, at least until he says what it is that produces true happiness.
Check out Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Oswald Chambers!
Humility is the Point
Using both specific language and broad concepts from the Psalms and Proverbs, Jesus reveals to us that humility is the way of God’s kingdom.
Humility is the heart of all the Beatitudes. Yet, there is a distinction we can observe between the first and second half of the Beatitudes. The first four have to do with the social situation and mindset of the person. Numbers 5-8 have more to do with one’s character and behavior. As we go, consider that Jesus lays out qualities of both inner humility and outward expression of it.
Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
He begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). Jesus was speaking to a large crowd of people, many of whom were likely materially poor. But the word poor here refers to more than an absence of wealth.
The Greek for “poor” here is ptochos. Jesus told Nazareth that he is anointed “to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). This is a quote from the Greek Septuagint, but the original Hebrew word is anav. They essentially mean the same thing: destitute, lowly, afflicted. The poor are those who are the least in society. Yet Jesus calls them happy.
The Psalms commonly associate anav with those in such a sad state of affairs that they must trust in God for their needs. Psalm 40:17 says, “As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me.” And again, 109:31 says, “For he stands at the right hand of the needy one, to save him from those who condemn his soul to death.”
And this is why Jesus says “poor in spirit.” One who is poor in spirit is aware of their need for the Lord. It is this person who, regardless of material wealth or life situation, depends on their heavenly Father for everything. As James Brenner notes, “The sense of complete dependence on and trust in God which is the characteristic of the anawim in the Psalms is contrasted forcibly with the arrogance and irreligiousness of the rich. The latter trust in their wealth; the poor, in God alone.”2 This humble soul possesses, both now and in the age to come, the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed Are the Sorrowful
As stated above, the rest of the Beatitudes echo a similar sentiment as the first. Next up, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). The word “mourn” here means to lament or to grieve. Jesus’ listeners would be familiar with mourning. It was part of their daily life as the anav, but it was also part of their regular worship experience.
Out of 150 psalms, 58 express sorrow. All of these tell stories that express the emotions corresponding to great suffering. Hatred, anger, weeping, and doubt on the part of the author are characteristic of these psalms. One example is Psalm 137. It recalls the captivity of Israel in Babylon. The author, seeing the vile things done to his or her people, wishes back onto the Babylonians the evils they committed.
The psalmist says, “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8-9). This passage is not an endorsement of murdering children. Rather, it is a cry for retribution coming from the broken and bitter heart of someone who has experienced great trauma.
Some say that Jesus meant we should mourn over sin. Others say to mourn over suffering. And to both of these, I say yes. Sin and suffering go hand in hand. Sin is the disruption of Shalom, the perfect order and peace and goodness that God created in the beginning (Genesis 1:31). Whether we cause the suffering by our own sin or we are victims of the sins of others, we ought to humble ourselves and mourn. For in our mourning, we will be comforted.
Blessed Are the Meek
Jesus then said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). This comes from Psalm 37:11, which says, “But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” This psalm contrasts the injustice of the wicked with the future punishment that awaits them. It also speaks to the suffering of the meek and their future reward.
This Greek word praus means “strength under control.” It was used in ancient Greece to describe horses that are powerful in themselves, yet they are broken and submissive to the control of their rider. So meekness is not descriptive of weakness or inability, but of a disposition toward intentional gentleness.
On the other hand, a closer look at the psalm in Hebrew shows us that the word for “meek” is the same word for “poor” which we examined above: Anav, or the plural form, anawim. In other words, “This Beatitude is almost synonymous with the first one. All we have here is just a different shade of meaning, putting the emphasis more on the spirit of resignation than on any material condition.”3 Meekness is just another side of the same coin.
According to Psalm 37, the meek trust in God, do good, and are faithful (v. 3). They delight in the Lord (v. 4), commit their way to him (v. 5), wait for the Lord (vv. 7, 9), refuse to act out of anger (v. 8), and more. Meekness is all about humility and dependence on God, trusting in his way, not our own.
Further, Proverbs describes the same sort: “It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor (anawim) than to divide the spoil with the proud” (16:19), and in the following verse, “blessed is he who trusts in the Lord” (16:20).
Blessed Are the Hungry and Thirsty
Jesus continues his teaching, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).
To no surprise, the Psalms contain language of hunger and thirst. Psalm 107 talks about the Lord’s redemption of Israel in history. It recalls various points at which the people of Israel rebelled against God, ended up in a bad situation, and were delivered from it by God. In one of these stanzas, the psalmist says, “Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things” (Psalm 107:4-9)
The people of Israel knew from experience that their God is one who provides for them, when they were hungry and thirsty, as well as in many other situations laid out in Psalm 107. Jesus built on this theme.
Hungry for Justice
We can also find an even closer connection to this Beatitude in Psalm 65:4-5: “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple! By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas” (emphasis mine).
Not only does Psalm 65 contain its own beatitude, but it makes a similar promise to the one Jesus made. Those who dwell in the courts of God will be satisfied. They will be full because of the goodness and holiness of God’s house. This is a foreshadowing of the New Testament idea of Jesus and his people being the new temple, God’s proper dwelling place. And he answers them and reveals himself with righteousness.
The illustration is obvious: Those who have righteousness as the desperate need of their being will receive it and be satisfied. But what is righteousness? According to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, it is “the state of him who is such as he ought to be,” and more specifically, “justice, or the virtue which gives each one his due.”4
In other words, the person who will be satisfied here is not just the one who desires to live a morally good life. They are the one who actively pursues and cries out for justice, who longs with their whole being to see the world made right in the way that God desires it to be. That person’s hunger will be filled.
Blessed Are the Merciful
Halfway through, Jesus transitions from a heart posture before God to behavior before humanity: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Believe it or not, this concept of mercy is more complicated than it sounds. Once defined, the implications are pretty simple, but getting there is a challenge.
As you can tell by now, original languages are important to me with these things. Jesus uses the verb eleeo here for “receive mercy.” “Merciful” is an adjective version of the same. And noun forms show up in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
But here is where the confusion comes. Rather than being an expansion of the meaning of one Hebrew word like “meek” and “poor” from previous Beatitudes, this word for “mercy” is a summary of meaning. In other words, at least two different Hebrew words, chesed and chanan, are translated in the Septuagint, and then used in the New Testament, as this same word family of eleeo. Jesus quotes from Hosea 6:6 in Matthew 9:13, saying, “I desire mercy (Hebrew chesed), and not sacrifice.” But Paul quotes Exodus 33:19 in Romans 9:15, saying, “I will have mercy (Hebrew chanan) on whom I have mercy.”
Both Mercies in View
Chesed carries tones of loyalty, kindness, and faithfulness, and chanan refers to being gracious to and showing favor on a person. One can understand how these terms overlap, yet they are distinct. God obviously shows us both of these things. The former has more to do with maintaining a disposition of love toward a person or group, and the latter refers more to blessing or taking care of them or giving them something they did not earn.
Jesus’ ties his use of the word “mercy” in this Beatitude to both. He takes this concept of mercy as the reward for mercy right out of Proverbs 14:21-22. It says, “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous (chanan) to the poor. Do they not go astray who devise evil? Those who devise good meet steadfast love (chesed) and faithfulness.”
The Psalms use these terms a sum of almost 200 times. The Psalms are all about God and his relationship to his people. So in nearly every time use of these words, the Psalmist either asks God to be that way or thanks him for being that way. The book of Proverbs, however, is all about living a godly and wise life. So Jesus takes this from the Proverbs, essentially to say that if we will act like our Father, and help those who need it, we will find that he shows us the same sort of mercy.
Blessed Are the Pure in Heart
After this, Jesus seems to go back to the heart-posture focus he began with. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Not surprisingly, this theme comes from the Psalms. In Psalm 24:3-4, we read, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.”
On closer examination, we see that having a pure heart is not only about the heart itself, but about the actions the heart produces. The person with a pure heart is the one who neither worships false gods nor deceives others. This is the only category of person welcome into God’s presence: The one wholly devoted to the Lord. This sort of loyal worshipper is a part of the “generation of those who seek him” (Psalm 24:7).
Following the admonition to stay pure, the second half of Psalm 24 has in view a heavenly procession of the “King of glory” entering into his courts. In other words, the pure in heart see God.
James echoes this sentiment when speaking to his own church: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). And this he said after chastising them for striving to satisfy their selfish passions (James 4:1-4). James is effectively accusing this church of worshipping their own desires. Turning away from our selfishness, we draw near to God and open the door, so he draws near to us in return.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers
Keeping with this behavior theme, Jesus goes on, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). There are a couple of passages in the Psalms and Proverbs that speak to this sort of character trait. Psalm 34:13-14 instructs the listener in the way to see a long and fulfilled life. David says, “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it” (emphasis added).
Psalm 120:6-7 then says, “Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!” These same people who hate peace are earlier said to have a “deceitful tongue” (Psalm 120:2-3).
Proverbs presents the same contrast: “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but those who plan peace have joy” (Proverbs 12:20, emphasis added). In case you missed it, the testimony of Scripture seems to be that being a person of peace is the opposite of being a deceiver. This same chapter confirms this theme in verses 5-6. It says, “The thoughts of the righteous are just; the counsels of the wicked are deceitful. The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright delivers them” (emphasis added).
While there is no exact equivalent to the word Jesus uses for “peacemakers,” the theme above is clear. Jesus exalted the peacemaker, knowing that this character trait is intimately connected to truthful speech. Our Lord expects us to be people who bring about peace. In both Greek and Hebrew, peace refers to wholeness, prosperity, and the absence of quarreling. This is achieved, both individually and corporately, when pretenses are removed, selfishness is squashed, and integrity reigns.
Purity and Peacemaking
If you look back to the previous beatitude, “pure in heart,” you will see that the Psalms contrast both purity and peacemaking against the person who deceives others (see Psalm 24:4). James must have known this too. We observed earlier that James 4 makes an explicit reference to this verse. However, this is all in the context of the people he wrote to quarreling among themselves.
His command to “purify your hearts” (James 4:8) is part of his solution to the problem he starts the chapter with. Verses 1-2 say, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” This church was seriously failing to make peace. They apparently had a tendency to “speak evil against one another” (James 4:11).
So James, a brother of Jesus, learned and passed on these beatitudes of purity and peacemaking to his own disciples. Though Christ listed them out with some nuance in Matthew 5, James saw that they are so intimately connected that he didn’t even see a need to distinguish them. Further, he summarized his thoughts in much the same way that I do the beatitudes. The title of this post says it all: “Blessed are the humble.” James paraphrases Proverbs 3:34 this way: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). And again he says in verse 10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
Blessed Are the Persecuted
The eighth and final beatitude will challenge our understanding of this principle, however. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:10-12).
Being among the persecuted is, as expected, a major theme of the Psalms. The poverty and sorrow above is frequently lamented as the result of the actions of evildoers. Radaph is the Hebrew equivalent to the Greek term for “persecute.” It means to pursue or chase. Yet it does not always imply aggression. The same root word is used in Psalm 34:14, which we discussed above: “Seek peace and pursue it” (emphasis added). And in Psalm 23:6 David says that “goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” Pursuing, following, or chasing, are sometimes positive in their implications.
Many times, however, this word “pursue” is related to the word “enemies.” This automatically gives it an aggressive connotation. In Psalm 7, David asks God to save him from his pursuers. Then he goes on to tell God that if he has committed certain sins, “let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust” (Psalm 7:5). Again, in Psalm 31:15, David says, “My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!”
Be Happy About It!
David and other psalmists frequently cry out for deliverance and lament their sufferings. Of course there is nothing wrong with mourning, as we saw in that beatitude. But our Lord tells us that persecution is a cause for happiness. The depths of despair expressed in these some of these psalms tells me that happiness was far from the minds and hearts of their writers at the time. Yet Jesus takes these dark themes and redeems them. He spends the most time on this beatitude, hammering home the point.
Matthew Henry’s Commentary highlights this greater emphasis by our Lord. He infers that it reflects its relative importance among the beatitudes: “Those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are happy. This saying is peculiar to Christianity; and it is more largely insisted upon than any of the rest. Yet there is nothing in our sufferings that can merit of God; but God will provide that those who lose for him, though life itself, shall not lose by him in the end.”5
Jesus says to “rejoice and be glad.” Why? “For your reward is great in heaven.”
Beatitudes With The End in Mind
As we look back at the Psalms, we see that Jesus built this teaching on the way that the Psalms and proverbs describe the struggles and good deeds of the righteous. For the most part, serving God and living right seemed to go without reward for many faithful worshippers. In the Beatitudes, Jesus gives the listeners hope that those struggles do not go unseen, and those works do not go unrewarded. Many of those rewards are deferred until the end, but the reward will be great.
In Christ, a new era began. This marked a new dispensation, where Christ’s kingdom is “already, but not yet,” as theologians like to say. His ministry inaugurated his kingdom, and one day, his return will consummate it. In the meantime, let’s do our best to live the blessed life, stay humble, and trust in God. Remember James’ admonition in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
Footnotes
- Englishman’s Concordance, #835, BibleHub ↩︎
- Brennan, James. “The Psalms and the Beatitudes.” The Furrow 14, no. 9 (1963): 561–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27658600. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Thayer’s Greek: 1343. δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosuné) — righteousness, justice (biblehub.com) ↩︎
- https://biblehub.com/commentaries/mhc/matthew/5.htm ↩︎
