|
|
Chapter 1. Blessed (1)
Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying: ‘Blessed are ...’ Matthew 5.1-3. For some months, Jesus had been making his way from village to village throughout Galilee. If we look at the map, it might seem that it was a large area to cover on foot — 45 miles from north to south, 25 miles from east
 |
Note 1
Flavius Josephus, the first century AD Jewish historian, says that, at the start of the rebellion against Rome in 66 AD when he was governor of Galilee, the region had no less than 204 towns and villages with a population of at least 15,000 each. (The Life of Josephus, 235). |
|
|
to west, more than 1,000 square miles in all — but we need to bear in mind that much of the territory was high ground, forested and only sparsely populated. The life of the region was in its fertile valleys watered from the hills, and around its ‘sea,’ the Lake of Gennesaret (or Tiberias as it was then called), and that is where Jesus had been preaching and healing. Even so, the task of visiting some 200 towns and villages (Note 1) at the rate of perhaps two a day had been a gruelling one, even for a weather-beaten, rugged artisan like Jesus who had spent the last fifteen years felling trees, hewing beams, building houses, and doing all the other physically demanding jobs that fell to a carpenter in those days.
 His activities had caused quite a stir. Mark tells us that ‘the people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching — and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him”’. And Mark adds: ‘News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee’ (Mark 1.27-28).
That is understandable. We can imagine someone from one village (Capernaum, perhaps) visiting a sick relative in another (Chorazin, maybe) and saying, ‘If only Jesus was here he’d have you up and about in no time’. ‘Jesus? Jesus who?’ someone would ask. And so the news of what was happening would be passed on around the lake, through the valleys, and even up into the hills. But, surely, we tell ourselves, exciting as the message of Jesus and his miracles must have been, the news of them could not have leaked far from that remote corner of Palestine. Well, we are wrong.
Ancient trade routes from Tyre and Sidon in the northwest and from Damascus in the northeast met in Galilee, and there they joined up with the great Roman roads, so that anything of any consequence that happened in this particular territory was soon the talk of half the ancient world. Matthew’s narrative bears that out. Having told of Jesus preaching and healing throughout Galilee, he says: ‘News about him spread all over Syria ... Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him’ (Matthew 4.24-25). If we look again at our map of Palestine in New Testament times, we shall find that Matthew’s listing covers the whole of it, that part of Syria is even off the top of the page, and that at least one of the areas mentioned was a predominantly Gentile territory — the Decapolis, a federation of ten Greek towns. So Jesus was big news, and not only among the Jews. He was at the height of his popularity, and the crowds he was attracting were increasing in size day by day as more and more curious visitors arrived in the region.
At this point we need to look more closely at this mass of people who thronged around Jesus wherever he went. It was, according to Luke, made up of two elements: ‘A large crowd of his disciples ... and a great number of people ... who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases’ (Luke 6.17-18). So there where those who came and saw and heard and went away again, their curiosity satisfied; and there were those who came and saw and heard and went away healed. But then there were those who came and saw and heard and kept returning, responding to the preaching, asking questions, wanting to know more. These were the ‘disciples’ — the Greek word is mathêtai — and they were the ones to whom the Beatitudes were addressed (Matthew 5.1-2). That is why it is so important that we understand from the outset just who these people were.
Almost always, when we encounter the term ‘disciples’ in the gospels, we take it as referring to the Apostles, that inner circle of Jesus’ followers who were known simply as ‘the Twelve’ (1 Corinthians 15.5). But here (and in several other places — Note 2) it simply denoted those who cared enough about him to follow him around and were in earnest about his teaching. It was to this group that there must have belonged ‘Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias’ and the others described by Peter (in a post-
|
Notes 2, 3 and 4
2. We know from Luke 10.1 that, apart from the Twelve, there were at least ‘seventy-two others’ whom Jesus was able to call upon to go out two by two; and in Luke 19.37 we are told of a ‘whole crowd of disciples’ who praised God for the miracles they had seen.
3. At the stage when Matthew introduces the Beatitudes, he has mentioned the call of only four men who were to become part of Jesus’ inner circle — Peter, Andrew, James and John (Matthew 4.18-22) — and he has never referred to them as disciples. Not until Matthew 10.1-4 are the ‘twelve disciples’ mentioned.
4. The title of perhaps his most famous book, first published in 1952, in which (according to the preface) he ‘vigorously speaks out for the great common faith which unites all Christians’. |
|
|
Ascension search of a twelfth apostle to replace Judas) as those ‘who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us’ (Acts 1.21-23).
The noun mathêtês is derived from the verb manthanô which means ‘to learn, to find out, to discover’ and, essentially, the noun signifies nothing more than a person who does such things. It is true that the term came to acquire a special significance in relation to the Twelve but there is nothing in Matthew 5.1-2 to indicate that it was being used there in that special sense. Indeed, far from being what someone has called ‘the Ordination Address to the Twelve’, the Sermon on the Mount is presented in Scripture as the teaching that Jesus freely gave to all who were ready and willing to receive it.
This fact must, even at this preliminary stage, be allowed to disabuse us of the notion that the Beatitudes represent some special teaching reserved for some special group (Note 3). The Beatitudes were, and remain, part of what C S Lewis would call ‘mere Christianity’ (Note 4) — that central bedrock of belief on which there stands every Christian from the greatest to the least.
As the weeks rolled on, Jesus became increasingly aware of the mathêtai (those ‘learners’) who were always there wherever he went, keeping close to him in the ever-changing, teeming throng that surrounded him. He noted how they hung on his every word, drinking in the truths he offered them, seeking a new depth to their relationship with God, and finding in him something that was missing from the conventional, legalistic religion of the day. Often, he wanted to talk to them more, to explain things in greater detail, but always there were interruptions that could not be ignored; pleas for healing that
|
Notes 5 and 6
5. The Greek words eis to oros, here translated ‘on a mountainside’, may, and probably does, mean no more than ‘into the hills’. The term to oros — literally, ‘the mountain’ — may equally mean ‘the mountain region’ or ‘the hill country’. The presence of the definite article cannot be taken as proof that some specific mountain is intended, though a tradition (that can be traced back only to the 13th century) identifies the place as a mountain called the Horns of Hattin. This mountain, situated on the west of the lake between Mount Tabor and Tiberias, and about seven miles south-west of Capernaum, is saddle-shaped and rises above its neighbours to about 1,000 feet.
6. Luke says he stood on a topos pedinos which the KJV translates as a ‘plain’ (Luke 6.17). That introduces a disharmony between the two narratives that does not actually exist. A topos pedinos is simply somewhere flat as opposed to somewhere steep or uneven. The NIV calls it ‘a level place’. If the mountain was the Horns of Hattin (see the previous note), the description would fit the mountain’s natural amphitheatre. |
|
|
could not be denied, cries for deliverance that had to be heeded, demands for mercy that had to be met. Until the day when, with great deliberation, Jesus turned away from the multitude, left the noise, the frenzy, the excitement, and he headed up into the quiet hills to the west of the Lake (Note 5).
Perhaps he made it clear from the way that he deliberately outpaced those who immediately started off after him that there would be no more signs and wonders for a while. At any rate, many soon fell back and wandered off into the towns and villages to await his return. Others who would have followed him, signs and wonders or no, found the terrain just too difficult and they too, after a while, reluctantly returned to the lakeside. Until, eventually, the crowd was but a fraction of what it had been, and then, at last, Jesus turned aside to a level area from which he could both see and be seen (Note 6) and sat down on a large boulder and contemplated the people before him.
For a moment they were at a loss as to what they should do. Did he still want to be alone, or what? Were they wrong to have followed him? Should they go away? But then he made a gesture of invitation and they went to him, these mathêtai (Note 7), gathering themselves around his feet. Everyone was silent; not just because they were out of breath, but because there was a kind of
|
Notes 7-10
7. John Wesley points out that, if Jesus had wanted to teach the apostles only, ‘He had no need to have gone up into the mountain. A room in the house of Matthew, or any of His disciples, would have contained the twelve’ (Forty-Four Sermons, Epworth Press, 1946, Sermon XVI, p 187). And Wesley agrees that the ‘disciples’ referred to in Matthew 5.1 were ‘all who desired to learn of Him’ (Ibid). But it is worth observing here that although Jesus might have begun by addressing only such people, Matthew ends his narrative of the Sermon on the Mount by reporting that ‘the crowds were amazed at his teaching’ (Matthew 7.28). Matthew does not tell us when or how those crowds arrived and rejoined the ‘disciple’ but he clearly implies that once they were there with Jesus they became included by him as part of his audience.
8. The idiom occurs in Job 3.1; 33.2 and Daniel 10.16, and in all three places the NIV translates it faithfully. But it also occurs and is left untranslated in Matthew 13.35; Acts 8.35; 10.34 and 18.14 as well as here.
9. The Hebrew expression is phathach pîw — ‘he opened his mouth’ and the Greek expression is anoixas to stoma autou — ‘opening his mouth’.
10. Many scholars believe that the teachings of Jesus as set out in chapters five, six and seven of Matthew’s gospel do not comprise one single ‘sermon’ — the Sermon on the Mount, as Augustine called it — but are, as Calvin described them, ‘a brief summary ... collected out of his many and various discourses’ (Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, I). The force of the Greek edidasken — ‘he began to teach’ — would support this; the word might equally well be translated ‘he taught in his customary manner’ It may well be, too, that Jesus delivered similar teaching on different occasions, developing his themes in different ways — which would account for such variations as exist in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 and Luke 6. |
|
|
solemnity about Jesus now that stilled any chatter before it got to their lips. The whole scene was, for the men that were present, reminiscent of the times they had all spent as boys in ‘the house of the book’, sitting on the ground in a semicircle at the feet of their teacher, learning from the Tanak — the Law, the Prophets and the Writings that now form the Christian Old Testament.
Certainly, Matthew himself felt that. A literal translation of the Greek of Matthew 5.5 reads ‘and when he sat his disciples approached him; and opening his mouth he began to teach them saying ...’ The phrase ‘and opening his mouth’ (which the NIV inexplicably chooses to ignore wherever it occurs in the New Testament — Note 8) is a recognised idiomatic marker in both the Old and the New Testament (Note 9) for the introduction of a discourse that is either solemn or revelatory or both. In the Book of Job, when Elihu uses it, he prefaces it with ‘listen to my words; pay attention to everything I say’ (Job 33.1), and that is the force of it. In Matthew’s estimation, when Jesus adopted that rabbinic attitude seated on a rock high among the Galilean hills, he somehow made the disciples understand that he was about to open his whole mind and heart to them and to impart something of the utmost importance (Note 10).
What was this ‘something of the utmost importance?’ Well, it centred around the word that we generally translate as ‘blessed’, and that is where any
|
Notes 11-14
11. In Latin, each Beatitude begins: Beati ..., meaning ‘Blessed [are] ...’
12. Hence the Beatitudes are sometimes called Makarisms.
13. Those that do include the Jerusalem Bible, J B Phillips’ The New Testament in Modern English, the Living Bible, the New American Bible and Today’s English Version.
14. Ethics, Book 8, 5.2. |
|
|
attempt to understand the Beatitudes (Note 11) must begin. In the Greek in which the New Testament is written, the word is makarioi (Note 12), and that is the plural form of the adjective makarios which, in simple translation, means ‘happy’. But few English versions of the Bible adopt that simple translation because they recognise that it is seriously misleading for several reasons (Note 13).
The first is that, unlike makarios, the English word ‘happy’ signifies a mood or emotional state that is almost entirely dependent on circumstance and that can, therefore, be destroyed in a moment. The inappropriateness of such a word in the context of the Beatitudes is apparent when we come to the second and the eighth of them — Happy are those who mourn! Happy are those who are persecuted! Mere happiness cannot withstand death or persecution; it is far too fragile an emotion. And the clue to its fragile nature lies in its root: the Old Norse word happ which means ‘luck or chance’. But makarios described a state that was largely untouched by circumstance. Outside the New Testament, it described a state of wholeness and completeness. Aristotle contrasted it with endeês — being in want, in need, deficient (Note 14). Makarios was the state of the gods who had within themselves all that they needed for their satisfaction and contentment. Cyprus was once called hê Makaria — the Happy [Isle] — because it was thought to have within itself everything that was needed for its inhabitants’ enjoyment and well-being: climate, crops, mineral resources, etc.
Secondly, however, even in its true sense makarios was only a Greek approximation for the term which Jesus actually used on that Galilean hillside. Although he could probably speak Greek when it was necessary
|
Notes 15 and 16
15. Greek was the lingua franca of the Empire (Acts 21.37) and Pilate would normally converse in it. It is highly unlikely that he could speak Aramaic, yet it would seem that Jesus conversed with him without the need of an interpreter (John 18.33-40).
16. Pronounced ash-ray. |
|
|
for him to do so (Note 15), his native tongue was a Galilean version of Western Aramaic, a dialect cognate with Hebrew though not identical to it, and it was in that dialect that he uttered the word tûbhayhôn translated by Matthew as makarioi. That Aramaic word is equivalent to the Hebrew exclamation ’ashrê (Note 16) and it is with that little Hebrew word, not the Greek word makarios, that we must concern ourselves for much of the remainder of this chapter, for it is one of the doors that will admit us to the truth of the Beatitudes.
’Ashrê is found forty-two times in the Old Testament (twenty-five times in the Psalms, eight times in Proverbs and nine times elsewhere) and always, in the Septuagint (Note 17), it is translated as makarios (or very occasionally
|
Notes 17, 18 and 19
17. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Tanak and the Apocrypha that was begun in Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century BC. Its name derives from the Latin word for seventy (hence the abbreviation LXX) and refers to the 70 or 72 Jewish scholars who, according to a non-historical tradition, completed the translation in 72 days on the island of Pharos. Given that many Jews living outside of Palestine could read no Hebrew, the LXX was the ‘international’ version of the Old Testament in use throughout the Roman empire in New Testament times. Matthew would be familiar with the LXX and was following a solid precedent when he used makarioi to translate the Semitic exclamation that Jesus actually used.
18. ‘How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!’ (1 Kings 10.8; 2 Chronicles 9.7).
19. Taking the one to be the author of Proverbs and the other to be the author of Psalms. |
|
|
makaristos — ‘most blessed’). It is usually said to mean ‘Oh how fortunate!’ and sometimes — on the lips of the Queen of Sheba, for example, when she sees the privileges that Solomon’s servants enjoy (Note 18) — that is all that it signifies. But generally there is more to it than that, particularly on the lips of Solomon himself and of his father David (Note 19).
The interjection, ’ashrê, is derived from the verb ’ashar which, in the Qal (simple active) conjugation, means ‘to go straight ahead, to walk, to go on, to advance, to make progress’ and, in the Piel (factitive) conjugation, means ‘to lead on, to set right, to bless, to pronounce fortunate, to call blessed’. The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament states that: ‘The relationship, if any, between Qal “to go” and Piel “to bless” is not apparent’, and thereupon it abandons the search; but the view taken here is that there is a link and that it is not too difficult to find.
The link lies in the teachings and instructions that constitute the law of the Lord. All societies associate straightness and uprightness with
|
Note 20
In the English vernacular someone who is corrupt or dishonest is ‘bent’, someone who makes a living by criminal activity is a ‘crook’,and someone who reforms and starts to live in conformity with the law is ‘going straight’. |
|
|
the keeping of the law and connect crookedness with its transgression (Note 20); and Israel was no exception. To ‘walk straight’ was, if you belonged to God’s chosen people, to live in faithfulness to the Lord by observance of his precepts (tôrâ), his commandments (mitswâ) and his testimonies (‘edâ). Cause someone to be in such a state of faithfulness — by leading them on and setting them right — and you blessed the persons concerned because the blessings of Yahweh himself were poured out upon those who kept the tôrâ.
It is in this light that the interjection, ’ashrê, should generally be understood. It is a word that describes not someone who is merely fortunate per se but someone who, because he or she is faithfully walking in the way of the Lord by following his law, is inevitably the recipient of his blessing. Consider the following scriptures:
Blessed is [‘ashrê] the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law [tôrâ] of the Lord, and on his law [tôrâ] he meditates day and night (Psalms 1.1-2).
Blessed is [’ashrê] the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commandments [mitswâ] (Psalms 112.1).
Blessed are [’ashrê] they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law [tôrâ] of the Lord. Blessed are [’ashrê] they who keep his statutes [‘edâ] and seek him with all their heart (Psalm 119.1-2).
Blessed is [’ashrê] he who keeps the law [tôrâ] (Proverbs 29:18).
Now then, my sons, listen to me; blessed are [’ashrê] those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is [’ashrê] the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway (Proverbs 8.32-34).
It is clear, then, from this weight of evidence, that those who are to be congratulated are those who walk in the way of the law of the Lord. And they are to be congratulated not because of their faithfulness or their perseverance or their self-discipline or anything like that, but simply and solely because they are going to prosper as a result. They are called blessed because the Lord is going to bless them and ‘the blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it’ (Proverbs 10.22). The scope and extent of the prosperity to which the blessings for obedience would give rise had been laid down for them by Moses:
Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land — your grain, new wine and oil — the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease (Deuteronomy 7.12-15).
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse — the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today (Deuteronomy 11:26 -27).
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock — the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven. The Lord will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will fear you. The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity — in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground — in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them (Deuteronomy 28.1-14).
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 30.15-19).
|
