‘mercy’ (Ages). St. Paul’s constant use of the term (Oixoeroadyn) continued its theological designation.
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the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.’
This beatitude type of utterance was not new upon Jesus’ lips, for it appears abundantly in the OT.* But Jesus made the Beatitude His own (as He made the Parable His own), and constantly used it as a mode of expression which carried the idea of love rather than of exaction, the idea of persuasion rather than of force, the idea-of God’s blessing and assistance to His children whom He tenderly leads and exalts.; When in the 5th cent. B.C. the legal element in the Hebrew Scriptures had become the chief interest of the nation, there followed logically the dominance of the legal idea of God, according to which He was an austere lawgiver and judge, demanding under severe penalties an exact obedience to His statutes, re- garding men as slaves to be driven to their tasks or to be punished if they failed. The higher con- ception of God which is expressed in the Psalms and the Prophetical Writings was for centuries sadly obscured by this supremacy of legalism. It fell to Jesus, as one part of His mission, to restore the former better idea of God as a loving Father who cares for, comforts, guides, and blesses His children. +
When, therefore, Jesus sets at the beginning of the Sermon these Beatitudes, He does so with the profound intention of revealing at once the spirit and the substance of the Gospel. Man is not made subservient to an external law forced upon him from without, but is made responsive to a creative light and power within. The criterion by which God judges him is not primarily a standard of external performance, but a standard of internal purpose and aspiration, of which external per- formance is in due time a necessary outworking. This fact is seen in the Beatitudes, whose descrip- tion of the ideal of human life pertains to the fundamental nature of a person and concerns all men equally. Jesus furnishes here a universal ideal and a universal criterion. Not only did He describe the ideal in words; He also illustrated it in His own life.g According to Jesus’ teaching
* See particularly Ps 411 654 845-7 8915 1191. 2 1981.2, Pr g32. 34, Ts 3018 3220 562, Dn 1212; also 1 S 2625, 1 K 815, Ps 286 6819 7218.19 11826, Jer 177. The idea ‘Blessed’ is expressed in the Hebrew OT (see also Sir 141. 2. 20 258.9 261 2819 4811 5028) by two different words, 228 and 7173, The former is a noun in construct case from the root Ws meaning ‘to go straight, to advance, to prosper.’ WN is in OT usage nearly confined to the Psalms, where it appears nineteen times (elsewhere seven times). It is always rendered in the LXX by pexzépios, which in classical meaning was quite akin to this Hebrew word (see Heinrici, Berg- predigt, i. 27). 3973, Qal pass. ptep. of 372 meaning ‘to bless’ occurs fifteen times in the Psalms, and frequently (twenty-two times) elsewhere. It is always rendered in the LXX by siaoynrés OY evAoynuivos, never by uwaxeépios. In the Psalms without ex- ception, and predominantly elsewhere, it is used with reference to God as the object of the blessing, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.’ The NT uses both peaxepios and edaoynrés (-weévos), and after the prevailing practice of the LXX, for naxépios is used of men and eaoynros (-wévos) of God as recipient. * ws denotes a status of true well-being, due to right thoughts and right con- duct, the harmony of a man with his God. 9193 when referring to men as recipients denotes some special blessing bestowed by God and coming upon one from without. It is a fair inference from these data that Jesus used ‘28 rather than 9173, and the Greek translators of His words did well to follow the LXX in rendering this by wexepios. The point is of some importance for determining the exact meaning of Jesus when He uses this term in His Beatitudes, In the ‘ Blessings and Cursings’ of Dt » 27, 28 the terms are 7172 and 73¥, rendered in the LXX by evhoyntezvos and tmixaré pares. The Greek word for ‘Woe’ in the Woe passages of the Gospels is odes.
t ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him,’ Ps 10318, See also Dt 85 326, Is 12 6316, Mal 16 210,
{ Cf. especially Wendt, Lehre Jesu, ii. 139-160 (Eng. tr. i. 184-209) ; G. B. Stevens, Bibl. Theol. of the NT, pp. 65-75.
§ Gore, Sermon on the Mount, pp. 15, 16: ‘The character which we here find described [in the Beatitudes] is beyond all
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and example, a man’s success or failure is to be judged not by the amount of money he can accumulate, or by the amount of social dis- tinction he can command, or by the extent of his intellectual or official achievements; but rather by the essential character which he fashions within himself, and by the service which he renders to his fellow-men. In the Beatitudes Jesus calls men away from the superficial tests and standards which so commonly prevail, to a criterion which concerns the real nature of man, is equally just to all, and stands in relation not alone to the few years of a man’s present exist- ence, but to the whole of his eternal career. In no respect was the Judaism of Jesus’ day more per- verse, and perhaps in no respect has error been more perpetuated, than in the maintenance of superficial tests of righteousness and of success (cf. Lk 18°14, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican). The Gospel of Christ was, in the lst cent. A.D., the rebuke and the correction of this condition ; and that Gospel needs, as much now as then, to be established in the world. In no words of Jesus has His essential teaching concerning the ideal of humanity ‘been so simply and clearly epitomized as in the Beatitudes of Mt 5°”, The man, woman, or child who sincerely, persistently aspires and strives to attain to the character and to perform the service described in the Beatitudes, will not fail of Christianity either in knowledge or achievement. *