The Beatitudes present each a special idea, but they are not mutually exclusive. An organic unity binds them all together, and they interlace with one another. Like so many facets of a diamond, they present the ideal life in eight different aspects, they indicate the several characteristics which make up the whole. The specific meaning of each of the Beatitudes must be carefully determined, in order that we may apprehend correctly the ideal of Jesus for men which they embody.
(1) ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’+ The phrase ‘the poor’ (rrwxot =n"3y and 0314) was a current one among the Jews,
* See the discussion of the term in the footnote * on p. 14.
+ Tholuck, Bergrede>, p. 59 (Eng. tr. p. 66): ‘There can be no doubt—and this should be carefully noted—that all the ideas which meet us here in the Sermon on the Mount, those of the Kingdom of God, the righteousness of that Kingdom, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, seeing God, etc., were no new ideas, but well-known ones, of which Christ only revealed the deepest meaning.’ The passages of the OT in which these ideas are found will be indicated below. : firing .
{Mt 5? wankpios of rayol ra avebuari, Ors aiTaY tory 7 Boos Asia cay ovpavay; Lk 620 paxcpror of rrmyol, ort UmEeTépe eoriy 4 Buoireiee sod Oeod. The Gospel of Matthew usually, though not always, employs the phrase 4 BuctAsia ray odpavay, while all the EXTRA VOL.—2
SERMON ON THE MOUNT 17
arising in the OT period and bearing a somewhat technical meaning (see art. Poor in vol. hye le designated that class, generally in humble circum- stances, who lived the higher life, fixing their thought upon God and seeking His spiritual bless- Ings, instead of living in a worldly way, to accumu- late property and to attain social distinction and political power ; they were in the world, but not of it; they were the faithful and righteous ones whom God could approve and bless.* It seems probable, since Jesus in the Beatitudes has taken up many current Jewish phrases to put upon them His own interpretation, that He here used the phrase ‘the poor’ in the sense of, and with regard to, the current conception of it. In that case the words ‘in spirit,’ which in Matthew are associated with the phrase, but not in Luke, may be an expansion of the original utterance made in the Greek for the purpose of protecting Jesus’ words from a material misinterpretation.| The 7¢ avevuare would, then, although a later addition, preserve the original meaning of Jesus; as it stands, it limits of rrwyol (not paxdp.or) as a phrase of closer definition,+ like ‘the pure in heart’ of Mt 58 and the ‘lowly in heart’ of Mt 11”; cf. also Mk 8, 1Co 734 It fixes the sphere in which the poverty is predicated. Jesus means, not that spiritual poverty is in itself a good thing, but that the man who has a deep sense of his spiritual deficiency and dependence upon God will turn to Him, and will then receive the spiritual blessings which he needs. There- fore the phrase ‘the poor in spirit’ designates an internal rather than an external condition,a moral and spiritual rather than an economic status.§
other Gospels and the other books of the NT use 4 BuoiAchu rob Geov. Did Jesus use both phrases in their Aramaic equivalents ? If so, did the two phrases mean different things? Or was only one of the phrases used by Jesus, the other being of a different origin? If so, which was Jesus’ phrase? These questions have been variously answered. The majority of scholars, however, are of the opinion that the two phrases are identical in meaning, that Jesus was accustomed to use both of them, and that His more frequent term was ‘the Kingdom of God.’ (See esp. O. Holtzmann, Leben Jesu, pp. 124-126). The other phrase, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven,’ is to be explained as arising out of the fallacious reverence for the name of God which char- acterized the Jewish people and led them to use circum- locutions instead of speaking the name itself. Jesus, however, did not share this superstitious regard for the name of God ; on the contrary, he spoke of God constantly. The First Gospel adopted the phrase, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven,’ which probably was in general use among Jewish Christians, in order to be more acceptable to the Jewish readers for whom it was intended. On the other hand, in the Second and Third Gospels, and elsewhere, the phrase ‘ the Kingdom of God’ occurs, since this universal use of terms was more acceptable to the great body of Gentile Christians for whom and among whom most of our NT books were written.
* So Ps 912.18 102. 9.12 125 4017 6929 792. 4.12.18 322-4 ggl 10922 1137, Is 611 (cf. Lk 418) 662, See Achelis, Bergpredigt, p. 7 f.; Kabisch, SK, 1896; Klopper, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol. 1894; Wellhausen, Israelitische u. Jtidische Geschichte’, 1897, ch. 15; Rahlfs, 39 wnd 139 in den Psalmen, 1892; J. Weiss, Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes2, 1900, pp. 188-185; Driver, art. Poor in vol. iv., who argues for Rahlfs’ distinction between °3y (poor, needy) and 13) (humble towards God).
+ It is obvious that when Jesus’ words came into the hands of the Gentiles, who were not familiar with the history, litera- ture, ideas, and religious terminology of the Jews, there would be great danger of His words being misunderstood. The first Beatitude, for instance, was likely to be misinterpreted, because the term ‘poor’ was used by the Gentiles only in a material sense, not with an ethico-religious content. It was therefore necessary to add the words ‘in spirit,’ in order that Jesus’ meaning might not be misunderstood. Modern English usage of the term ‘poor’ is also economic instead of religious, and therefore we also need the words ‘in spirit’ to guard against misinterpretation. ; x