Matthew 5:3

μακάριοι. This is one of the words which have been transformed and ennobled by N. T. use; by association, as in the Beatitudes, with unusual conditions, accounted by the world miserable, or with rare and difficult conduct, e.g., in John 13:17, “if ye know these things, happy (μακάριοι) are ye if ye do them”. Notable in this connection is the expression in 1 Timothy 1:11, “The Gospel of the glory of the happy God”. The implied truth is that the happiness of the Christian God consists in being a Redeemer, bearing the burden of the world's sin and misery. How different from the Epicurean idea of God! Our word “blessed” represents the new conception of felicity. οἱ πτωχοὶ : πτωχός in Sept [17] stands for אֶבִיוֹן Psalms 109:16, or עָנִי Ps. 40:18: the poor, taken even in the most abject sense, mendici, Tertull. adv. Mar. iv. 14. πτωχός and πένης originally differed, the latter meaning poor as opposed to rich, the former destitute. But in Biblical Greek πτωχοί, πένητες, πραεῖς, ταπεινοί are used indiscriminately for the same class, the poor of an oppressed country. Vide Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, p. 76. The term is used here in a pregnant sense, absolute and unqualified at least to begin with; qualifications come after. From πτώσσω, to cower in dispiritment and fear, always used in an evil sense till Christ taught the poor man to lift up his head in hope and self-respect; the very lowest social class not to be despaired of, a future possible even for the mendicant. Blessedness possible for the poor in every sense; they, in comparison with others, under no disabilities, rather contrariwise such is the first and fundamental lesson. τῷ πνεύματι. Possibilities are not certainties; to turn the one into the other the soul or will of the individual must come in, for as Euthy. Zig. quaintly says, nothing involuntary can bless (οὐδὲν τῶν ἀπροαιρέτων μακαριστόν). “In spirit” is, therefore, added to develop and define the idea of poverty. The comment on the theme passes from the lower to the higher sphere. Christ's thought includes the physical and social, but it does not end there. Luke seems to have the social aspect in view, in accordance with one of his tendencies and the impoverished condition of most members of the apostolic Church. To limit the meaning to that were a mistake, but to include that or even to emphasise it in given circumstances was no error. Note that the physical and spiritual lay close together in Christ's mind. He passed easily from one to the other (John 4:7-10; Luke 10:42, see notes there). τῷ πν. is, of course, to be connected with πτωχοὶ, not with μακάριοι. Poor in spirit is not to be taken objectively, as if spirit indicated the element in which the poverty is manifest poor intellect: “homines ingenio et eruditione parum florentes” (Fritzsche) = the νηπίοι in Matthew 11:25; but subjectively, poor in their own esteem. Self-estimate is the essence of the matter, and is compatible with real wealth. Only the noble think meanly of themselves. The soul of goodness is in the man who is really humble. Poverty laid to heart passes into riches. A high ideal of life lies beneath all. And than ideal is the link between the social and the spiritual. The poor man passes into the blessedness of the kingdom as soon as he realises what a man is or ought to be. Poor in purse or even in character, no man is beggared who has a vision of man's chief end and chief good. αὐτὼν, emphatic position: theirs, note it well. So in the following verses αὐτοὶ and αὐτῶν. ἐοτι, not merely in prospect, but in present possession. The kingdom of heaven is often presented in the Gospels apocalyptically as a thing in the future to be given to the worthy by way of external recompense. But this view pertains rather to the form of thought than to the essence of the matter. Christ speaks of the kingdom here not as a known quantity, but as a thing whose nature He is in the act of defining by the aphorisms He utters. If so, then it consists essentially in states of mind. It is within. It is ourselves, the true ideal human.

[17] Septuagint.