The Beatitudes, Mat 5:2-12 overview

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's.

I would now like to start a verse by verse study of The Beatitudes:

Matthew 5:2-12

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. "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 5:2-12)

INITIAL OBSERVATIONS

 

For any person who does not have easy access to Bible software you can look up all cross references listed in this blog at the Bible Gateway website.    It is easy and quick to use and you can choose from many different translations.  The cross references are a big part of any Bible Study that we may undertake! 

 

 

Things Emphasized:

• Perseverance through persecution
• The rewards of being blessed are truly great!

Things Repeated:

• Twice during the Beatitudes Jesus mentions people persevering through persecution as being rewarded.

 

Cause and Effect:

• Every Beatitude IS a cause and effect!  The Greek word translated here as "for" means because!  In every one of the beatitudes the effect is to be counted as blessed (see separate word study in VERY next post) and the end of the sentence is the cause.   (ie:  Blessed because "they shall be comforted."   Mat 5:4 )  The conditions (or states of the people described in the Beatitudes, ie: poor in spirit, those who mourn) are deeper than we think.  After initial readings it seems that Jesus is laying out the life of a Christian in these verses. 

Important Persons:

• Jesus
• His disciples.  He has pulled His disciples aside to give them this sermon on the mount.  Mat 5:1-2

Author and Intended Audience:

• Matthew was the author.  He was one of Jesus' disciples.
• Matthew’s emphasis is easy to discern. As a Jew writing to fellow Jews, Matthew sets out to prove that Jesus’ life and atonement are the fulfillment of OT prophecies regarding the coming Messiah. Further, he is preoccupied with the motif of Jesus as King and with the nature of discipleship for those who follow Christ. (text taken from the ESV Literary Study Bible)

Literary Concerns:

• The beatitudes are an example of parallelism (as were the Psalms!) which is defined as:

Any successive series of phrases or lines that have the same grammatical format, such as “whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely” (Phil. 4:8). More technically, parallelism is the verse form in which virtually all biblical poetry is written. While there are specific types of the verse form of parallelism (antithetic parallelism, synonymous parallelism, synthetic parallelism, climactic parallelism), the overriding idea that covers all of them is this: parallelism consists of two or more lines that form a pattern based on repetition or balance of thought and grammar and/or syntax.

Jesus (a) pronounces a blessing on a group of people, (b) names the group according to their essential trait, and (c) offers a reason (which is at the same time a promise) for their condition of blessedness. The promised rewards are spiritual in nature and have an eschatological as well as temporal application. The literary technique was known in ancient literature as “the character” (we call it a “character sketch”).  (the preceding text is from the Introduction to Matthew in the ESV Literary Study Bible.)

Contextual Considerations:

 

• This is one of Jesus' first sermons ( Mat 4:17 )  And is the beginning of a rather large and important Sermon that concludes in Mat 7:27
• It is also very important to know and understand that Jesus began His public teaching after he resisted the temptations of the devil.  Mat 4:1-11
• For only after Jesus had resisted temptation could He be the one who could take on the sins of the world.  Jesus is/was the lamb as promised by God!  Gen 22:7-13     Joh 1:36     Rev 7:9  Rev 7:14 
• And digging further into context:  The temptation of Jesus came after he had been baptized by John and then acknowledged by the Father. Mat 3:13-17  
• And yet a little more:  Jesus performs no miracles (In Matthew) until after He FIRST teaches His disciples.
• It is interesting and most likely very important that Jesus started this important sermon with the Beatitudes!!  (consider this when studying)

My next post will be an in-depth word study of the word Blessed.  I felt it was VERY important to understand this word before diving into each verse in detail.  And it was!  Until then............

“Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”