Flight of steps bearing the words of the Beatitudes. Is the idea to express climbing the mount of the Sermon on the Mount? Wikimedia Commons.
By James Emery from Douglasville, United States – Stairs of MEEI church_1098, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35132465
The Beatitudes1
Introduction
The version of the Beatitudes from Matt 5 in Book 6 dates from before this site went live in June 2015. Somewhat surprisingly, the only other metrical version of the Beatitudes I have ever managed to find is by Isaac Watts. That one alas is not suitable for modern use2. In Common Worship Daily Prayer (CWDP) it is canticle 53 but their version only includes eight of the Beatitudes. Some parishes that use them in worship have spontaneously adopted the practice of saying them antiphonally, the leader or one side saying the ‘Blesséd are those that …… ‘ and the congregation or the other side responding with the ‘for they shall be ….’.
My version has always included the ninth Beatitude. In its current form, to suit the rhyme and metre, two of the Beatitudes are in the wrong order. The sequence should be, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on Jesus’s account. In the current version, though, the merciful precede those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Here is the current version.
1. Blest are the poor in spirit for ~ heav'n's kingdom shall be theirs. 2. And blest are those that mourn; they shall ~ know comfort in their tears. 3. Blest are the humble, meek, for to ~ the earth they shall succeed. 5. Blest too shall be the merciful; ~ mercy they’re guaranteed. 4. Blest are they that hunger and thirst ~ for what is just and right; They shall be satisfied, renewed, ~ filled with what gives them might. 6. Blest too the pure in heart for they ~ our blesséd God shall see. 7. And blest the peacemakers; named as ~ God’s children they shall be. 8. Blest are those persecuted for ~ the sake of righteousness: For heaven’s kingdom shall be theirs; ~ they’ll know his blessédness. 9. And blest are you when people curse, ~ oppress, taunt and defame: Tell lies and persecute you for ~ your bearing Jesu’s name: 9b. Rejoice, be glad for your reward ~ is great in heaven’s view, For so did they the prophets treat, ~ who went ahead of you.
This is in Common Metre and the tune provided is Beatitudo by J.B. Dykes (1823-76). That has been used for many hymns, but despite its name, does not appear hitherto have been linked to any version of the Beatitudes. Other suggested tunes include Clifton, Chorus Angelorum and Lloyd.
It occurred to me recently that if one was less rigid about putting each Beatitude wholly in either its own line or its own stanza, it might be possible to sing them in the right order.
Righteousness, Justice or something else
I had been aware for some time that there is a translation issue with one of the Beatitudes. What is it that Jesus exhorts the disciples, and through them, us, to hunger and thirst for? Most English Bibles historically have had some version of “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” . Some translations, though, have some sort of variant of “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice”3 . There is a slight tendency for Protestant translations to be the ones that use ‘righteousness’ and Catholic ones ‘justice’ but this is by no means a universal match. It is possible that the Catholic tendency may derive from the Vulgate version of this verse, “beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam quoniam ipsi saturabuntur”. That is more relevant as evidence for Latin semantics around 400 AD than for what English words actually mean now.
So a first question for you, ‘to you, do ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’ mean the same thing and have the same resonances?’ For me, they do not. Perhaps it’s the retired lawyer in me, but ‘justice’ is a slippery word, a word I am wary of. I cannot help associating it with trials, decisions, demands for compensation and vengeance. Just as anyone who proclaims ‘I know my rights’ invariably doesn’t, lawyers sometimes joke that when a person calls for ‘justice’, what they are usually demanding is an injustice in their favour. That is not just being cynical.
‘Righteousness’, though, is not that brilliant either. It can all too easily acquire a flavour of self-satisfied virtue, a list of the things a person does not do, rather than what they do or who they are. To me, also, ‘hunger and thirst for justice’ feels more like campaigning for a social cause, something communal, public or political, whereas ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’ feels more like trying to achieve something personal, virtue, holiness, sanctity. ‘Righteousness’ in modern English is also more of a specifically ‘religious’ sort of word than ‘justice’.
So my second question for you is ‘Before considering what Jesus is actually saying, for you, which of those, righteousness or justice, do you think is the more worth hungering and thirsting for?’ That is a subjective question for you, before turning to the much more important objective ones this blog is asking, ‘Which of these two English words best conveys what Jesus is saying?’ and ‘What does he mean?’
Δικαιοσύνην4
This is the Greek word which occurs twice in the Beatitudes. In most translations it is rendered as ‘righteousness’ but in some as ‘justice’ or even in other ways5. It is not a rare or obscure word. A bit of research reveals that this word behind ‘righteousness/justice’ can be rendered with either. That is not because it can mean either, but because its meaning in Greek includes aspects of both, justice, fairness, rightness, equity etc. As so often happens in linguistics, neither words nor syntax in one language conveniently map neatly onto the words and syntax in another. Both ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’ mean significantly less than the full meaning or flavour of δικαιοσύνην. It is part of a tribe of words from the same root, found right through classical Greek literature, the Septuagint (LXX) (i.e. the Greek version of the Old Testament), the rest of the New Testament, and down into modern Greek.
The LXX used it to translate an important set of Hebrew words, so that it had come to be linked to peoples’ relationship with God, their conduct before him, their right living and their keeping of the Torah. In contrast to the flavours ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’ have come to have in English, it describes something that is both personal and communal. This is significant because it is prudent to allow for the likelihood that Greek words in the New Testament take something of their meaning and flavour from Greek usage in the LXX rather than classical Greek or koiné Greek as spoken generally across the eastern Mediterranean.
Δικαιοσύνην is behind the word Jesus uses again later in the Sermon on the Mount at Matt 6:33, rendered by the AV/KJV:-
“33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
St Paul uses δικαιοσύνην when he writes about attributed righteousness. When Matt 1:19 describes Joseph as a man who was therefore minded to divorce Mary privately the word there is δίκαιος6 from the same root. Jerome translates that as ‘justus’, and the Authorised Version as ‘just’. When John the Baptist resists Jesus’s submitting to baptism by him, on the entirely understandable grounds that this is the wrong way round, Jesus insists that he go ahead.
"γὰρ πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν πληρῶσαι πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην"
which the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) renders as
"for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
It is all very well for the NRSV to render δικαιοσύνην there as ‘righteousness’, but that is not the normal way either ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’ are used in modern English. Worse, using ‘righteousness’ there makes it difficult to work out what it is that Jesus is saying to John the Baptist. ‘Justice’ would have been even more opaque. The sense in that exchange between them is more that this is ‘fitting’, ‘the right thing to do’, or ‘this is what the kingdom requires’.
The ordinary word Google translate provides for a judge or a magistrate in modern Greek is δικαστής7 which appears to be from the same tribe of words. For δικαιοσύνη, Google translate gives justice, equity, fairness and judicature.
And, of course, just to complicate matters a bit further, it’s very likely that Jesus uttered his original version of the Beatitudes in Aramaic or Hebrew.
If one wants to set righteousness and justice against each other, it is better to conclude that they have different meanings and flavours in English but the concept that the word δικαιοσύνην expresses contains aspects not just of both those words, but a number of similar ideas that are related to each other, something like
‘that which is right, just, good, fitting, a sense of how the kingdom of heaven is’.
Indeed, is it possible to be completely accurate when it comes to rendering what Jesus actually said, or meant into English? The way I have chosen to render these two Beatitudes is.
"4. And blest whoso hungers and thirsts: ~ for what is just and right."
and
"8. Blest are those persecuted: for ~ that which is just and right:"
Merciful and mercy
When I said earlier in this post that there is a translation issue with words Jesus uses in the Beatitudes. I had realised that ‘righteousness’, ‘justice’, δικαιοσύνην is not the only example. There is also potentially a puzzle as to what ‘mercy’ means in “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”. How well does the envelope of meaning ‘mercy’ expresses in English coincides with what Jesus might have been saying?
If there is a mismatch in meaning, it is possible that that one may go back to a mismatch between Greek and Hebrew. The Greek behind this Beatitude is
“μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται.”
Blesséd are the ****, for they will be ****ed.
The underlying word is normally translated into English as ‘mercy’ or forms from it. The Greek word behind it is ἔλεος (eleos), which in classical Greek meant mercy, compassion and pity. It is the word from which the English words eleemosynary and, with more changes over the centuries, alms, derive, the former meaning relating to or dependent on charity, and the latter, of course, money etc given to the poor. If that is simply what Jesus is saying in this Beatitude, ‘mercy’ in English does more or less occupy the same semantic space. If we are merciful to others, God will be merciful to us. That would not be that dissimilar to ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.
It is this word, ἐλέησόν με which forms the ‘have mercy on me’ in the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ and is the word in the prayer Kyrie Eléison, Lord have mercy.
Condescension, downwards, upwards or across.
The meanings Greek-English dictionaries propose for ἔλεος (eleos) are words such as, ‘mercy’, ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’. As with the link to charity and the giving of alms, ‘mercy’ is something which a person asks of God or a social superior. Mercy in that sense is something that goes downwards, condescension. It also can have a discretionary flavour. Just as it is up to the prominent citizen whether to be merciful or not, and he or she is free not to be, in the same way it is up to God whether he decides to extend his mercy or not8. It is not something that humans give to God or equals normally give each other. Just about the only contexts in which a person can be merciful to God, is where a little girl is playing the part of Mary caring for Jesus in a nativity play, or in the classic portrayals of the Deposition from the Cross.
It is unequivocally right that Jesus calls us to be merciful towards those who are disadvantaged, are weaker than we are, or those to whom we might be tempted otherwise to feel superior. A look at the LXX, though, does raise a query whether that is all what Jesus means in this Beatitude.
Mercy and Ḥesed
Were one translating classical Greek, ‘mercy’ would usually be an appropriate rendering of ἔλεος (eleos). When it comes to the LXX, it may not be.
” 1. eleos and its derivatives are found nearly 400 times in the LXX. It normally represents ḥeseḏ; only 6 times raḥᵃmı̂m. The vb. normally represents ḥānan (Grace), but also rāḥam; eleēmosynē renders ṣᵉḏāqâh.
2 These Heb. concepts betray a completely different background of thought from the predominantly psychological one in Gk. They are based on legal concepts. Hence, we have to interpret the LXX translation from the standpoint of the Heb. original, and not the other way round. Philo is the first Jewish writer in whom a penetration of the Gk. concepts is observable in our word-group.
(a) ḥeseḏ means proper covenant behaviour, the solidarity which the partners in the covenant owe one another (Covenant). The covenant may be between equals, or it may be made by one who is stronger than his partner in it. In either case it may result in one giving help to the other in his need. So the connotations of eleos meaning ḥeseḏ may stretch from loyalty to a covenant to kindliness, mercy, pity. …..”
From the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT), Vol 2 p 594
Many bible translations have used ‘mercy’ to translate ḥesed. In the Authorised Version (AV/KJV) the repetitions in Psalms 118 and 136 are “his mercy endureth for ever”. The CWDP psalter follows that with “his mercy endures for ever”. The word behind that, though, is unequivocally ḥesed. Both the NRSV and its predecessor, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) render the repetitions as “his steadfast love endures for ever.” Ḥesed is not what ‘mercy’ usually means in English. Yes, when God loves us with his steadfast love, we are receiving something from a superior, a love which has a quality and depth greater than we can give in return. But ḥesed is still what we are called to give him in return so far as we are able and is what we are called to give each other. Nor, unlike ‘mercy’ does it have a sense of being conferred by discretion. It is something that is part of God’s nature, his personality, how he is. It contains a very strong element of covenant and commitment. As such, it is fundamentally and of its essence something that we are called to emulate. I would suggest that it is a similar understanding of love, even though there it is agape, that underlies what St Paul is talking about at Eph 5:25,
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ….”
The profound question with this Beatitude, is this. When Jesus says ‘mercy’ and ‘merciful’ does he mean it in the familiar sense, the way we hear it, with its Greek and English meaning, or does he mean it as the Greek for ḥesed, in which case the meaning would be more like, “Blessed are those who love with steadfast love, for they will receive steadfast love”? And, from that, when ‘mercy’ appears elsewhere in the New Testament, does it mean ‘mercy’ or the Greek for ḥesed?
Eleos and Elaion
For many centuries there has been a belief, a linguistic legend, as far as I know never proven and never proven to be wrong, that it is not just the coincidence that they sound similar, but that there is a common derivation that links ἔλεος (eleos), ‘mercy’ and the cluster of words ἔλαιον (elaion), olive oil9, ἐλαία (elaia), olive tree/olive etc. Olives, and especially their oil, have enormous resonances both in Jewish culture and in the Christian Mediterranean, from biblical times down until the present, more so than on the north-western European seaboard where they do not grow. They are an essential for even the minimum of civilised life. Oil is for so many things, cooking, the fuel for lamps, as in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, healing for wounds, cosmetic freshening of the face, preparation of the body for physical combat, the anointing of kings and priests, and throughout a symbol of blessing, joy, favour and abundance.
Ps 133 A: 1-2 from this collection
1. How vast must their advantage be! ~ how great their pleasure prove!
Who live like brethren, and consent ~ in offices of love!
2. True love is like that precious oil, ~ which, poured on Aaron’s head,
Ran down his beard, and o’er his robes ~ its costly moisture shed.
and Ps 23 A: 5
5. My table thou hast furnishëd ~ in presence of my foes;
My head thou dost with oil anoint, ~ and my cup overflows.
If the link between oil and mercy is linguistically valid, or even if it is merely widely believed, that would suggest that even in New Testament Greek, mercy is rather more than its flavour in English.
Other possible ways of rendering eleos/’mercy’
In the current version, this Beatitude has been.
"Blest too shall be the merciful, ~ mercy they’re guaranteed."
It has been quite difficult deciding whether uncontroversially to stick with the familiar ‘merciful’ and ‘mercy’ or whether, so far as might be possible within the demands of scansion and rhyme to introduce at least some reference to ‘steadfast love’ which is the phrase this collection normally uses for ḥesed in the Psalms and Old Testament canticles. This,
5. Blest those who loves with steadfast love ~ such love they will receive.
would scan and fit the metre. However, because mercy is so much a part of the familiar version of this Beatitude, I felt it would be unrecognisable without it. I tried a number of alternatives before finally settling on,
5. Blest those whose mercy is steadfast: ~ such mercy they’ll receive.
At one point, I even considered whether to give you an insight into the creative process by listing some of the other versions that did not make it, but thought better of it.
Blesséd/Makarios
The most surprising thing, bearing in mind that the Beatitudes are so called, is that the Greek word Μακάριοι (Makárioi) is not a form of the usual word for blessing, which is εὐλογέω (eulogeō) in various forms, found throughout the LXX where it is the normal Greek translation of the Hebrew root, bāraḵ. Rather than ‘blessed’ in the sense of ‘conferring a blessing’ as at the end of a Sunday Service or of the couple at a wedding, it means more ‘happy are those …. ‘, ‘this is what is good and will make you better’ rather than ‘if you do these things, Jesus will bless you’ or ‘you will receive his blessing and approval’.
This is from the Tyndale Commentary on these verses,
“Blessed’ is a misleading translation of makarios, which does not denote one whom God blesses (which would be eulogētos, reflecting Heb. bārûk), but represents the Hebrew ʾašrê, ‘fortunate’, and is used, like ʾašrê, almost entirely in the formal setting of a beatitude. It introduces someone who is to be congratulated, someone whose place in life is an enviable one. ‘Happy’ is better than ‘blessed’, but only if used not of a mental state but of a condition of life. ‘Fortunate’ or ‘well off’ is less ambiguous. It is not a psychological description, but a recommendation. The beatitudes thus outline the attitudes of the true disciple, the one who has accepted the demands of God’s kingdom, in contrast with the attitudes of the ‘man of the world’; and they present this as the best way of life not only in its intrinsic goodness but in its results. The rewards of discipleship are therefore spelt out in the second half of each verse. … “
A few Bible translations with a commendable desire to get away from an assumption that is misleading do indeed choose other words to introduce each Beatitude. The Good News Bible, the Bible in Basic English and the Common English Bible, for example, have ‘Happy are …’. For this version, I have stayed with ‘Blest’ for no better reason than that it is one syllable rather than two.
Peacemakers
There is no authority for this statement but it is more likely that the ‘peacemakers’ in v 9 is aimed more at those who make peace in the domestic and neighbourhood sphere, who bring together bickering family members, church disputes, rows about fences etc. rather than a commendation of the relatively few people in the world who genuinely get any opportunity to make peace between nations. It is clear from the opening of the Sermon on the Mount that these are not words addressed to the multitude. Jesus has temporarily taken the disciples aside from public ministry to give them teaching up on a hill where it is quieter and more intimate.
“5,1 (NRSV) When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: …
The rest of the Beatitudes do not appear to be aimed primarily at holding up the remote and distantly worthy to our admiration. They appear to be an injunction to each Christian as to how to behave, what makes him, her – or you – ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’.
The new version
This is the final version of this canticle, which, for now, is the form it will take when Book 6 is next updated. It will be linked with the same tune as before, Beatitudo, with the same suggested possible alternatives.
1. Blest are the poor in spirit: for ~ heav'n's kingdom shall be theirs:
2. And blest are those that mourn; they shall ~ know comfort in their tears.
3. Blest are the meek: for they’ll be heirs ~ to the earth, heaven’s delight.
4. And blest whoso hungers and thirsts: ~ for what is just and right.
They shall be filled and satisfied ~ more than they can conceive.
5. Blest those whose mercy is steadfast: ~ such mercy they’ll receive.
6. Blest are the pure in heart: for they ~ shall see God, unashamed:
7. And blest the peacemakers: for as ~ God’s children they’ll be named.
8. Blest are those persecuted: for ~ that which is just and right:
For heaven’s kingdom shall be theirs: ~ they’ll know his blessédness.
9. And blest are you when people curse, ~ oppress, taunt and defame:
Tell lies and persecute you for ~ your bearing Jesu’s name:
9b. Rejoice, be glad for your reward ~ is great in heaven’s view:
For so did they the prophets treat, ~ who went ahead of you.
Worship
“O Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”
These are the opening words of a very familiar hymn by the Revd John Monsell, normally, despite what hymnary.org implies, sung to the tune Was Lebet Was Schwebet. That line echoes the AV version of Ps 96:9. “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.”
In February 2020, just before the pandemic reached these shores, I wrote a piece in our churches’ newsletter on worship, what we are doing when we worship God individually and, more importantly, together. Somebody recently suggested that I include this in the blog. This is not the exact text of that piece. I have updated it, added a few extras and adapted it where it is too closely tied into the cultures of the two ecclesiastical households for which I wrote it.
Worship is a key part of our calling. It is something that is built into how we are created. It is what we are made to do. In my childhood, every Sunday morning the service contained,
“O come let us sing unto the LORD: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and shew (sic) ourselves glad in him with psalms.”
and later on
“O come let us worship and fall down: and kneel before the LORD our maker. “
These are verses from the Venite, Psalm 95, in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer prose or chanting version.
Yet worship is something that is no longer instinctive. It does not come naturally to many C21 people. Some ‘get it’. Many do not.
Even the statement one hears that loving one’s neighbour and doing good deeds are a part of how we worship, profound though it can be, is often in stead expressing either a bewilderment about worshipping in its more traditional and direct sense or is an excuse for not really making the attempt.
An L or an inverted T, a ⟘
From what people say to me it’s clear that many people have a problem with how to worship, what it is about.
You may find it helpful to visualise this as an L or an inverted T, a ⟘. There is what goes up. There is what comes down. There is what goes across. So,
- Prayers, praise, thanksgiving, hymns, go up.
- The readings and sermon come down.
- What we share goes across.
Reflection, though, quickly reveals that much of what we do turns out to involve more than one arm of the ⟘. The prayers we pray and the psalms and hymns we sing go up, but the very fact that we worship together, sometimes even singing in parts, and not just on our own, goes across. Many hymns express profound truths. They include something that comes down. Furthermore, even when it comes to praise, thanksgiving and prayer which one might naturally think of as being what goes up, this is often a response to what has come down, or even what we aspire for or have received ‘across’. So
- praise is about God, who he is, us responding to his identity. So that really is predominantly about the upward arm of the ⟘,
- thanksgiving, though, is our upward response to what has already come down, and
- prayer often contains intercession for our brothers, sisters, neighbours, the world around us, so that much of it is about our desire to send the bottom, i.e. the across, arm of the ⟘ upwards.
The bread and the wine
It is easy and straightforward to think of Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the Breaking of Bread Service, the Mass, the Holy Liturgy, the Holy Qurbana or whatever term your ecclesiastical household uses predominately as something that comes down. Wherever that household stands on the question what is happening at the event and however we understand it, in the bread and the wine, in some way, we receive the body and blood of Christ.
Yet, we break bread together. That goes across. If your practice includes the peace, that is also clearly something that goes across, yet what we are saying by it, to each other and to God is something that we offer him, something that goes up.
At the core of Holy Communion is thanksgiving. From my own household’s usage, but I would imagine something similar may well be part of yours, the command is
“Eat and drink in remembrance that he died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.”
What is more, thanksgiving is what Eucharist means in Greek, and thanks is something that goes up.
Finally, the adverts – an apology
I hope you realise that as a mere user of wordpress, I have absolutely no control over the advertisements you see. I have no influence on them. I do not even know whether you all see the same ones, whether you see the same ones as I get sent or completely different ones, whether some algorithm sends different advertisements to each visitor to this site, or how or by whom or by what they are selected. The only advice I can offer is to avert your eyes from them and not click on them. The only other thing I can do is to apologise for them.
- They get their name from the Latin word ‘Beati’ (Blessed) which opens each of them in the Vulgate ↩︎
- Because of changes in language it includes a stanza which would now cause raucous amusement if used unamended
“Blessed are the men whose bowels move, ~ And melt with sympathy and love.
From Christ the Lord they will obtain ~ Like sympathy and love again.” ↩︎ - e.g. New Catholic Bible (NCB) “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will have their fill.”
New Living Translation (NLT) “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.” ↩︎ - Transcribed dikaiosunēn or pronounced thikayoseenin? ↩︎
- The Revised English Bible (REB) has “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail; they shall be satisfied”. ↩︎
- Transcribed dikaios or pronounced theekayos. ↩︎
- Transcribed dikastēs or pronounced thikastees. It is wise, though, to be cautious with using Modern Greek as evidence for what words in either the LXX or the New Testament might have originally meant. Greece has been Christian since the age of the Fathers and knows and uses the LXX and New Testament as the scriptures. So the original texts have continued to influence and interact with normal speech and language ever since. ↩︎
- Rather as Esther does not know whether or not Ahasuerus will extend the golden sceptre to her or not. (Esther 5:2) ↩︎
- Modern Greek, courtesy of Google translate, ελαιόλαδο ↩︎
Psalms And Psimilar 