Matthew 5:5

Matthew 5:5 depicted in the window of a Trittenheim church

Matthew 5:5 is the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It is the third verse of the Sermon on the Mount, and also third of what are known as the Beatitudes.

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth.

The World English Bible translates the passage as:

Blessed are the gentle,
for they shall inherit the earth.

This well known verse is perhaps the most famous of the Beatitudes. Unlike the previous two, however, this one has no parallel in Luke's Sermon on the Plain. Luke's Sermon contains four Beatitudes and four Woes. There is considerable debate over whether this Beatitude was in Q, and Luke left it out, or if it is an original addition by the author of Matthew.[1] Gundry's theory is that the author of Matthew wanted to remove the woes for later use against the Pharisees in Matthew 23, however he wanted to keep the same eightfold structure and thus needed to create four new sayings. He sees this verse as essentially just a rephrasing of Matthew 5:3, this same wording is also found at Psalm 37:11. Meek and poor, which can also be translated as humble, mean essentially the same thing.[2] Schweizer feels meek should be understood as meaning powerless.[3]

The phrase "inherit the earth" is also similar to "theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" in Matthew 5:3. Schweizer notes that two terms reflect the two different views of the end times current when Matthew was writing. One view was that the end of the world would see all the believers brought up to join the Kingdom of Heaven. The other view was that the end times would have God come down to directly rule Earth, and the chosen people would then be given dominion over the entire world.[3] Hill does not see the two verses referring to different things. He does not feel that word "earth" means the physical world. Rather he notes that Deuteronomy 4:1 and 16:20 both use the word inherit to refer to the Israelites taking possession of the Holy Land. Hill feels that earth, which can also be translated as land, is an allusion to the new Holy Land, which might not be on Earth.[4] A refined meaning of this phrase has been seen to say that those that are quiet or nullified will one day inherit the world.

Meek in the Greek literature of the period most often mean gentle or soft. Nolland writes that a more accurate interpretation for this verse is powerless[5] Clarke notes how important and revolutionary this elevation of meekness was in the Mediterranean's societies of the time that placed enormous stock in honour and status.[6] This verse has been much praised, even by some non-Christians such as Mahatma Gandhi. Some have seen it less favourably. Baron d'Holbach felt that this verse, and those around it, reflected the interests of Christians when they were a small and powerless sect. He felt that whenever Christians gained power these views were inevitably abandoned. Friedrich Nietzsche was harshly critical over this verse, which to him embodied the "slave morality" of Jesus. It has also been criticized by James Joyce, William Blake, and Theodore Dreiser who all rejected a life without striving.[7]

Cultural uses

As one of the most famous of Beatitudes, the meek shall inherit the earth has appeared many times in works of art and popular culture:


References

  1. ↑ Boring, Eugene "Gospel of Matthew." The New Interpreter's Bible, volume 8 Abingdon, 1995 pg. 176
  2. ↑ Gundry, Robert H. Matthew a Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.
  3. 1 2 Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975
  4. ↑ Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981
  5. ↑ Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: a commentary on the Greek text. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005 pg. 201
  6. ↑ Clarke, Howard W. The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
  7. ↑ Davids, Peter H. "Meek Shall Inherit the Earth." A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. David Lyle Jeffrey, general editor. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.

External links

Preceded by
Matthew 5:4		 Gospel of Matthew
Chapter 5 		Succeeded by
Matthew 5:6
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