What Did Jesus Teach in the Beatitudes?

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. -Matthew 28:19-20

This is the thirteenth part of my series on what Yeshua (Jesus) taught his Jewish disciples to teach the newly minted Gentile disciples to obey. We are coming to the end of the material I was able to glean from Matthew's Gospel on Yeshua's teachings. Before proceeding, let's review a summary of my previous blog post, Part 4 of What Did Jesus Teach About the Torah:

In a nutshell, we learn that the Yoke of the Messiah's Torah is light when we realize that obedience to Torah starts with faith and grace. Everything we do to obey God out of our faith and devotion, when we love God with all our might and we love our neighbor as ourselves, will yield much good fruit and contains all of the teachings in the Torah.

I must admit, I've been avoiding the Beatitudes. What does one say about Yeshua's teachings in the Beatitudes? What do these teachings mean? Are you really "blessed" if you're in mourning, if you're meek, or if you're "persecuted because of righteousness"?

Let's take a look at the Beatitudes, as recorded in Matthew 5:

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. -Matthew 5:1-12

Yeshua seems to be saying in a nutshell, "Don't worry if your life is bad now for my sake because it'll be great in the Kingdom of Heaven." This is similar to what we find in James 1:2: Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds. There's also a parallel in the following:

Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted. -Habakkuk:1:3-4

Is Yeshua just giving the troops a "pep talk" so that they (and we) will put up with the various injustices in the world until Messiah's return?

In trying to research the Beatitudes, I came across a couple of excerpts from Derek Leman's new book, Yeshua in Context where he addresses this topic. Leman points out something that had never really occurred to me before:

Another scholar famous for his work on the Sermon on the Mount is Hans Dieter Betz. He suggests, as do others, that the Sermon on the Mount is not to be thought of as the exact address or outline Yeshua used on one occasion when speaking. A number of factors give evidence that the Sermon on the Mount is an ancient summary of the many things Yeshua taught, compiled by someone after Yeshua’s time (Essays on the Sermon on the Mount). For one thing, there is the fact that the Sermon on the Mount is very similar to Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Yet comparison of the two stories shows that they are not the same event. And differences between the two show that Yeshua spoke about certain topics repeatedly.

In other words, you can make a pretty good case that the Sermon on the Mount is a sort of summation of the life message of Yeshua prepared after him by his disciples.

And the Beatitudes occupy a very important place in the Sermon on the Mount. They introduce the essential message of Yeshua. They are the epitome of what he stood for.
Quoted from Origin of the Sermon on the Mount

In reading this quote, I imagined Yeshua as a traveling Rabbi, trying to spread a specific message to the Jewish people throughout the Land of Israel (and beyond). If he wanted to present the same teaching to a large number of people, he would likely present (more or less) the same message at different times and at different venues. This is no different than a person today going on a promotional speaking tour or an author visiting different cities on a book signing tour, trying to attract the attention of a large number of people to a specific work or lesson.

Leman's take on the Beatitudes, as quoted from Beatitudes as a Sad Reality, describes Yeshua's central message as not one of happiness and joy (wiktionary.org defines beatitude as a "supreme, utmost bliss and happiness") but of sadness. This isn't to be confused with despair, but functions more as a "reality check". God didn't "promise us a rose garden" in this life and our work for the Kingdom in this world will have its share of hardships. Only at the end, when God rules, will our sufferings be rewarded. I said something similar in one of my blog posts on Yeshua's teachings about following Jesus and it certainly is important to realize that God won't make life easier for us than for unbelievers, just because we are Yeshua's disciples. In fact, I suspect quite the opposite.

Remember Yeshua's audience. They were a group of, for the most part, common men and women of the Land. Today, we'd call them blue collar workers, laborers, "Joe the Plumber", or "the average guy". These were Jews who lived and labored in a nation held by military occupation. Rome was a brutal task master, and to make things worse, like in many other military occupations, the Roman governors had put their own people in key positions of authority, including Jewish religious authority, in order to control the masses and to keep them down.

The other part to remember is that, once people started to realize that Yeshua was the Messiah, they'd expect him to kick the Romans out and restore self-rule of the Jews to Israel immediately (see an example of this in Acts 1:6-8). He knew they'd be crushed when, instead of witnessing him ascending to the throne of Israel, they saw him die a horrible, torturous death on the Roman execution stake, as if he were nothing more than a thief or a terrorist. Even after he was resurrected, he would ascend into Heaven 40 days later. While the Spirit would be sent as a comforter, the people would also need Yeshua's words of encouragement to hang on to as they lived through the long years, as they lived through the destruction of the Temple, and as they lived through losing their nation.

We need that encouragement, too. In the almost 20 centuries that have passed since these events occurred, the Messiah has yet to return. Many, many hard things have happened and many more are likely to come. We need to hang on through the hardships, even though it is very difficult sometimes.

The word "Beatitudes" is taken from Latin "beatus", meaning "blessed" or "happy", but I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't substitute the word "Praiseworthy" instead. Consider these examples I found at mitzva.org:

Praise G-d, Praiseworthy is the man who fears G-d, who greatly desires His mitzvos.
Tehillim 112:1

Praiseworthy is the one who merits completing the mitzvos. He causes man to complete his spirit and soul in this world and the world to Come.
Zohar, Terumah

Praiseworthy is the man who fulfills the mitzvos and knows her secrets.
Zohar II, 218b

Praiseworthy is the person who obeys Your mitzvos and takes to his heart Your teaching and Your word.
Morning Prayer before Shema

The term "blessed" always seemed a little abstract for me. I tend to be a linear thinker and rather concrete in my conceptualizations (I can get past these limitations, but it takes work). If "blessed" doesn't make a connection for me, "praiseworthy" or "worthy of praise" is easier to grasp. Imagine Yeshua saying something like:

You are praiseworthy if you are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
You are praiseworthy if you are in mourning and you will be comforted.
You are praiseworthy if you have been broken, feel dejected, and are treated as if you are unimportant, to paraphrase Leman's commentary on the Beatitudes from his book.

Conclusion: What do we learn from the collection of Yeshua's teachings we commonly refer to as "the Beatitudes"?

1. We learn that there will continue to be suffering, sorrow, pain, and despair in the current world for disciples of the Master who are working for the Kingdom.
2. We learn that, once the Messiah returns and God rules the world, there will be great rewards for those who have fought the good fight, those who have finished the race, and those who have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
3. We learn, through Leman's interpretation and as we apply Matthew 28:18-20, that this teaching is a central message the Master intended to be passed on to his Jewish disciples, to the people of Israel, and to all of us who labor and struggle for the sake of righteousness.

In a nutshell, Yeshua teaches us to hang on, to keep the faith, to persevere in the face of hardship, for although life in this world now is hard and we suffer, great is our reward in the Kingdom if we stay the course and complete the race. Praiseworthy is the person who obeys Your mitzvos and takes to his heart Your teaching and Your word.

My next blog post will be the final one in this series presenting the teachings of Yeshua that are to be learned and obeyed by both the Jewish and Gentile disciples, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. After that, there will be one last post to try and summarize the conclusions of this series and hopefully, by God's wisdom and grace, bring all of us, me especially, to a better understanding of how we Gentile disciples of the Messiah are to live our lives and obey his commandments.