This coming weekend is the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel is the beginning of Matthew’s well known “Sermon on the Mount.” In yesterday’s post we covered the nature and alternative outlines of the Sermon. Today we go a little deeper into the nature of the first part of the Sermon known as the Beatitudes.

Internal Structure  – Altogether there are nine beatitudes in 5:3–12, the ninth (5:11–12) is really an expansion of the eighth (5:10). Some scholars opt for a structure with three sets of three, the first eight exhibit such a tightly knit parallel structure that it is more likely that we should understand them as two sets of four. This is most consistent with Hebraic poetry forms which seem to be the literary background of the Beatitudes. Still there is an internal consistency within each “stanza/verse” as seen in the form of each pronouncement:

Blessed are they who… (a quality/activity in the present tense)
for they will be…. (a verb in the future; except vv. 3 and 10)

This form is repeated each time with minor variations.  The first and last beatitude have the same ending: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Image credit: Cosimo Rosselli |Sermone della Montagna, 1481, Sistine Chapel, Public Domain