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 drilled deep into the nature of the first part of the Sermon known as the Beatitudes. In today’s post we consider the first stanza of the the beatitudes (vv.3-6)

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. ⁵ Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. ⁶ Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. 

Powell states: “All four of the beatitudes in the first stanza may reasonably be interpreted as promising eschatological reversals to those who are unfortunate, and some of the beatitudes in this stanza can be reasonably interpreted only in this way” (122). With this approach, these are not virtues that one should aspire to, but they are circumstances in which people find themselves. 

Poor in spirit. The word ptochoi (poor) is used to translate Hebrew ʿănāwîm in the LXX, the dispossessed and abandoned ones in Israel. The phrase alludes to an Old Testament theme which underlies all the beatitudes, that of the ‘poor’ or ‘meek’ (‘ānî or ‘ānāw) who occur frequently in the Psalms and elsewhere (Isa. 61:1–2, alluded to in v. 4, and Ps. 37, alluded to in v. 5), those who humbly trust God, even though their loyalty results in oppression and material disadvantage, in contrast with the ‘wicked’ who arrogantly set themselves up against God and persecute his people. The emphasis is on piety and suffering, and on dependence on God, not on material poverty as such.