Matthew 5 · Passage · Meekness
Blessed Are the Meek
Jesus promised in the Sermon on the Mount that the meek will inherit the earth, in the words of Psalm 37.
Before Psalm 37 promises the land to the meek, it tells its reader three times not to fret over those who do evil.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
- The passage
- Matthew 5:5, Psalm 37:11
- Books
- Matthew, Psalms
- Hold in memory
- Matthew 5:5
Summary
Psalm 37 counsels a reader who envies the wicked when they prosper. It tells him to trust the LORD, to wait for Him and to give up his anger, because the evildoers will be cut off and the meek will inherit the land. Jesus spoke that promise over His disciples as a blessing, so the meekness He blessed is the trust that waits for God to right a wrong.
- Matthew's Greek takes its words for the meek, for inheriting and for the earth from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the psalm.
- The Berean text reads the land in the psalm and the earth in the beatitude, and both the Hebrew erets and the Greek ge can mean a land or the whole earth.
- Psalm 37 promises the land five times, always to people who belong to the LORD and always beside the end of the wicked.
- Teachers have read the earth of the promise as this earth, as the heavenly Jerusalem, and as the land of Judea standing for the kingdom of God.
The Third Beatitude
The beatitude stands third of the eight blessings in Matthew 5:3 to 10, after the poor in spirit and those who mourn.
Meekness is the gentleness that bears a wrong without striking back and leaves the answer to God. Every believer who is wronged meets the choice it names, whether to take up his own cause or to leave it with the LORD, and the third beatitude attaches a promise to the second choice.
This study asks what Jesus promised the meek and what the psalm He quoted meant by its promise. It gives the reader the Hebrew and Greek words of the promise, the counsel of the psalm around it, and the verses that test each reading of the earth the meek will inherit.
When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain and sat down. His disciples came to Him, and He began to teach them, saying:Matthew sets the blessings on the mountain where Jesus sat down and began to teach the disciples who came to Him, so the promise was first spoken to them.
Each blessing names a people and gives a reason that begins with for, and this one gives the meek an inheritance.
In Matthew's Greek the line reads makarioi hoi praeis, hoti autoi kleronomesousin ten gen. The verb kleronomesousin is a future, which the tagged Greek text glosses will inherit, so the inheritance lies ahead of the people Jesus blesses.
One Promise in Three Texts
The Septuagint numbers the psalm 36, one less than the Hebrew Bible, and its line stands in the middle column of the table.
Matthew opens the line with a blessing and gives the promise as its reason, where the Hebrew psalm joins it to verse 10 and the Greek psalm sets it against the wicked.
| The question | Psalm 37:11, Hebrew | Psalm 36:11, Septuagint Greek | Matthew 5:5, Greek |
|---|---|---|---|
| How does the line open? | va-, and, joining the line to verse 10 | hoi de, but | makarioi, blessed are |
| Who receives the promise? | anavim, the humble | praeis, the meek | hoi praeis, the meek |
| What will they do? | yireshu, they will possess | kleronomesousi, they will inherit | hoti autoi kleronomesousin, for they will inherit |
| What will they receive? | erets, the land | gen, the earth in Brenton's English translation | ten gen, the earth |
| What follows the promise? | ve-hitanegu al-ro shalom, and they will take delight in abundance of well-being | kai katatruphesousin epi plethei eirenes, and shall delight [themselves] in the abundance of peace | the next blessing, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6) |
The Hebrew noun erets is also the word of Genesis 1:1, where "God created the heavens and the earth". The STEP Bible lexicon gives erets as the earth at large or a land. It gives the Greek ge as soil, a region or the whole globe, so each noun holds both the narrow sense and the wide one.
The Psalm Jesus Quoted
An acrostic psalm of forty verses sets the end of the wicked against the inheritance of those who trust the LORD.
Do not fret over those who do evil; do not envy those who do wrong.The opening line names the temptation the whole psalm answers, the envy a believer feels when evildoers prosper.
Against that envy the psalm sets its commands "Trust in the LORD and do good", "Delight yourself in the LORD" and "Commit your way to the LORD" (Psalm 37:3 to 5).
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men prosper in their ways, when they carry out wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and abandon wrath; do not fret—it can only bring harm.Stillness before the LORD and the giving up of anger are the conduct the psalm calls meek three verses later.
But the meek will inherit the land and delight in abundant prosperity.This is the line Jesus took up, and in the psalm it answers verse 10, where "the wicked will be no more".
Verse 11 returns to verse 4, for the Hebrew verb of delight is the same in both. The meek are given at the end the delight the psalm told them to seek in the LORD.
The Hebrew psalm is an acrostic. Its stanzas begin with the letters of the alphabet in order, aleph at verse 1, bet at verse 3 and gimel at verse 5. The promise to the meek stands in the stanza of vav, the sixth letter, at verses 10 and 11.
The heirs of the land in Psalm 37 are those who hope in the LORD, the meek, those He blesses, the righteous and the one who waits for the LORD.
| Verse | Who will inherit the land | The word on the wicked beside it |
|---|---|---|
| Psalm 37:9 | those who hope in the LORD | the evildoers will be cut off (Psalm 37:9) |
| Psalm 37:11 | the meek | the wicked will be no more (Psalm 37:10) |
| Psalm 37:22 | those He blesses | the cursed will be destroyed (Psalm 37:22) |
| Psalm 37:29 | the righteous, who will dwell in it forever | the offspring of the wicked will be cut off (Psalm 37:28) |
| Psalm 37:34 | the one who waits for the LORD and keeps His way | when the wicked are cut off, you will see it (Psalm 37:34) |
The psalm gives the sword to the wicked, who have drawn it "to bring down the poor and needy," and it says that "their swords will pierce their own hearts" (Psalm 37:14 to 15). The people who inherit the land receive it by waiting for the LORD to act.
The Meek and the Heirs
The Hebrew word anav names those who wait for the LORD, and the Greek translation gives the promise the verb of an heir.
Anav also names the poor, and its neighbour ani names the poor whom the wicked attack in Psalm 37:14.
Anav is the Hebrew word behind humility as well, and the humility family's word study of anavah and tapeinophrosyne traces its senses of the humble and the poor. The Greek words for the meek and the gentle are set out in the word study of meekness.
The Hebrew verb of the promise is yarash, which the lexicon gives as to occupy by driving out the former tenants and possessing in their place. It is the verb of the command in Deuteronomy 1:8, "Enter and possess the land that the LORD swore He would give to your fathers."
The Septuagint renders yarash in the promise to the meek with kleronomeo, which the lexicon gives as to be an heir, and Matthew keeps the heir's verb. In the beatitude the meek receive the earth as heirs receive an estate, by the gift of another.
How Teachers Have Read the Promise
An early church manual and a nineteenth-century commentary apply the psalm's promise to every believer.
died 100 · Didache
The manual turns the beatitude into a command to be meek and keeps the promise as the reason for it.
“But be thou meek, since the meek shall inherit the earth. Be long-suffering and pitiful and guileless and gentle and good and always trembling at the words which thou hast heard. Thou shalt not exalt thyself, nor give over-confidence to thy soul. Thy soul shall not be joined with lofty ones, but with just and lowly ones shall it have its intercourse. The workings that befall thee receive as good, knowing that apart from God nothing cometh to pass.”
Didache · The Didache, Chapter 3 · on Psalm 37:11Patristic
1834 to 1892 · Charles Spurgeon
The commentary reads the land as the privileges of the covenant and sets the peace of verse 11 above gold.
“But the meek shall inherit the earth. Above all others they shall enjoy life. Even if they suffer, their consolations shall overtop their tribulations. By inheriting the land is meant obtaining covenant privileges and the salvation of God. Such as are truly humble shall take their lot with the rest of the heirs of grace, to whom all good things come by a sacred birthright. And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Peace they love and peace they shall have. If they find not abundance of gold, abundance of peace will serve their turn far better.”
Charles Spurgeon · The Treasury of David, Vol. 2 · on Psalm 37:11
What the Meek Will Inherit
Chrysostom, Augustine and Adam Clarke disagree on whether the earth of the promise is this world, the heavenly city or the land of Israel.
This earth, with spiritual goods beside itJohn Chrysostom; Theophylact of Ohrid
John Chrysostom, in Homily 15 on Matthew, set aside a figurative earth, for "nowhere in Scripture do we find any mention of an earth that is merely figurative". He said of Jesus, "He holds out a sensible prize", and he held that Christ mingled such rewards with spiritual ones. Theophylact of Ohrid, in his Commentary on Matthew, wrote of the earth, "understand it to mean this earth as well."
The objection: in the same sermon Jesus tells the persecuted, "great is your reward in heaven" (Matthew 5:12), so some rewards of the blessings lie in heaven.
The heavenly landAugustine of Hippo
Augustine, in his Exposition on Psalm 37, read the land as "the holy Jerusalem, which is to be released from these her pilgrimages, and to live for ever with God, and on God."
The objection: the psalm tells its reader to "dwell in the land" now (Psalm 37:3) and promises that the righteous will "dwell in it forever" (Psalm 37:29), with the same Hebrew noun in both verses.
The land of Judea as a type of the kingdomAdam Clarke
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, read the meek of the psalm as "the afflicted, the poor Jewish captives". He read its land as "the land of Judea given by God himself as an inheritance to their fathers". On Matthew 5:5 he wrote that "Canaan was a type of the kingdom of God", so that the beatitude points through the land to the spiritual good of the gospel.
The objection: a few lines later in the sermon the same Greek noun names the whole world. Jesus says "You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13) and "until heaven and earth pass away" (Matthew 5:18).
The wider question of what all the blessings of Matthew 5 promise, and when they are fulfilled, is argued on What Are the Beatitudes For? The land the psalm first promised, with its borders and its history, is taught on The Land of Israel.
Those Who Take Refuge in Him
The psalm's last two verses answer its first, for the envy of verse 1 gives way to the salvation the LORD gives the righteous.
The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps and delivers them; He rescues and saves them from the wicked, because they take refuge in Him.The psalm ends on the LORD's rescue of those who take refuge in Him, which is the ground of every promise it makes to the meek.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG, the brief lexicons (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0), entries h6035, h6041, h3423, h776, g2816, g1093 and g4235.
- The Septuagint, Psalm 36:11 (Psalm 37:11 in the Hebrew numbering), the Greek text with Brenton's English translation beside it.
- The Didache, chapter 3.
- Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, volume 2, on Psalm 37:11.
- John Chrysostom, Homily 15 on the Gospel of Matthew, on Matthew 5:5.
- Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 5:5.
- Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 37, on verse 11.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, on Psalm 37:11 and Matthew 5:5.