Commentary on the Teachings of Rabbi Yeshua VIII - Mt. 5:6, 7, 8

The Beatitudes in verses six and seven are not present in any of the nine mss. of Shem Tob's Hebrew Matthew examined by Professor Howard. In the Greek tradition, they read as follows:

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.


Verse six has a weak parallel in Luke 6:21: Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Verse seven is not paralleled in Luke at all.

If these sayings were added late to Matthew, then verse six must be the older of the two, because Luke does not seem to have been aware of verse seven at all. Verse seven is one of my favorites, and it seems too important to ignore.

Luke has reduced verse seven to something that sounds more like a campaign promise than a spiritual teaching. To go back to our earlier criterion, "righteousness" (צדקה) is a personal virtue; "hunger" is not.

אַשְׁרֵי זַכִי הַלֵב וְהֵמָה יִרְאוּ אֲלֹקִים׃

The above is the Shem-Tob Hebrew version of verse eight. It reads, "Happy are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."

This saying is probably a relatively late one, as it was not picked up by Luke. There is not much to say about it, but there is a great deal to say about the verses that follow.

Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.