The Confusing Sayings: Matthew 5:4
Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
This article is part of a series explaining Jesus’s Confusing Sayings.
If any of Jesus’s verse’s are confusing for you, let me know in a comment and I may analyze its Greek in a future article.
In this article, we look at a verse that no one finds confusing in English translation. Matthew 5:4 is the second Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount (but the third in the Latin Vulgate). It follows the verse about the poor in spirit and the kingdom of heaven. It appears very easy to understand as translated.
Matthew 5:4 NIV Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
This version was first made easy to understand in the Latin Vulgate, where they first used the idea of “being comforted.” However, this is very far from what Jesus said in the Greek. The English, Latin, and other translations of this verse are very compatible with the comforting vision we have been offered of Jesus. The Greek, however, is the confounding Christ that Christianity often doesn’t want to deal with. As is usual the case, the problems in the original Greek the hallmarks of humor and a trickster who gets people to think by confounding them.
The word translated as "blessed" is a Greek adjective from a root word meaning "happy" or "fortunate." In Jesus's era, all good fortune was attributed to divine favor but this is not otherwise a religious word. It has no relationship to the Greek verb that means to religiously "bless" or the noun "blessings.” This is a pure contradiction that his hidden by the “religious” meaning that we have given to the word “blessed,” which is closely related to our English religious verb “bless” and our English noun, “blessings.”
This sets up the contradictory play on words: "happy those mourning.” This is a clear non-sequitur. Those mourning are the opposite of happy. The Greek translated as “those who mourn” means “the ones mourning.” The word translated as “mourning” means "to bewail", "to mourn", "to go into mourning," and "to lament." Such a contradiction is always confusing, but it is understandable. Especially here, since Jesus said offered a very similar contradiction in the first Beatitude (see this article).
However, Jesus say saves the really confounding word for his punchline at the end of the verse.
The Last Word
In translation, both English and earlier in Latin, the final word is the unsurprising “comforted. This word has no humor and no information in it because it is completely expected. It is also nothing new or interesting. Everyone already knew then as they know now, that someone mourning will be offered comfort by those who care about tjem. This is not the kind of surprise that Jesus offered at the end of his verses. Some of his words are less surprising now, after 2,000 years of familiarity, but this idea was unremarkable at the time.
The Greek ending word this verse literally means “will be called near." So it primarily means "to be summoned" since it is in the passive. It also means "to demand," ("called from") "to encourage," ("called along") and "to excite" (called beyond"). Much later in Matthew, this same word is translated as "to call," "to beseech," "to pray", and “entreat.” (Matthew 18:32, Matthew 18:29, Matthew 26:53, and Luke 15:28). In all of the verses, "call upon" works best in English, both in the sense of "summoned" and "to be asked." None of its various meanings, especially as used by Jesus, do we get anywhere near the idea of “comforted.” None of these these established meanings work well here except “will be summoned” or “will be called,” the primary meanings of the verb. I don’t see any way of connecting these idea to the idea of “being comforted.” If you do, let me know through a comment.
This verb could also be another, even more common Greek verb that means “to be broken off.” In this form, that verb would be “they will be broken off.” This meaning is even less compatible with the idea of “comforted.” The ones mourning will be broken off makes some sense here, but it is even a less comforting meaning than “called up” or “summoned.” Those losing relatives and friends are broken off parts of friends and families, so the idea makes sense. It also makes the idea of these these people being “happy” more of a contradiction. This word also cannot be interpreted as “comforted.”
Since this second Greek verb is never used in the Bible, it seems unlikely that Jesus used this meaning in this verse. Going to the primary meaning of the verb that the Bible and Jesus actually used, most listeners would have understood this saying as:
Listeners Heard: Happy those mourning for they themselves will be summoned.
This last word leaves the audience hanging. How will they be summoned? Where will they be summoned to? Why should it make them happy. Jesus does not answer these question directly, so we must think about what he may have meant. This is as easy or hard as we want to make it.
The obvious context here is “mourning.” The verse doesn’t say what is being mourned, but the obvious idea is a death of a loved one.” Is Jesus saying that mourners should be happy being summoned to their own deaths? What else could it be? Should they be happy because they will be reunited with our lost loved one. This is a teaching of Christianity, of course, but they are no statements about the afterlife that say this clearly in the gospels. He promises the apostles thrones and he talks about sitting at the table of Abraham.
Perhaps, he is referring to the end of the previous verse, “the kingdom of heaven” or “the realm of the skies.” This saying is also the larger context of the whole Sermon. Jesus refers to it specifically in both the first and the last of the Beatitudes. His catchphrase from the beginning of his teaching was in in Matthew 4:17.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
The concept of “the kingdom of heaven” seems to fit in one way or another into most of the other Beatitudes. As a translator, not a teacher, I would strongly suggests that his listeners would have heard this as saying the mourning the loss of a loved one was a summoning to the “realm of the skies.” The deaths of others is a kind of invitation to our own, unavoidable, passing.