Hermeneutics = Interpretation | Theological Foundations | Part Three

Honest confession: I have often had to look up the terms 'exegesis' and 'hermeneutics' in the past (prior to the rigorous drilling of their meaning into my memory via coursework) because they are not terms often used in regular church life. And when that does happen, people are often confused and say nothing or need definitions.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The middle step of solid Bible study is interpreting the text, first for the original audience, accounting for the first-century hearer’s timestamp. Then interpreting for “us now,” adjusting and taking inventory of any hermeneutical shifts needed for the 21^st Century. Noting the main point, the original understanding, and then considering other passages via word study and parallel texts will yield, with the work of the Spirit, a balanced interpretation of the text (Fee & Stuart, 2014). 

The Main Point and First Century Hearers

The central theme of Matthew 5:2-12 (“core text”) is to define and address present expectations of what a ‘blessed life’ looks like. After all, the Old Covenant stated that obedience to God meant blessing, and breaking God’s law would result in cursing. Jesus redefined the expectations but also explained how temporary suffering would amount to eternal blessing for the sheep of his pasture. His audience would have heard these couplets in familiar poetic form (which was easier to remember in the same way that song lyrics are more memorable than paragraph text). They would have heard the echos of so many Old Testament passages – far too many for this writing to cover – and their hearts would have been pricked to respond to his message. As previously hinted, the kingdom of God is so foreign to our thinking that it is a kingdom upside-down (Rydelnik, 2014). 

There are two less familiar words in the core text for the modern English speaker: “blessed” (without a hashtag) and “meek.” As previously explored, the “blessed” here is Makarios, meaning “blessing” or “deep joy” and is applied to humans (Strong, 2010, G3107). “Bless” in plain English means “pronounce words in a religious rite, to confer or invoke divine favor upon.” Its antonym is “curse.” The pair of words both find their power source in divine origin versus human will. When Jesus uses this word, he is speaking divine blessing over the people, and he has the power to bestow it because he is fully divine. (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2010). 

“Meek” means ‘gentleness of spirit,’ and ‘mildness of disposition,’ and finds its opposites in ‘self-assertiveness’ and ‘self-interest.’ Meekness is a heart posture towards God in which we accept his actions towards us as good, even when goodness is cloaked in sorrow and suffering.* The meek in scripture are those who trusted God with all their hearts rather than falling back on their own understanding, accepting his mysterious ways with joy (NIV Bible, 2011, Pro 4:23). Meekness is rooted in trusting in God’s inherent and immutable goodness and sovereignty. Meekness, then, towards people, especially those perpetrating evil deeds, assents that God has allowed their circumstances to come to pass and uses these trials as a refiner's fire (NIV Bible, 2011, Zec 13:9), purifying his true children like gold in a flame (Pierce, n.d.).

Parallel Texts

Perhaps the most unmistakable parallel text is Luke 6:20-26, known as the ‘Sermon on the Plain.’ Verses 20-23 are a very close approximation of the core text of verses 3,6 and 11. There are a handful of differences, though. Luke notes a narrower audience of “his disciples,” which could have been the twelve or a larger group that was also called ‘disciples,’ who were known as traveling companions of Jesus. Also, the adjectives describing “the poor” are different. Luke says, “You who are poor,” while Matthew says, “Poor in spirit.” (It is possible that Matthew had personal insight into this because he would likely have been the richest among the called disciples and therefore understood that he was called out of spiritual poverty into Jesus’ chosen twelve.) Luke speaks of hunger in general; Matthew qualifies this as “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Luke pairs “weeping” and “laughing,” while Matthew pairs “mourning” and “comfort.” Luke lists “hate, exclude, insult, and reject your name as evil” in a list that parallels Matthew’s “insult, persecute, and falsely say all kinds of evil because of me.” Luke has fewer couplets compared to Matthew, omitting the meek, peacemakers, pure in heart, merciful, and the simpler version of the persecuted verse. It’s worth noting that Luke took the first, middle, and last of Matthew’s couplets, perhaps to frame up the essence of the sermon similarly to the inclusio from Matthew’s structure (Rydelnik, 2014) .

Another intersection is in Isaiah 61:2-3. Part of this passage reads: “to comfort all who mourn and to provide for those who grieve in Zion.” Isaiah draws richer imagery around this couplet, but it’s interesting because Isaiah 61:1-2a is what Jesus preached in Nazareth, not long before the Sermon on the Plain, according to Luke. Shortly after reading this passage in the Nazarene synagogue, the people of the town make an attempt on Jesus’ life, but he walks through the murderous crowd and goes his way. He picks up teaching from Isaiah 61, right where he left off at the synagogue in the Sermon on the Mount. Which provocative words did he say in Nazareth? He proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor,” which entailed “good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” It echoes the poor in spirit, the powerless, the unjustly treated, and the persecuted. The original hearers would hardly have missed the messianic undertones (Carson, 2007). 

Certainly, of all the abounding parallels to the core text, the most succinct is found in Mark 10:31, “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” The kingdom turned upside down rings out from the hushed oracles after Malachi, heralded first by an odd man in the desert eating bugs and wearing the hair of camel and then by his cousin, God the Son, cloaked in the flesh of man. Here is the symbolism of the old covenant coverings [animal skins] (NIV Bible, 2011, Gen 3:21) to the new covenant in the blood of the perfect sacrifice, sinless man, Jesus of Nazareth (Dunn et al., 2003). 

Conclusion

Those who needed good news most certainly heard it in Jesus’ proclamations of how the kingdom of God is ordered. For the original hearers, Jesus’ parallels with the law, prophets, and writings have resonated in their hearts and heads, calling them to remember and to live like kingdom people, and they would be blessed. Present-day readers, looking back and looking around, have been called to the same, meek living, remembering God’s word, and rightly observing their own lifestyle attitudes and choices, measuring them to the ways of the kingdom of God (Rydelnik, 2014). 

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Note: The following document was written in 2025 as part of my coursework in a class called "Theological Foundations for Counseling" at Colorado Christian University in pursuit of a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master's Degree (CHMC). Brevity was required. There were four parts that all exclusively focus on this small part of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5:2-12.

*Meekness has often been poorly conceptualized. You have heard that it said upon many pulpits and conference stages in the 20th and 21st centuries that meekness is "strength under control." But I say to you that is not an accurate or adequate definition. At times, meekness looks like strength (or authority or power) under humble self-control, but a snapshot of meekness in action does not make a full definition. The definition provided is cited in the references for this written work, see Pierce.

References

Carson, D. (2007). Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament (unknown ed.). Baker Academic.

Dunn, James D. G. (ed.); Rogerson, & (ed.), J. W. (2003). Eerdmans commentary on the Bible (1st ed.). Eerdmans.

Fee, G. D., & Stuart, D. (2014). How to read the Bible for all its worth: Fourth edition (4th ed.). Zondervan Academic.

NIV Bible. (2011). Zondervan.

Oxford dictionary of English (Revised ed.). (2010). Oxford University Press.

Pierce, L. (n.d.). Outline of biblical usage [https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g4239/niv/mgnt/0-1/]. Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved March 23, 2025, from Blue Letter Bible.

Rydelnik, M. (2014). The Moody Bible commentary (New ed.). Moody Publishers.

Strong, J. (2010). The new Strong's exhaustive concordance of the Bible. Thomas Nelson.