The following information is derived from a paper by Eric Ottenheijm of the University of Utrecht presented at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature in the Matthew section.

In Matthew 5:1, Yeshua went up on “the mountain.” No one knows which mountain, although there is a lovely hill which is the traditional spot. More important than a physical location, though, is understanding the allusion of “the mountain.” There are a number of mountains of great significance in the Hebrew Bible. The echoes of Exodus and Isaiah in particular add depth and meaning to the Sermon on the Mount.

For a long time, it has been recognized that Yeshua’s ascending the mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount has echoes of Moses ascending Sinai to receive and then deliver the Torah. There is a long tradition of viewing the Beatitudes, for example, as a sort of new Ten Commandments.

Dale Allison, in The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, gives a few reinforcements to the Sinai imagery: (1) “went up the mountain” in the LXX (Greek or Septuagint version of the Bible) is used 18 times of Moses, (2) Yeshua sat on the mountain and Moses “dwelt” or “sat” forty days according to Deuteronomy 9:9, (3) other Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra 14 uses the “sat” motif to make a character echo Moses, and (4) Matthew 8:1 continues to echo language about Moses.

Eric Ottenheijm shows, however, that more than Moses is going in in the mount of the Sermon.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” says Isaiah in 52:7.

“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” is Isaiah’s word in 40:9.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted,” Isaiah says in 61:1.

The mountain of Isaiah is the mountain of good news. The one whose feet are on it delivers good news to the poor. “Blessed are the poor,” says Yeshua in the Sermon.

Ottenheijm points out a few things about Isaiah and Matthew:
(1) Matthew quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than any other book.
(2) Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (the larger section surrounding 5:1) begins and ends with Isaiah references (see below).
(3) Matthew is not the only Jewish literature combining Isaiah 52:7 with 40:9 and 61:1 (see below).

Is this a denial of the Moses/Sinai theme in Matthew? Not at all. Ottenheijm says that first, Isaiah took the mountain theme from the story of Israel and gave it a new twist and then Matthew took up Isaiah’s mountain theme, which already had Moses overtones, and gave it still a new twist:

Moses/Sinai/Torah –> messenger/mountain/good news in Isaiah –> Yeshua brings good news on the mountain.

In the time of Yeshua and Matthew, people read the Torah looking for connection to God and an end to the exile. They also read Isaiah this way, finding Isaiah to be a sort of messianic handbook of the last days. It is not hard to imagine those who first heard Matthew’s version of the Sermon read aloud connecting Yeshua with the messenger of good news in Isaiah. God sends his Torah and his good news from “the mountain.”

APPENDIX A: Isaiah in Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (derived from Ottenheijm’s paper):

Matt 4:12-17 Galilee of the gentiles, Isaiah 8:23 – 9:1.

Matt 4:23 Good news, allusion to Isaiah 52:7 and 40:9.

Matt 5:1 Yeshua ascends the mountain and sits down.

Matt 5:3-5 First two Beatitudes compare to Isaiah 61:1-3.

Matt 5:11 Echoes Isaiah 51:7.

APPENDIX B: Early Jewish Texts Combining Isaiah 52:7; 61:1-3; and 40:9 (abridged from Ottenheijm):

–11 QMelchizedek.

–Psalms of Solomon 11.

–Tanhuma Toledot 14 combines the idea of Messiah and Isaiah 52:7.

Cliches like splitting hairs, chopping logic, quibbling over details, or making fine distinctions come to mind as the probable result of insisting on a good interpretation of a few words from an ancient saying. After all, do the differences really amount to much?

Well, I think they do. Take the phrase “poor in spirit” for example.

I was explaining the Beatitudes at a “Yeshua in Context” seminar this past weekend. It was the third lecture in a few hours and the whole experience for me was like an intensive meditation on the meaning of being a disciple, of being a follower, of thinking about what it meant to be near to Messiah and learn from him. I was learning at least as much as those I was speaking to. Sometimes inspired texts do that.

Of course, following the example of Yeshua, I started the talk with something unexpected. Predictability is often not the best tactic in teaching. So we started by thinking about the Beatitudes in Luke 6 instead of the more familiar ones in Matthew 5.

Matthew’s version is easier to take, especially Matthew’s version of the very first Beatitude about the “poor in spirit.” As you probably know, in Luke’s version, Yeshua makes a very similar point, but not about the “poor in spirit,” but rather “the poor.” Blessed are the poor.

Why is “poor in spirit” easier to take?

It’s because there is no alternate way to understand “blessed are the poor.” “Blessed are the poor” is an antithesis, pure and simple. It’s truth standing on its head, logic upside down. It’s crazy to say “blessed are the poor.”

But “poor in spirit” is capable of a few comfortable interpretations. The common one goes like this: “Blessed are people who exhibit humility, who think more of others than themselves. They are poor in spirit but rich in rewards from God.”

It’s a nice interpretation and the main point of it is certainly true. So if we just read Matthew’s version of the saying that way, we can’t go wrong. Right?

Why not just read all of Matthew’s Beatitudes in a parallel manner? Meek people are humble. Those who hunger and thirst in Matthew do so for righteousness (of course, in Luke, they just hunger and thirst). Being merciful is good. Peacemakers and people will to be persecuted are good.

Maybe all the Beatitudes are about something we do to earn a blessing. God gives the kingdom to humble people, the poor in spirit, and the meek and merciful. Maybe that’s what Yeshua meant.

But I don’t think so.

I think there is plenty of evidence that the “poor in spirit” are the broken and devastated. And the meek are not the “saints of humility” but rather the stepped on and oppressed, the ones always overlooked and never assumed to be important.

I think there is a long tradition of this in the Psalms and Prophets (and also the Wisdom) before Yeshua ever comes to teach God’s way to a band of disciples.

Job exhibits repeatedly a Wisdom tradition concerning care for the poor as a sign of righteousness, such as in 30:25, “Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?”

In Psalms the poor or needy one is the special subject of God’s care, as in 34:7(6), “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”

The Prophets rail against the injustice done to the poor, as in Isaiah 3:14, “What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?”

So, a good interpretation of the Beatitudes does matter and it gives a different message. It is not, “Blessed are the righteous for they will earn a reward.” It is, rather:

Blessed are the crushed people, devastated, for theirs is the kingdom.
Blessed are those suffering grief, for they will be comforted by God.
Blessed are the overlooked and oppressed, for these will own the world to come.
Blessed are those who cannot find justice and true goodness in this broken world, for they will see goodness in the kingdom.
Blessed are those who have mercy now, for all will see how mercy is needed then.
Blessed are those who work for the One Thing, for they will see the One.
Blessed are those who heal fights and bitterness, for this is what God does.
Blessed are those who suffer for the mission of healing and serving, for their reward will redeem the persecution.

And the underlying message is also clear: My disciples will work to make this world as much like the world to come as they can.

In Matthew 5:1, Yeshua went up on “the mountain.” No one knows which mountain, although there is a lovely hill which is the traditional spot. More important than a physical location, though, is understanding the allusion of “the mountain.” There are a number of mountains of great significance in the Hebrew Bible. The echoes of Exodus and Isaiah in particular add depth and meaning to the Sermon on the Mount.

For a long time, it has been recognized that Yeshua’s ascending the mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount has echoes of Moses ascending Sinai to receive and then deliver the Torah. There is a long tradition of viewing the Beatitudes, for example, as a sort of new Ten Commandments.

Dale Allison, in The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, gives a few reinforcements to the Sinai imagery: (1) “went up the mountain” in the LXX (Greek or Septuagint version of the Bible) is used 18 times of Moses, (2) Yeshua sat on the mountain and Moses “dwelt” or “sat” forty days according to Deuteronomy 9:9, (3) other Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra 14 uses the “sat” motif to make a character echo Moses, and (4) Matthew 8:1 continues to echo language about Moses.

Eric Ottenheijm shows, however, that more than Moses is going in in the mount of the Sermon.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” says Isaiah in 52:7.

“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” is Isaiah’s word in 40:9.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted,” Isaiah says in 61:1.

The mountain of Isaiah is the mountain of good news. The one whose feet are on it delivers good news to the poor. “Blessed are the poor,” says Yeshua in the Sermon.

Ottenheijm points out a few things about Isaiah and Matthew:
(1) Matthew quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than any other book.
(2) Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (the larger section surrounding 5:1) begins and ends with Isaiah references (see below).
(3) Matthew is not the only Jewish literature combining Isaiah 52:7 with 40:9 and 61:1 (see below).

Is this a denial of the Moses/Sinai theme in Matthew? Not at all. Ottenheijm says that first, Isaiah took the mountain theme from the story of Israel and gave it a new twist and then Matthew took up Isaiah’s mountain theme, which already had Moses overtones, and gave it still a new twist:

Moses/Sinai/Torah –> messenger/mountain/good news in Isaiah –> Yeshua brings good news on the mountain.

In the time of Yeshua and Matthew, people read the Torah looking for connection to God and an end to the exile. They also read Isaiah this way, finding Isaiah to be a sort of messianic handbook of the last days. It is not hard to imagine those who first heard Matthew’s version of the Sermon read aloud connecting Yeshua with the messenger of good news in Isaiah. God sends his Torah and his good news from “the mountain.”

APPENDIX A: Isaiah in Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (derived from Ottenheijm’s paper):

Matt 4:12-17 Galilee of the gentiles, Isaiah 8:23 – 9:1.

Matt 4:23 Good news, allusion to Isaiah 52:7 and 40:9.

Matt 5:1 Yeshua ascends the mountain and sits down.

Matt 5:3-5 First two Beatitudes compare to Isaiah 61:1-3.

Matt 5:11 Echoes Isaiah 51:7.

APPENDIX B: Early Jewish Texts Combining Isaiah 52:7; 61:1-3; and 40:9 (abridged from Ottenheijm):

–11 QMelchizedek.

–Psalms of Solomon 11.

–Tanhuma Toledot 14 combines the idea of Messiah and Isaiah 52:7.

O the gladness of the poor in ruach, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Yeshua makes desirable what is commonly regarded as unpleasant or pathetic. Our emotions are stirred by such talk. The imaginations and hopes of peasants sitting on the Galilean grass were stirred. It is something greatly to be desired, a reversal so needed by those of us who deeply feel our poverty of spirit.

What makes these Beatitudes pleasantly sweet is a combination of our trust in the one who speaks them and the attractiveness of their message. There is nothing in all Jewish literature after the Bible to compare with them.

The king, if we believe that about Yeshua, offers his kingdom to the unlikely. It is not because we are poor in spirit that the time of God’s rule on earth is extended to us. Rather, we can know our destiny is gladness and draw on that blissfulness now because the kingdom is ours.

In other words, poverty of spirit is not a condition of the kingdom, though some have read it that way. Rather, poverty of spirit is a condition in which many of us find ourselves without any say in the matter, just as mourning happens to us rather than being a virtue we cultivate.

The Beatitudes are further attractive to us because they are not spoken by just another religious teacher. Yeshua had two things that proved his words worthy of devoting one’s life. He lived what he professed and he gave evidence of having authority to back up his assurances. He comforted mourners and lifted up unimportant people. He showed that the kingdom of heaven can be partially here amongst those who will bring its qualities into life now. His kingdom aims were not simply to draw a following of desperate poor with a false assurance of future hope. Rather, he taught the movement that followed him how to become communities of healing while waiting for the full arrival of God’s reign.

And who could deliver such a counter-intuitive message with authority like Yeshua? He spoke of granting the right for his disciples to sit at his table in his kingdom (Luke 22:29-30) and demonstrated in life, death, and resurrection that he can keep his word.

Yeshua’s audience, at least those who thought he might be the King, Messiah, expected him to bring the kingdom right away. Some modern scholars have said that Yeshua was a failed idealist. He taught an in-breaking of divine blessing that never came. Perish the thought! Yeshua clearly taught reality and nowhere more clearly than in the Beatitudes. Consider these thoughts . . .

The Beatitudes are about happiness. Why, then, are they also sad? Yeshua said:
–there will be broken, dejected, unimportant people
–there will be death and mourning
–there will be unsatisfied longing
–there will be war and persecution and slander

Poor in spirit = broken, dejected, unimportant.
The presence of mourners means death will not cease with Yeshua’s coming.
The fact that people will hunger and thirst means satisfaction is not yet to come.
The need for peacemakers means swords will not yet be beaten into plowshares.

Yeshua prepared his disciples for this. Many thought he would bring the kingdom then. He taught that the kingdom has started but is not fully arrived.

The kingdom now is for his disciples. God will come and rule soon. Meanwhile, Yeshua’s followers are doing God’s work on earth. How have we been doing so far? The Beatitudes should sadden us and make us want more.