Jesus was never one to mince words. He told his message in a most straightforward manner, which was one of the reasons he was so popular to those outside of the power structure. The everyday person loved hearing their friends tell of the time that they heard Jesus teach about the kind of people God favored, or the time they saw Jesus healing bonafide lepers and crippled people, or the time they sat in the crowd while Jesus went head to head with the influential people.
Of all the gospels, Luke seems to have wanted to highlight the teachings that Jesus gave that raised the importance of the everyday person. Perhaps because Luke was had medical training and tended to hurting people, he also had a heart for those whose spirits were hurt. The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, unique to Luke, is a grand example of Luke's sentiments for the hurting. It also appears that Mary's stories were a source for Luke because of the genealogy at the beginning of the book and the fact that he mentions Mary double the number of times of the other gospels. If so, this might have also contributed to the "feeling" language of the stories found in Luke favoring the average person and criticizing the prestigious and influential groups.
With this in mind, Luke gives another take on the μακαριοι sayings found at the opening of the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5. If Luke is recording the same occasion that Matthew records, the teachings in Luke are more skeletal in nature, briefer, so his source(s) had retained the information somewhat differently. But, there is nothing to preclude Jesus from using his sayings and comparisons multiple times on many hillsides around Galilee and Judea. So, truly these words might not have been a different memory of the same occasion, but a different occasion altogether.
Jesus began speaking in similar fashion to the event Matthew recorded. Jesus had come from a hilltop to a lower level place or to one of the valleys among the hills that range across the area (Luke 6.17-26). Again he had eight sayings. μακαριοι introduced his first four.
How favored are the poor. The realm of God is for you.
How favored are the ones who are hungry now. You will be full.
How favored are the ones crying now. You will be laughing.
How favored you are when people hate, ostracize, and brand you as a bad influence because of the Son of Man. Be crazy happy because you have a great reward in heaven. Your ancestors treated their prophets the same exact way.
The source for Luke after these first four sayings is very different from what Matthew recorded. It's also the point where Jesus (perhaps Mary as Luke's source) shows a bit of a sting toward those in the power structure of Judea. Jesus used πλην (in addition) before starting the next four sayings. That would be the equivalent of someone saying something, then adding "And get this... " to show the importance of what is going to be added to what was just said. The word following πλην is ουαι, the beginning word for the next four sayings. This word is the opposite of μακαριοι. The first of the ουαι sayings shows the structure and semantics of this group of four.
πλην ουαι υμιν τοις πλουσιοις οτι απεχετε την παρακλησιν υμων.
(And get this. It won't go well for you who are rich. You are receiving your plush life now.)
The next four sayings are the mirror opposites of the first four sayings. Another way to put it is that Jesus gave one set of conditions for God's favor and a second set of conditions for his disfavor. The two sayings were in direct juxtapostion. I don't know that Jesus spoke one group of sayings and then a second group of sayings as it is recorded. It's possible that the way it was remembered was merely an organizing method for oral transmission. Ancient literature elsewhere in the world, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, had an organizational structure for transmission such as rhyme, repetition of nominative participles, and a melodic number of syllables (number of feet in a line). Ancient Hebrew poetry also used literary features such as parallelism and chiasm for easy remembrance. So, people were used to hearing orally transmitted material through the use of particular organizational patterns. Below is a little different organizational structure for the modern reader in order to show the offsetting meanings of the two types of sayings. A modern translation might use this method to report the sayings for the semantic effect they might have had on the listeners that day in valley.
How favored are the poor. The realm of God is for you.
It won't go well for you who are rich. You are receiving your plush life now.
How favored are the ones who are hungry now. You will be full.
It won't go well for you who are full. You will be hungry.
How favored are the ones crying now. You will be laughing.
It won't go well for you who are laughing. You will be grieving and crying.
How favored you are when people hate, ostracize, and brand you as a bad influence because of the Son of Man. Be crazy happy because you have a great reward in heaven. Your ancestors treated their prophets the same exact way.
It won't go well for you when everyone accepts you everywhere. Your ancestors treated their false prophets the same exact way.
There's a tasty morsel in setting up the sayings. Before Jesus opened his mouth, he surveyed all the people who had gathered in the valley. He noticed there were two groups of people. When I was a young adult and reading less critically, I didn't notice at all the two groups of people, and I thought Jesus usually drew "crowds" from local villages which were small, hardly a crowd by modern standards. But, I'm not so sure these days. People had been hearing about Jesus, so by the time he decided to select his twelve closest followers, thousands of people had decided to come to the hills where Jesus taught in order to sit and listen to him. And one can bet that since healings were happening there in the hills, people were showing up for that too.
One group of people were his followers. Specifically, οχλος πολυς μαθητων αυτου (a tremendous number of his followers) had gathered to hear more about him. μαθητων was used for the word followers. It was used in Greece to speak of students and derived from the verb to study. So what did go through Jesus's mind, really, when he surveyed the crowd and saw a tremendous number of μαθητων. Students? Probably not. Jesus knew that people came to hear him speak because he called himself the Son of Man, one of the identifications Jews had given to the Messiah. Both the popular book of Enoch, the writing called Second Esdras, and the Old Testament book of Daniel speak of this identification. People came to check out the teachings of the messiah. Thousands of people were flocking to the hills because they were attracted by the audacity of Jesus to claim this in the first place and by his message of contemporaneous application of God's realm to people of this time and place, not something spoken long ago and laboriously applied to each successive generation like the rabbis had done for centuries.
The Dierks Bentley song below makes me feel like I think Jesus's followers felt. They were just holding on. Jesus let them know who they were holding on to and what they were holding on for.
The second group Jesus noticed were πληθος πολυ του λαου (a tremendous number of people) from various places - Judea, its capital, Jerusalem, and the Roman cities of Tyre and Sidon. Basically, they were people from a hundred miles or more away in a time when people walked everywhere. They seemed to be easy to spot. Perhaps they were the rich, educated, or haughty types, not from the same class of people as the ones who were listening to Jesus as learners. Perhaps, they were wearing regional garb, and so were distinct in their dress or nationality.
For whatever reasons, Jesus noticed two groups of people - his and not his. And certainly, this division in his mind surfaced in his speech. He began by rewarding his μαθητων (followers) with μακαριοι (how favored) sayings. Then he turned his attention to the second group he saw, λαου (the people) from other regions, with ουαι sayings.
I find myself split-minded about which group I would have been in had I lived during that day. I probably would have gone out to hear this Son of Man teach about God's realm. I can see myself listening intently and soaking up what Jesus was telling me, that I was favored by God. Unfortunately, I can see myself on the fringe, sizing up Jesus's teaching to see if it was worthy of the messiah. In that case, I hear Jesus tell me that it won't go well for me.
The speech in Luke helps me see the two sides of myself. It keeps me honest. It tells me where I stand.
One group of people were his followers. Specifically, οχλος πολυς μαθητων αυτου (a tremendous number of his followers) had gathered to hear more about him. μαθητων was used for the word followers. It was used in Greece to speak of students and derived from the verb to study. So what did go through Jesus's mind, really, when he surveyed the crowd and saw a tremendous number of μαθητων. Students? Probably not. Jesus knew that people came to hear him speak because he called himself the Son of Man, one of the identifications Jews had given to the Messiah. Both the popular book of Enoch, the writing called Second Esdras, and the Old Testament book of Daniel speak of this identification. People came to check out the teachings of the messiah. Thousands of people were flocking to the hills because they were attracted by the audacity of Jesus to claim this in the first place and by his message of contemporaneous application of God's realm to people of this time and place, not something spoken long ago and laboriously applied to each successive generation like the rabbis had done for centuries.
The Dierks Bentley song below makes me feel like I think Jesus's followers felt. They were just holding on. Jesus let them know who they were holding on to and what they were holding on for.
The second group Jesus noticed were πληθος πολυ του λαου (a tremendous number of people) from various places - Judea, its capital, Jerusalem, and the Roman cities of Tyre and Sidon. Basically, they were people from a hundred miles or more away in a time when people walked everywhere. They seemed to be easy to spot. Perhaps they were the rich, educated, or haughty types, not from the same class of people as the ones who were listening to Jesus as learners. Perhaps, they were wearing regional garb, and so were distinct in their dress or nationality.
For whatever reasons, Jesus noticed two groups of people - his and not his. And certainly, this division in his mind surfaced in his speech. He began by rewarding his μαθητων (followers) with μακαριοι (how favored) sayings. Then he turned his attention to the second group he saw, λαου (the people) from other regions, with ουαι sayings.
I find myself split-minded about which group I would have been in had I lived during that day. I probably would have gone out to hear this Son of Man teach about God's realm. I can see myself listening intently and soaking up what Jesus was telling me, that I was favored by God. Unfortunately, I can see myself on the fringe, sizing up Jesus's teaching to see if it was worthy of the messiah. In that case, I hear Jesus tell me that it won't go well for me.
The speech in Luke helps me see the two sides of myself. It keeps me honest. It tells me where I stand.
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