How should the Greek word μακάριος be translate in Matthew 5:3? Should it be rendered "happy" or "blessed"?
Latin Vulgate: beati pauperes spiritu quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum
Weymouth NT: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for to them belongs the Kingdom of the Heavens."
Young's LT: "Happy the poor in spirit -- because theirs is the reign of the heavens."
Moffatt's NT: "Blessed are those who feel poor in spirit! the Realm of heaven is theirs."
David Bentley Hart NT: “How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the
Kingdom of the heavens;"
Bentley Hart Footnote: μακάριος (makarios): “blessed,” “happy,” “fortunate,” “prosperous,” but originally with a connotation of divine or heavenly bliss.
David Turner (BECNT): The word “beatitude” is related to the Latin beatus, which means “blessed.” To be blessed (μακάριος, makarios) is to receive God’s approval, favor, endorsement, congratulations. To be “blessed” is to be so much more than “happy,” since the word “happiness” conveys only a subjective, shallow notion of serendipity, not the conviction of being a recipient of God’s grace. God initiates blessing by graciously condescending to save people. They respond to God’s initiative by blessing God with praise and obedient living. Their present experience of God’s reign in Jesus motivates them to live in light of its future intensification (6:10). The pattern of the Beatitudes is to highlight the character of the blessed person and then to explain the promise of God to such a person.
Louw-Nida defines μακάριος as “pertaining to being happy, with the implication of enjoying favorable circumstances—‘happy.’”
BDAG: μακάριος, ία, ιον (Pind., Pla., X.+; inscr., pap., LXX, En., Philo, Joseph.) blessed, fortunate, happy, usu. in the sense privileged recipient of divine favor.
μακάριος occurs around 50x in the GNT.
LXX Occurences: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/inflections.cfm?strongs=G3107&t=LXX&ot=LXX&word=%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BA%E1%BD%B1%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82
See Psalm 41:1; 128:1 (LXX); 1 Timothy 1:11; Titus 2:11-14.
https://www.wordsense.eu/%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BA%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82/
ReplyDeletehttps://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BA%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82
ReplyDeleteThanks Duncan
In my "Jesus's Manifesto" book, I rendered it "how happy are" .... but it's not an easy one, I felt that "how happy" brought out the general thrust of the term with the least baggage.
ReplyDeleteI think that "happy" is more meaningful to a modern audience than "blessed".
ReplyDelete~Kas
Everyone, thanks for your input. I like "happy" better, but I've come across some objections to that choice through the years. I believe that Spiros Zodhiates did not like happy because he felt that it indicated a person enjoys his/her status by chance rather than through divine means. But that objection borders on an etymological fallacy IMO.
ReplyDeleteR.T. France:
ReplyDelete'Blessed’ is a misleading translation of makarios, which does not denote one whom God blesses (which would be eulogētos, reflecting Heb. bārûk), but represents the Hebrew ’ašrê, 'fortunate’, and is used, like ’ašrê, almost entirely in the formal setting of a beatitude. It introduces someone who is to be congratulated, someone whose place in life is an enviable one. ‘Happy’ is better than ‘blessed’, but only if used not of a mental state but of a condition of life. ‘Fortunate’ or ‘well off’ is less ambiguous. It is not a psychological description, but a recommendation.
Right, for me the point was a class reversal of fortunes which makes sense of the contrast to the "woes" ... blessed could be a little bit to spiritualized, I thought of fortunate but it struck me a little bit too much as "lucky," so I figured happy was the best way to, basically the poor are gonna have it good, the rich will not.
ReplyDeleteI remember spending some time on this word and going through the different usages, it was fun to research for that book.
Thanks for sharing the fruits of your research. I need to revisit your discussion of these issues and how the beatitudes could be understood.
ReplyDelete"Most happy"
ReplyDeletewould be a more apt translation. Makarios denotes a condition much higher than just "happy". "Blessed" is not correct in the mind of any Greek. Funny enough, the Greeks can translate makarios back into Greek with a second word: paneftyhis (πανευτυχής).