Matthew 5:5

 “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.”

Before I even dig into this I want to say something I strongly believe: if you didn’t grab hold of the truth presented in the first two Beatitudes, this one is completely irrelevant. If you have never allowed God to break you and humble you, and if you don’t really get it about spiritual poverty and if you haven’t grieved and mourned over your sinful condition, this Beatitude is out of your reach. Meekness, you see, is not something we can practice and get better at. It’s not something we acquire by studying it and learning about it. Meekness is simply a by-product of recognizing who we are in relation to God. Meekness comes as a natural consequence of those first two Beatitudes.

I want to be honest with you, though, my first thought on reading this Beatitude was, “Who wants to be meek anyway? Who even cares?” Meekness has never been a top priority of mine, and probably not yours either. That’s because I didn’t understand what Jesus meant by meekness. Our English word is so inadequate. There isn’t a direct translation -there isn't a match in English for the word Jesus used. Unfortunately, in English, meek is not such a good word. In English, meek has come to be associated with weak, shy, timid, and cowardly. But that is not at all what Jesus is talking about, so, let’s just forget the English word and look at what Jesus actually meant. Let’s look at the meaning of the words actually used in the Bible.

The word translated in Matthew 5:5 as meek is the Greek word Praus. To understand this word, I think it might help us to take a little mini-philosophy course. Some of you might have studied philosophy before and you might remember this. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher had a tremendous influence on Greek language. This is important because, as you probably know, Matthew wrote this gospel in Greek. Aristotle believed that every important or true concept had an ideal, had perfection right in the middle between extremes.

Here’s what I mean. If you take miserly greed on one hand and foolish wastefulness on the other, in the middle would be the ideal of generosity. If you take outrageous affluence on one hand and abject poverty on the other, right in the middle would be contentedness. If you take artificial flattery on one hand and complete rudeness on the other, right in the middle would be the ideal of friendliness.

Do you understand what Aristotle was driving at? Good, because the Greek word used in out beatitude today is one of these ideals of perfection right in the middle between two extremes. The extremes are on one hand, violent, uncontrolled anger, and on the other hand, timid, apathetic, cowardice. The word Jesus used for meekness was the ideal, the perfection between the extreme of being a complete doormat and the extreme of uncontrolled anger. In English we have no word for this. The King James and the New International Versions of the Bible call this meekness. Some translations of the Bible translate this as humility. Some translations translate it as gentleness. We really don’t have an exact match, but let me describe what the Praus means.

As I’ve already mentioned, the word praus was often used to describe the ideal between uncontrolled anger and timid cowardice. The idea here is of a person who never gets angry for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time or to the wrong degree, but who always gets angry about the right things at the right time, and uses his anger effectively to accomplish justice. The word praus was also used to describe a gentle breeze on a hot day. The word was also used to describe soothing medicine. How good does a gentle breeze on a hot day feel? When we are sick, how welcome is soothing medicine? Let’s put these ideas together and see if we can make sense of what Jesus is saying.

At the core of it, Jesus is implying something like this:  

“Blessed is the person who is never angry at the wrong time over the wrong things or to the wrong degree, but whose life is like a gentle breeze on a hot day or like soothing medicine to the sick. This is the person who will inherit the earth.”
There is also another use of the word praus, though, that I think will help us understand this even better. The Greeks used this word to describe a well-trained horse. Think about the difference between a wild horse and a well-trained horse. There is no difference in strength. There is no difference in agility.  There is no difference in beauty. The main difference is that the untrained wild horse is fearful, mistrustful, and of no use to people. On the other hand, the power, strength, and agility of a well-trained horse are under the control of its master and, therefore, useful to its master. Think of the implications this has for us as believers. In this sense, meekness is the state of having all of our strength, all of our ambitions, all of our passions, all of our resources under the control of Jesus. So, let’s add this dimension to what we already know about what meekness really means.

Here is what I believe Jesus is saying:

“Blessed is the person who is never angry about the wrong things at the wrong time or to the wrong degree, but whose strength, ambitions, passions, and resources are controlled by God, so that he is like a gentle breeze on a warm day and like soothing medicine to the sick. This person will inherit the earth.”

Maybe I want to be meek afterall.