Language Studies

Greek Thoughts

praus - πραυς (Strong's #4239)
Equanimity; a moderated temperament of soul'

For the last couple of weeks we have been examining the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. This week our word study will come from the third beatitude: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). This beatitude by the Lord is a quotation from Psalms 37:11. The kingdom truth in this beatitude lies in the meaning of the "meek" and the phrase "inherit the earth." The Greek word πραεις (Matthew 11:29; 21:5), are the calm, meek sufferers relying on God's help, who, without bitterness or revenge, suffer the cruelties of their tyrants and oppressors.^F1 Meyer states: "Meekness is a calming of excitement produced by passion: a moderated temperament of soul (cp. 1 Peter 3:4)."^F2 Bullinger defines the term as: "patient oppressed ones;^F3 meek, gentle, enduring all things with an even temper, tender, free from haughty self-sufficiency, tender of spirit."^F4 The world view of meekness is often misunderstood and mistaken for passivity and docility, however, it is not a weak but a heroic quality. It is a virtue that can be exercised both towards God and towards man and involves self-control, The basic element of meekness, derived from its root meaning, is "equilibrium" - the full and complete possession of all the faculties of one's being, an inner mastery. Christ elevated the term of "meekness" to a higher level because in the kingdom of heaven the "meek" are those who take on an active passionate temperate attitude toward combating both their own sins and the sins of others. Vincent adds: "As toward God, therefore, meekness accepts his dealings without murmur or resistance as absolutely good and wise. As toward man, it accepts opposition, insult, and provocation, as God's permitted ministers of a chastening demanded by the infirmity and corruption of sin."^F5 The Scriptures affirm, "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; And he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city" (Proverbs 16:32). One who is not easily provoked or irritated, and is patiently tolerant in the face of provocation is said to be "meek." It can be illustrated as the captain at the helm of his ship during a violent storm, who by the strength of his inner composure maintains full control of his vessel by steadily and safely guiding his ship through adversity. It was a quality attributed to Moses: "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3). Moses acted upon the hidden man of the heart, his inner mastery and quiet spirit to courageously and continually rely upon God even against what often seemed impossible odds, and for that God blessed him as His deliverer, leader and lawgiver of Israel. Thus, the intention of the Lord is to describe those who possess the blend of spiritual poise and the gentleness of an inner strength of soul necessary in order to acknowledge ones sins before God and hold fast the faith of the gospel in the kingdom of God when faced with the opposition of the sinful world.

At the time Jesus gave this sermon, the hearers were all under Roman yoke. His own disciples were becoming citizens in the Messiah's new kingdom, the heavenly life of God brought down to earth indwelling as an inheritance for its citizens (Luke 17:21; Acts 20:32; 26:18; Eph. 1:18,19; Heb. 9:15). As its emissaries, they were soon to be surrounded by the hostilities of many opposing elements; these included the oppositions of paganism, the oppressions of the Roman Empire and the persecutions of their own fellow Jews. But in their moderated temperament of soul, the gentleness of strength and inner mastery of will that gives victory over all surroundings, the Lord declared they would overcome all of these hostilities, rather than be subdued by them, and thus fill the earth with the teaching of Christ. With the promise of the third beatitude "to inherit the earth," Christ has raised the very ancient popular theocratic conception: to come into the possession of the land of Palestine (as promised to Abraham: Genesis 15:7ff) and (after the expulsion of Israel's haughty enemies: Psalms 37), to its antitypical Christian idea, so that the Messiah's kingdom and the receiving possession of it is the Lord's intention (cp. Galatians 3:18; Eph. 1:11). The phrase "to inherit the earth" has no reference to material possession of the earth or to the rulership of the world. It rather means that the disciples of Christ would possess a superior equilibrium of soul and strength of will that will give them spiritual victory over the adverse surroundings they would encounter and so enable them to come into the possession of the whole land of God, the new spiritual kingdom of the heavens on earth, the church, by filling the whole world with the principles of the gospel of Christ, being then announced. The application is the same for us today. All who wish to enter the kingdom of God must act in obedience to God with a passionate temperament of soul, displaying a humble gentle spirit relying upon God to wash their sins away. As we walk in the light of the gospel (1 John 1:7), weathering the stormy sinful sea of the world and its opposition to the gospel message we are commanded to proclaim (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47), only our inner mastery of soul and temperate courage in the Lord will carry us to the end of the good fight of the faith (1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7).

Jesus said the time of the gospel dispensation as prophesied by both Isaiah and Habakuk when they declared: "for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of (the glory of) Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9; Hab. 2:14), has now come. Both prophets foresaw the time of the gospel dispensation, just as the beatitudes are a preview of its principles. As the Lord sat on the Mount of Olives and prophesied of the coming siege and destruction of Jerusalem, He said that He would "send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Matthew 24:31). Jesus was referring to the same expansion of the church through His emissaries of the gospel filling the earth "with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah" that both Isaiah and Habakuk's earlier forecasted. When God commissioned Jeremiah, He said: "see, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10). God informed Jeremiah that through the teaching of the prophet, he would rule over nations and kingdoms. The apostle Paul made a similar statement when he said: "Or know ye not that the saints shall judge the world" (1 Corinthians 6:2)? Paul was not saying that the saints would judge as rulers, but rather would judge through teaching and exemplifying the principles of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Thus, it is the same sense that "the meek shall inherit the earth;" the disciples of the Lord as subjects of His spiritual kingdom, the church, would through patient gentle strength of will that gives victory over all surroundings, spread the kingdom over all the earth "as the waters cover the sea." The gospel affirms this was accomplished during the disciples missionary endeavors to all nations prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as the Lord had earlier prophesied from the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:31; Col. 1:5, 6; 1:23; Rom. 1:8; 16:25,26). The third beatitude, therefore, forecasts the meekness of character necessary in being temperately angry over our own sins toward God in order to actively pursue entrance into the Messiah's kingdom; and it portrays the temperate strength of will of its citizens toward the sinful world. This we accomplish today by humbling ourselves to God in fighting the good fight of the faith and preaching the good news of Christ, thus, continuing to expand the church over all the earth until the end of the Christian age (Matthew 28:20).

FOOTNOTES:
F1: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, TH.D., Critical and Exegetical Handbook To The Gospel of Matthews, vol. 1 (Peabody, Massachusetts, 1983 reprint of 6th edition of 1884), pg., 114.
F2: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, TH.D., Critical and Exegetical Handbook To The Gospel of Matthews, vol. 1 (Peabody, Massachusetts, 1983 reprint of 6th edition of 1884), pg., 114.
F3: Ethelbert W. Bullinger, Companion Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, reprint of 1922), pg., 753.
F4: Ethelbert W. Bullinger, A Critical Lexicon and Concordance To The English And Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, reprint of 1975), pg., 492.
F5: M.R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol. 1 (Florida: MacDonald Publishing Company, reprint of 2nd edition 1888), pg., 29.

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