The Beggar's Blessing: "Poor in Spirit" in Matthew 5:3

The Sermon on the Mount opens not with a command but with a blessing on the empty-handed: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

The Greek word behind "poor" is ptochos, and it is stronger than we usually hear. Greek had two words for poverty: penes, the working poor who had little, and ptochos, the beggar who had nothing and could only stretch out a hand. Matthew uses the second one. Jesus is not blessing low self-esteem; he is blessing the person who knows that before God they own nothing and can only receive.

That reading fits the Old Testament soil the Beatitudes grow from. Isaiah 61:1 English - ESV promises good news for the poor and brokenhearted, the very passage Jesus reads over his own ministry in Luke 4:18 English - ESV. Psalms 34:18 English - ESV says the LORD is near to the crushed in spirit. The poor in the Psalms and Prophets are those with no resources left but God.

Notice also the tense. Most Beatitudes point forward: they shall be comforted, they shall inherit the earth. But verse 3, and verse 10 with it, says

Beggar. The empty-handed poverty the first beatitude pronounces blessed.

theirs IS the kingdom of heaven. Present tense. The kingdom does not wait for the spiritually bankrupt to get their accounts in order; it belongs to them now.

The narrow way begins at zero. Everything else in the Sermon, the salt, the light, the higher righteousness, grows out of this first admission: I come to God as a beggar, and he calls that blessed. Matthew 5:3 English - ESV

Isaiah 61:1 English - ESV

Matthew 5 Berean Standard Bible - Bob Souer