You all
The Plural Audience of the Sermon on the Mount
There is one aspect of all the beatitudes I have not taken up to this point. So far, I have treated the plural nature of each beatitude as distributively individual. By saying “those who …” I have addressed the personal intent of the beatitude to any particular person: Blessed is the individual who is poor in spirit, mourns, hungers and thirsts, is merciful, etc.
But while it is good to ask “how does this teaching apply to me (singular)?” the fact is that all of the beatitudes are plural.
Further, almost the entire Sermon is plural.
The first eight beatitudes are all impersonal. Jesus speaks blessing on “those.” The audience had to then transpose this impersonal to themselves. Are “we” or am “I” a member of “those who …”?
Jesus appears to have a rhetorical strategy.
He begins with eight broadly and impersonally addressed beatitudes, then in the ninth—actually an extension of the eighth—Jesus changes to “You” plural.
Y’all
After the Beatitudes, Jesus consistently uses “you” plural (Southern: y’all, Midwestern: you guys). Only when Jesus is giving specific examples of individual behavior does he use the singular (“bearing your gift to the altar,” the adulterous eye, oath-taking, and others).
Jesus speaks to each individual as part of a group. The group is made of individuals and the individuals are part of a group.
In God’s economy, there is no isolation.
We are all connected—right back to Adam.
One another
Back to the fifth beatitude—Blessed are the merciful, for they will be mercied— this is the first one where this observation about the plural is essential for understanding the beatitude itself. Whereas poverty of spirit, mourning, humbleness, and hungering/thirsting after God can arguably be interior, individual pursuits, mercy is not.
Showing mercy implies the other.
So does peace-making.
Mercy and peace-making take place between people. In God’s economy, his children show mercy and make peace first with one another as those in the kingdom. And to the degree possible, this mercy and peace is extended to the world as an invitation to join the kingdom. The world as a whole will reject these efforts, but some will respond.
Jesus’s disciples (the small audience) together will change the world, then the ongoing body of believers (the ecclēsia, the Church). The effectiveness of the whole is directly related to the integrity of each individual; when the individual does not maintain integrity or acts as an island, the whole suffers. But the whole Church (Y’all) enfolds all its fallible members, directing them to the teachings and sufferings of Jesus on their behalf.
I might add that the Church is only as faithful to do this as its trust and adherence to the inscripturated Word—the Bible.
An Invitation
Are you interested in learning New Testament Greek? I will be teaching an intensive course with 50 hours of live instruction via Zoom from June to August. Please contact me at jack.painter@gmail.com or go to https://www.rightonmission.org/intro-to-new-testament-greek for more information. I would love to have you!
Observations on the Greek text
Thus far these observations have been free to all readers and free subscribers. Subsequently, they will be available for paid subscribers. Besides observations on the Greek texts that I address, later I plan to add both beginning and advanced Greek instruction for paid subscribers.
Unlike English, but like most other languages, Ancient Greek distinguished between the singular and plural of “you”. The singular is σύ, σοῦ, σοί, σέ and the plural is ὑμεῖς, ὑμῶν, ὑμῖν, ὑμάς (nominitive, genitive, dative, and accusative forms, respectively). Of course some languages like French even have formal and familiar forms. Greek and Hebrew just distinguish singular and plural. Greek adds case forms (Hebrew uses prefixes and suffixes to identify the subject and additional suffixes for accusative or genitive pronouns).
Why is this so important? Greek’s ability to distinguish singular from plural along with case distinctions allow the translator and interpreter to identify the “you” with precision as an individual or group, as well as that particular individual or group from the context.