These verses, the opening phrases of the Sermon on the Mount, hold some of the Bible’s most beautiful and best-loved poetry. Part of its beauty, though, lies in the fact that the meaning is not quite clear. What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? What does it mean to “inherit the earth” or to be called “the children of God.” The fact that there are many possibilities causes us to linger over the phrases, pondering them.

Understood in the internal sense, these blessings show the spiritual states of the various people who could be receptive of the Lord and the new church he was launching. On a deeper level it shows that states within ourselves that can lead each of us to the Lord and to a deeper understanding of His truth today.

The “poor in spirit” are those who know little about spiritual things, but want to learn. Those that “mourn” are those who want to be good, but see no desire for good in their church. The “meek” are those who love to care for and serve others. To “hunger and thirst after righteousness” shows a desire to rise up, to learn about what’s good and to come to desire it.

The “merciful” are those who love their fellow people. The “pure in heart” are those who love only what is good. “Peacemakers” are those who are in harmony with the Lord, gaining knowledge from Him and wanting what He wants. And to be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” means acting out of love and care for others, even though you are condemned by others for it.

There’s something of a progression there, from those who simply want to learn to those who actively want to be good people to those who actually are good and acting out of love for others. None of it, though, describes those who are learned in the Jewish traditions, or even necessarily observant in terms of ritual; they are, rather, those who sense that it is possible to be a good person and are willing to make the effort.

And they are promised their rewards! The “kingdom of heaven” is the understanding the angels have of the Lord; “comfort” represents ideas that lead to the good of life; “inheriting the earth” is a state of loving others and being loved by them in return. The overall message is simple: If we truly wish to be good people, and are willing to let the Lord teach us how to be good people, we will end up filled with love and wisdom from Him. And that’s what we need to focus on: The desire to be good, and openness to ideas from the Lord. It’s not about ritual and intellectual “correctness”; it’s about ideas that lead us to be good.

But what of being reviled and persecuted? This depicts temptation, when the hells attack our newborn good desires and true understanding. They cause us to doubt our ability to be truly good and question the ideas that are leading us. And they can do it in many ways, reminding us of the fun we’ll be missing or reminding us of all the bad things we’ve ever done to render us hopeless. They will even attack the Bible and the ideas that come to us through it from the Lord; that’s represented by the idea that people also attacked the prophets.

These states, however, are blessed in their own way; only by battling these evils, which are rooted inside us, can we finally fully embrace the good life we have been striving for. That’s why it is pictured last, and that's why it leads to the “great reward” in heaven.

15. To show that the prophetic books of the Word of the Old Testament are in many places unintelligible apart from their spiritual meaning, I should like to cite just a few. This from Isaiah, for example:

Then Jehovah will rouse up a whip against Assyria, like the blow against Midian on the rock Oreb; his staff will be stretched out over the sea, and he will lift it against the way of Egypt. And it will happen on that day that his burden will depart from your shoulder and his yoke from your neck. He will come against Aiath; he will cross over into Migron. He will command his weapons against Michmash; they will cross Mabara. Gibeah will be a place of lodging for us; Ramah will tremble with fear; Gibeah of Saul will flee. Wail with your voice, daughter of Gallim! Listen to Laishah, unfortunate Anathoth! Madmenah will wander; the inhabitants of Gebim will gather together. In Nob is it still a day for standing firm? The mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem, will move its hand. Jehovah will cut down the tangled places in the forest with iron, and Lebanon will fall by means of the Mighty One. (Isaiah 10:24-34)

All we find here are names from which we can draw no sense without the aid of the spiritual meaning, in which all the names in the Word point to matters of heaven and the church. We gather from this meaning that this passage refers to the ruin of the whole church by information that corrupted every true teaching and supported every false teaching.

[2] In another passage from the same prophet,

On that day the rivalry of Ephraim will wane and the enemies of Judah will be cut off. Ephraim will not compete with Judah, and Judah will not trouble Ephraim, but they will swoop down upon the shoulder of the Philistines toward the sea. Together they will plunder the children of the east. Edom and Moab will be [subject to] the stretching out of their hand. Jehovah will curse the tongue of the sea of Egypt and will shake his hand over the river with the vehemence of his spirit; and he will strike it into seven streams, to make a pathway [that can be trodden] with sandals. Then there will be a highway for the rest of his people, the remnant from Assyria. (Isaiah 11:11, 13-16)

Here too, only those who know what these particular names mean will see anything divine, when in fact this is about the Lord’s Coming and what will happen then, as is perfectly obvious from the first ten verses of the chapter. So without the aid of the spiritual meaning, who would see what these statements in this sequence mean, namely, that if people are caught up in false beliefs because of ignorance but have not let themselves be led astray by evil tendencies, they will find their way to the Lord, and that the church will then understand the Word, so that their false beliefs will no longer harm them?

[3] It is much the same in other passages where there are no names, as in Ezekiel:

Thus says the Lord Jehovih: “Son of Humanity, say to every winged bird and to every beast of the field, ‘Gather and come. Gather yourselves from all around for my sacrifice, which I am sacrificing for you, a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, so that you may eat flesh and drink blood. You will eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the rulers of the earth. You will eat fat until you are full and drink blood until you are drunk, from my sacrifice, which I am sacrificing for you. At my table you will eat your fill of horses and chariots and the mighty and every man of war. This is how I will establish my glory among the nations.’” (Ezekiel 39:17-21)

If readers do not know from the spiritual sense the meaning of a sacrifice, of flesh and blood, of horses, chariots, the mighty, and men of war, all they can conclude is that they are going to eat and drink things like this. The spiritual meaning, though, tells us that eating flesh and drinking blood from a sacrifice that the Lord Jehovih offers on the mountains of Israel means taking divine goodness and divine truth into ourselves from the Word. This passage is about summoning everyone to the Lord’s kingdom, specifically the Lord’s establishment of a church among the nations. Can anyone fail to see that flesh does not mean flesh and that blood does not mean blood in this text? The same holds true for drinking blood until we are drunk and eating our fill of horses, chariots, the mighty, and every man of war.

There are passages like this in a thousand other places in the prophets.