“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” – Matthew 5:7

This is the second part of my somewhat loose work-through of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.

If you haven’t already, you may want to check out part 1 where I give a basic overview of the Beatitudes: here.

What is Mercy?

The 5^th beatitude in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is: “blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

But what exactly is mercy?

I often teach my youth group students that mercy is “not getting something that you deserve.” And that is true. If you were to search up the word “mercy” on whatever your favorite internet browser might be, that’s the definition you’d likely find.

Yet biblical mercy is much more than what that short sentence conveys.

In the Old Testament, the word that is most often translated as “mercy” into English is the Hebrew word rakcam or rakhamim (רַחֲמִים). This is the word that appears in the often-repeated phrase “the LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Joel 2:13). It’s a word that’s synonymous with compassion or pity. And while it’s primarily used to describe God and his actions toward his covenant people, we do find a few instances in which humans show rakcam to other humans. Joseph feels compassion toward his brothers in Genesis 43:30. The wicked are compassion-less according to Proverbs 12:10. Daniel receives pity from the palace master in Daniel 1:9. And Zechariah exhorts the remnants of Israel to “Administer true justice; show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other” (Zechariah 7:9-10).

What I find very interesting is that rakcam is also a very body-oriented word.

Many Hebrew scholars have noted that this word is linked to the word “belly” or “womb” (rekcem). The two Hebrew terms share the same consonants but contain different vowel pointings. The phrase in Genesis 43:30 where Joseph is “overcome with compassion/mercy” for his brother is the same exact phrase found in 1 Kings 3:26 where a mother pleads with Solomon to not kill her child.

It’s also used in a fascinating wordplay in Isaiah 49:15:

“Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? Can she withhold mercy from the child she has borne? Even if mothers were to forget, I [God] could never forget you!”

In the Old Testament, mercy is a word that’s used to convey something deeply personal. It’s emotional action.

This continues into the language of the New Testament as well. The Greek word splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι) is what is used when describing Jesus’ compassion, or mercy, on the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34), as well as the pity the Samaritan felt on the beaten victim (Luke 10:33). And, again, this word finds its root in the Greek word for “bowels” or “guts.”[1] It denotes an emotion that’s felt deeply within your body.

Elios (ἔλεος), the specific word used in Matthew 5:7 doesn’t have a direct bodily tie-in, but it still indicates active compassion. Two blind men, hoping to have their sight restored, yell out to Jesus to have elios “mercy/pity” on them (Matthew 9:27). When Jesus asked the Pharisees listening to his Good Samaritan parable about who in the story was neighborly, the Pharisee responded by stating that it was the one who showed elios (Luke 10:37).

Interestingly, Luke uses both words right in a row when describing the type of mercy that God displayed within the act of sending the Messiah Jesus:

“Because of our God’s tender (splágchnon) mercy (elios), the dawn will break upon us from on high…” (Luke 1:78)

As we can see, mercy is a deep, bodily feeling.

It’s something that creates, or spurs on action. It doesn’t merely describe a release from punishment; it is also a compassionate response to suffering and hardship.

Mercy & the Kingdoms of the World

Remember that Jesus’ Beatitude list isn’t a prescription for a set of behaviors that believers need to work toward. It’s instead a description of the behaviors that some of Jesus’ followers were already displaying in the first century.

“Mercy” wasn’t a very popular virtue in the eyes of the kingdoms of the world. Rome didn’t typically wish to display mercy, especially towards its enemies. They’d much rather show power or might. But in Jesus’ kingdom, mercy is commendable. And Jesus tells those listening to his sermon that God will show them mercy because of the mercy they’ve shown others.

Showing mercy is still an action that Jesus commends today.

Yet, unsurprisingly, showing mercy is still an action that isn’t looked upon too favorably by the kingdoms of this world. But oddly, there are certain pockets within American Christianity in which the virtue of mercy has come under scrutiny too. Remember when all of those pastors spoke out against the sermon an Episcopalian priest gave in which she asked the President to consider showing mercy to marginalized groups? [2]

Why is this the case?   

It may be because who society-at-large has deemed acceptable to show compassion toward has shifted over the last few decades. As an example, it was very uncommon for folks to empathize with people of the LGBTQ+ community 20 years ago.[3] Nowadays it’s become normative and those who don’t are often ostracized. For those Christians who think more about what they are against instead of what they’re for, this societal shift can seem rather threatening. It has the power to remove “villain” characters from the rhetoric we use to scare people into the pews just like Jesus’ challenge to see Samaritans as neighbors unsettled the Pharisees in Luke 10.

Mercy is a threat to those who are addicted to wrath.

[For more about this, consider this blog I wrote a few years ago: Wrathful Christianity]

Mercy & Deep Emotion  

Mercy can be summed up as not getting something that you deserve.

When we define mercy narrowly like this, we often do so in the context of explaining its soteriological connections – Jesus has offered us a way out of our sin so that we do not have to experience God’s wrath. But we need to remember that God did not save us from our sin out of obligation or in some impassionate manner. No, out of deep emotional love like a mother might feel for her growing child, God came and died in our place.

And again, in its wider biblical usage, mercy is linked with an act of gut-level compassion. Limiting the concept to only soteriology can sometimes take the “human feeling” out of mercy. We may look at someone caught in a web of sin, or even someone down on their luck in other ways, and pray that God might save their soul but feel personally numbed against their suffering in the here-and-now. There’s something broken about that. It is what God is warning us against in passages like Zechariah 7:9-10 and Luke 10.

Mercy is a characteristic found in God’s kingdom.

Let us not be afraid to show others mercy out of deep passion and love.

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[1] https://biblehub.com/greek/4697.htm

[2] https://www.christiancentury.org/news/trump-demands-apology-episcopal-bishop-explains-her-call-mercy-toward-those-living-fear

[3] I am not talking about Christians who claim to either be affirming or non-affirming. Instead, this is just a note about the desire to “step into the shoes of…” others who live completely different lives than we might so that we may gain some understanding about why they think and do what they do.