The Beatitudes of Jesus in different Bibles begin either with "Happy are those..."or "Blessed are those..." I am sure the questions that crossed my mind will be yours too, like: Do the words "happy" and "blessed" mean the same thing or something different? Why did different English translators prefer one word over the other? Which word should be used? All these questions led me to go deeper and study the commentaries and the articles on the Beatitudes of Jesus. Here are my reflections on the words "happy" and "blessed."
Makarios is a Greek word for "happy"/"blessed"
As we know, the gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and the word used for happy or blessed is Makarios. The Greek has two different words for bless:
Eulogeo: to dedicate, and
Makarios: to be happy, which is used in the Beatitudes.
Also, in Latin, there are two different words for bless:
Benedico: to consecrate, and
Beatus: to be happy, and it is from the beatus that we get the name "beatitudes."
So, from the Greek and Latin languages, it seems the right word in the Beatitudes should be "Happy."
Why did some English translators prefer "blessed" instead of "happy"?
Some English translators of the Bible preferred the word "blessed" instead of "happy" for the following four reasons:
1) In the English language, we use only one word, "bless," for both the idea of consecration and the idea of happiness, unlike Greek and Latin, which use two different words.
2) The word "happy" comes from the word "hap", meaning what happens by chance. From the root meaning of "happy," we might describe it as "lucky" or "fortunate." Because of this understanding of "happy" meaning "fortunate" or "lucky," the English translator did not use the word "happy." It was a non-religious term.
3) Happiness has more to do with worldly things. One gets happiness from worldly things. One could say people were fortunate and happy because they possessed things like wealth, fame, power, a life of pleasure, freedom from suffering, family, wisdom, knowledge, etc., and that is what produced happiness. As a result, happiness is more dependent on material things.
4) The word blessed had a rich tradition in the Old Testament that they did not want to trivialize it by using the word happy.
Jesus’ new understanding of happiness
But Jesus, in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, radically changes the conventional concept of happiness, which depends on worldly things. For him, those who are happy in the worldly sense of good fortune and who are free of hardships are not really "blessed." The "blessed" of Jesus are:
1) Those who are happy despite hardships in life. They can be happy despite having nothing, being hungry, humble, afflicted, humiliated, enduring hardships, and persecuted. The circumstances of life may turn against them, yet life cannot take that happiness from them because life has not given it to them.
2) True happiness is not to be understood as a mental or emotional state or concerning one’s feelings, but rather as the result of a divine act in human lives. God is the true source of happiness. The disciple is in a state of happiness when he or she is aware of God’s special blessings, regardless of whether he or she is experiencing good fortune or hardships in life.
3) The blessed of the Beatitude is happy now because of the future blessings awaiting them in heaven. The disciples are not happy because they are free of hardship in life, but rather because they are citizens of the kingdom by following Jesus as they go through hardship in life. Their lives have meaning in the light of the future realisation of the kingdom. It is the future that provides strength for the disciples in the present.
To summaries the inner happiness is God’s gift of blessings granted to those who choose to be disciples. This happiness is a result of the realization of a person’s spiritual poverty (Mt. 5:3) and an acknowledgement of one’s total dependence on God (Mt. 5:5). This is because the disciple has a special relationship with God. Such happiness is not attached to wealth, to having enough, to a good reputation, power, or possession of the goods of this world which may change but to God, the unchangeable and the source of all happiness.