BLESSEDNESS.The substantive does not occur either in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] or RV [Note: Revised Version.] of the OT, and has rightly been expunged from the RV [Note: Revised Version.] of Rom_4:6; Rom_4:9, Gal_4:15, where alone it had place in the AV [Note: Authorized Version.] of the NT. Blessed and happy are found in both Testaments as a varying translation of the same Heb. or Gr. word; blessed greatly pre-ponderating. The Biblical blessedness represents a conception of happiness in which the religious relation is taken into account, with its emotions and its issues. In the OT these issues sometimes lie rather in material prosperitylife, long life, wealth, children, outward peacebut it is recognized that the conditions of these are spiritual (Psa_1:1-6), and in not a few instances the inward and spiritual is itself represented as the content of true happiness (e.g. Psa_32:1-11 [but see Psa_32:10], Pro_4:7 [but see Pro_3:2; Pro_3:10]).
In the NT the stress is decisively shifted to the spiritual content of blessedness, which may consist with the most adverse earthly conditions (Mat_5:10-11, Luk_6:22, Jam_1:12). The thought of compensation in future reward is not absent, even from the Beatitudes (esp. in their Lukan form, Luk_6:20-26); but the reward is clearly only the consummation of a blessedness already attained by the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, etc. In the teaching of Jesus the summum bonum appears now as place in the Kingdom of God, now as eternal life (e.g. Mat_25:34, Mar_10:17; Mar_10:23, Joh_3:3-5; Joh_4:14), and both are described as a present possession (Luk_17:20-21, Joh_3:36).
Finally, in the Johannine writings the religious relation, already in the OT an essential condition of blessedness (e.g. Psa_2:12; Psa_33:12), is made supreme and in itself all-sufficing. Eternal life is personal union with Christ, revealer of the Father, by trust and fellowship (e.g. Joh_5:24; Joh_6:54; Joh_17:3, 1Jn_5:11-20). For so man becomes partaker of the life of Him who is Himself the blessed God (1Ti_1:11; 1Ti_6:15).
S. W. Green.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
bles?ed-nes: This translation of μακαρισμός, makarismós (a word signifying ?beatification? or ?the ascription of blessing?), is used but three times, in Rom_4:6, Rom_4:9, and Gal_4:15, in the King James Version only. In the first two instances it refers to the happy state or condition of a man to whom Christ's righteousness is imputed by faith, and in the last to a man's experience of that condition. See HAPPINESS.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.