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poor, noun and adjective   One consistent theme throughout the entire Bible is the obligation of the reader to emulate God’s concern for the poor.  The centrality of  this theme to the message of the Hebrew Scriptures might be more obvious to those fortunate enough to read the texts in the original language.  Hebrew has six words translated into English as poor in the sense of being economically impoverished.  Although these words appear to have been used interchangeably, they have distinct connotations that evolved into metaphors for the poor.

 ani, depressed or afflicted

         If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them.
[Exodus 22:25]

        You deliver a humble people, but your eyes are upon the haughty to bring them down.  [II Samuel 22:28]

          I am lowly and in pain; let your salvation, O God, protect me.  [Psalm 69:29]

          The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord  God of hosts.  [Isaiah 3:14-15] 

anav, depressed
same root as ani

         The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord.  [Psalm 22:26]

        The meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.  [Psalm 37:11]

         Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord's  wrath.  [Zephaniah 2:3] 

dal, weak or thin

         They will give back the fruit of their toil, and will not swallow it down; from the profit of their trading they will get no enjoyment. For they have crushed and abandoned the poor, they have seized a house that they did not build.  [Job 20:18-19]

         Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble.  [Psalm 41:1]

         Because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.  [Amos 5:11] 

ebyon, destitute, a beggar

         You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits.
[Exodus 23:6]

        They should make . . days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.  [Esther 9:22]

         Did I not weep for those whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?  [Job 30:25]

micken, indigent

         Better is a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king, who will no longer take advice.  [Ecclesiastes 4:13]

         There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man.  [Ecclesiastes 9:14-15] 

rush, lacking necessities

        The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.  [Proverbs 13:23]

         Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but one who turns a blind eye will get many a curse.  [Proverbs 28:27]

          If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and right, do not be amazed at the matter; for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them.  [Ecclesiastes 5:8] 

Often for emphasis a writer used two of these metaphors in combination.  In these examples, ani is translated as poor and ebyon as needy.

        You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.  [Deuteronomy 24:14]

         The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly; their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.  [Psalm 37:14-15]

         This was the guilt of your sister Sodom¹: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  [Ezekiel 16:49] 

In much the same way, dal and ebyon are paired, again with ebyon appearing as needy in English.

         The Lord raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.  [I Samuel 2:8]

         Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him.  [Proverbs 14:31]

         Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their husbands, "Bring something to drink!"  [Amos 4:1] 

The translators’ opinion that these words for poor have approximately the same meaning becomes even more obvious in the different ways they have handled the combination of ani and dal.

        They caused the cry of the poor (dal) to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted (ani).  [Job 34:28]

         Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy (dal) from justice and to rob the poor (ani) of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!  [Isaiah 10:1-2]

         I will leave in the midst of you a people humble (ani) and lowly (dal). They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord.  [Zephaniah 3:12] 

On at least one occasion, a poet used four of the metaphors in combination:

          Give justice to the weak (dal) and the orphan;
        maintain the right of the lowly (ani) and the destitute (rush).  Rescue the weak (dal) and the needy (ebyon);
        deliver them from the hand of the wicked.  [Psalm 82:3-4] 

            The early followers of Jesus, writing in Greek, did not have such a rich vocabulary to draw on.  Although they echoed the teachings about the poor found in Hebrew Scripture, they had to express themselves primarily through forms of the word ptochos, which originally suggested the cringing posture of a beggar.  The begging metaphor came to encompass all those who suffered from economic deprivation.

         Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."  [Matthew 19:21]

         A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.^"2  [Mark 12:42-44]

         The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.  [Luke 4:18-19]

         Judas Iscariot said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)  [John 12:5-6]

        You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.  [II Corinthians 8:9]

        Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?  [James 2:5-6] 

Understanding ptochos to mean being a beggar instead of  being merely indigent can help make sense of the aphorism that begins the section in Matthew’s gospel known as the Beatitudes³:

          Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[Matthew 5:3] 

Poor in this passage might be taken as a metaphor from the Hebrew tradition of using ani or anav  to mean lowly or humble.  It is also possible that with this figure of speech Matthew is drawing on the Greek image of the beggar.  Being humble of spirit⁴ is much more passive than being a beggars in the spirit.  The statement may claim that those who desire God’s spirit with the desperation that a hungry beggar seeks food are indeed blessed or fortunate because they are more likely than others to become aware of God’s realm⁵.  That is, those who beg for the spirit may become conscious of a dimension in human experience that is beyond what they can see, hear, taste, or touch.

Or it could be that Matthew was working with the same material that came to Luke’s attention, but that Matthew decided to spiritualize the teaching in order to avoid offending what today we would call middle-class readers. 

         Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  [Luke 6:20] 

The idea that God prefers poor people to rich people, or even to economically comfortable people, has seldom been appealing to those who live above the poverty level.  They tend to read Luke’s version as simply a way of offering hope to the poor so that low-income workers will not quit trying to get ahead.  If the rich and the moderately well off  draw on the Bible to justify⁶ their elevated economic status, they may prefer to put aside Luke and concentrate on the passages that take wealth to be a sign of God’s favor.

         Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he became very wealthy.  [Genesis 26:12-13]

         The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
[Proverbs 10:22]

         The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.  [Job 42:12]

         Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age."  [Mark 10:29-30] 

The followers of Jesus in the present age have to decide how to live with the contradiction in the Bible’s teachings about poverty and wealth.  Even if they feel that their level of economic comfort is a sign of God’s favor, however, they still must come to terms with the accumulated weight of the tradition that demands their concern for the poor.  In today’s complex economy such a concern may lead them beyond providing a free lunch for the homeless to challenging an oppressive political system.  

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1. For Sodomite, see From Literal to Literary, pp. 238-240.
2. For the exploitive economic system revealed in the story of the widow’s mite, see From Literal to Literary, p. 368.
3. For blessed and bless, see From Literal to Literary, pp. 50.
4. For spirit, see From Literal to Literary, pp. 246-248.
5. For kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven, see From Literal to Literary, pp.149-150.
6. For justify and justification, see From Literal to Literary, pp. 146-148.