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Matthew 5:6
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
This verse is part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, a foundational teaching delivered to his disciples and a larger crowd. It is one of the Beatitudes, a series of pronouncements on who is truly blessed by God.
What does truly hungering and thirsting for a just world look like in your daily life?
Then — the setting
Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, including this beatitude, likely around 30 CE, to Jewish and Gentile audiences in Galilee. The term 'righteousness' (Greek: dikaiosyne) in a Jewish context would have evoked not merely personal piety but also covenant faithfulness, right relationship with God, and ethical action that brought about justice and order in society. For many, this hunger and thirst would have been intensely felt under Roman occupation and local injustices, longing for God's promised kingdom where true justice (tzedek) and peace (shalom) would prevail.
Across the Testaments
The Old Testament is replete with calls for justice (mishpat) and righteousness (tzedek), often depicted as integral to God's character and the ideal for human society. Prophets like Amos, Isaiah, and Micah repeatedly condemn injustice and exploitation, urging Israel to pursue a societal shalom—a holistic peace, well-being, and flourishing—that is rooted in right relationships and equitable structures. This beatitude in Matthew synthesizes this Old Testament longing into a personal and communal yearning for a state of affairs where God's justice is fully realized, promising that such a deep desire will ultimately be satisfied or 'filled' through God's redemptive work. The New Testament connects this 'filling' with the coming of God's kingdom and the transformative work of the Holy Spirit.
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Read alongside it
This passage links true fasting with actively working for justice and liberation for the oppressed.
The Psalmist's longing for God is expressed with the metaphor of a deer thirsting for water, paralleling the intense desire in Matthew 5:6.
Mary's Magnificat echoes the theme of the hungry being filled, specifically in the context of God's justice inverting social hierarchies.
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