The Beatitudes in Aramaic
Jesus preached the Beatitudes in Aramaic, on a hillside above the Sea of Galilee, to a crowd who heard them in their own tongue. The Gospels record them in Greek, but the Peshitta, the ancient Syriac Bible of the Maronite Church, preserves them in Syriac, a dialect of the same Aramaic Jesus spoke. Praying them in that language returns them to something close to their first sound.
Each Beatitude opens with a single Aramaic word: Tubwayhun. It means "blessed are" or "how happy are," and it falls at the start of each line like a bell. Below is the full text of the Beatitudes in Syriac Aramaic, with a transliteration so you can read them aloud, the traditional English, and a line-by-line look at what the Aramaic carries.
The First Beatitude in Syriac
Matthew 5:3, in the Peshitta script, reads right to left:
ܛܘܒܝܗܘܢ ܠܡܣܟܢܐ ܒܪܘܚ ܕܕܝܠܗܘܢ ܗܝ ܡܠܟܘܬܐ ܕܫܡܝܐ
Tubwayhun l'meskeneh b'rukh, d'dilhun hi malkutha dashmaya.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
The Beatitudes in Aramaic — Transliteration
The full text of Matthew 5:3-12, transliterated from the Peshitta. Pronunciation varies between the Syriac traditions, so this transliteration is a close guide rather than a single fixed standard. The word Tubwayhun is also written Tuvayhun, since the Syriac letter is softened in speech.
Tubwayhun l'meskeneh b'rukh, d'dilhun hi malkutha dashmaya.
Tubwayhun l'avileh, d'henun nethbayun.
Tubwayhun l'makikheh, d'henun nerthun l'ar'a.
Tubwayhun l'aylin d'kaphnin watzhen l'khenutha, d'henun nesb'un.
Tubwayhun l'mrahmaneh, d'alayhun nehwun rahmeh.
Tubwayhun l'aylen d'daken b'lebhun, d'henun nehzun l'Alaha.
Tubwayhun l'avday shlama, d'vnaw d'Alaha nethqrun.
Tubwayhun l'aylen d'ethradephu metul kenutha, d'dilhun hi malkutha dashmaya.
Tubwayhun emath d'makhasdin l'khun w'radpin l'khun, w'amrin alaykun kul mela bisha metulath b'daglutha.
Haydeyn khdaw wa'rwazu, d'agrekhun sagi bashmaya.
The Beatitudes in English
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
What "Blessed" Means in Aramaic
The word that opens every Beatitude is Tubwayhun, from the root tuba, which means blessedness, good fortune, or deep happiness. It is the Aramaic cousin of the Hebrew ashrei, the word that opens the Psalms ("Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked"), and it carries the same weight.
Tubwayhun is not a wish or a command. It is a declaration. Jesus is not saying "try to be poor in spirit so that you may be blessed." He is announcing that the poor in spirit already stand in God's favor, that the mourners are already held, that the merciful are already inside the mercy of God. The Beatitudes are good news before they are instruction.
The Syriac keeps a rhythm the English loses. Each line begins with the same drumbeat, Tubwayhun, and ends with a promise introduced by d', "because." Blessed are they, because. Blessed are they, because. The form itself is a kind of music, and the Maronite Church has chanted it for centuries.
Line by Line
Tubwayhun l'meskeneh b'rukh — "Blessed are the poor in spirit"
The Aramaic meskeneh means the poor, the needy, those with nothing to fall back on. "Poor in spirit" is not a poverty of feeling but a poverty of self-reliance: the soul that knows it depends entirely on God. To such a soul the kingdom already belongs.
Tubwayhun l'avileh — "Blessed are those who mourn"
Avileh are the grieving, those in mourning. The promise, nethbayun, "they shall be comforted," uses a word for the deep consolation that only God gives. For the prayers of that consolation, see the prayer for grief.
Tubwayhun l'makikheh — "Blessed are the meek"
Makikheh means the humble, the gentle, the lowly. It is not weakness but the strength that does not need to dominate. To the meek is promised the earth itself, l'ar'a.
Tubwayhun l'aylin d'kaphnin watzhen l'khenutha — "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness"
The verbs are physical: kaphnin, to be hungry, and tzhen, to be thirsty. Khenutha is righteousness, or justice. The blessing is on those who want what is right the way a starving body wants bread.
Tubwayhun l'mrahmaneh — "Blessed are the merciful"
Mrahmaneh, the merciful, shares its root with rahmeh, mercy, and with rahem, the womb, the same root family that gives the Arabic rahma. Mercy in this language is not a transaction. It is the compassion of a mother for what she has carried.
Tubwayhun l'aylen d'daken b'lebhun — "Blessed are the pure in heart"
Daken b'lebhun, pure or clean in their heart. The promise is the greatest of all: nehzun l'Alaha, "they shall see God." In the Syriac tradition, purity of heart is the single condition of the vision of God, the goal of the whole spiritual life.
Tubwayhun l'avday shlama — "Blessed are the peacemakers"
Avday shlama means the makers, or workers, of shlama, peace. Shlama is the same word a Maronite uses to greet a neighbor and to end a prayer, the cousin of the Hebrew shalom and the Arabic salaam. The peacemakers will be called bnaw d'Alaha, sons of God.
Tubwayhun l'aylen d'ethradephu metul kenutha — "Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness"
The eighth and final Beatitude returns to the promise of the first, the kingdom of heaven, closing the circle. The Maronite Church, which has known persecution across its whole history and whose newest saints, the Massabki Brothers, died for their faith, has prayed this Beatitude as its own.
A Note on the Popular Mistranslations
If you search for the Beatitudes in Aramaic, you will find translations that render Tubwayhun as "ripe are those who," "aligned with the One," or "tuned to the source." These come from the devotional writings of Neil Douglas-Klotz, especially his book Prayers of the Cosmos, and they are best understood as meditations, not translations.
Aramaic roots carry a wide field of meaning, and Douglas-Klotz draws out every mystical possibility a root might hold. It is a creative spiritual exercise. But it is not how the words were used, and it is not what the Peshitta says. The Syriac Christians who have prayed these words for two thousand years, the Maronites among them, heard Tubwayhun as it plainly means: "blessed are," "happy are."
The real Aramaic is not less beautiful for being accurate. It ties the Beatitudes to the Psalms, to the whole tradition of Hebrew blessing, and to the ordinary speech of Galilee. There is no need to invent a hidden Gospel. The plain one is enough.
The Beatitudes in the Maronite Tradition
The Maronite Church still worships in Syriac, the language of the Peshitta, and the Beatitudes are woven through its liturgy and its spirituality. The saints of Lebanon lived them: the poverty of spirit of Saint Charbel in his hermitage, the mourning and meekness of Saint Rafqa in her suffering, the peacemaking of the monks who kept prayer alive in the mountains.
To hear more of the language behind the Gospel, read the Our Father in Aramaic and what language Jesus spoke. To understand the Bible the Maronite Church prays from, see the Peshitta.
Frequently Asked Questions
What language did Jesus give the Beatitudes in?
Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount in Aramaic, the everyday language of first-century Galilee. The Gospels record the Beatitudes in Greek, but the Peshitta preserves them in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic closely related to the language Jesus spoke. Each Beatitude begins with the Aramaic word Tubwayhun.
What does "blessed" mean in Aramaic?
The word is Tubwayhun (also written Tuvayhun), from the root tuba, meaning blessedness, good fortune, or deep happiness. It is best rendered "blessed are" or "how happy are." It is the same idea as the Hebrew ashrei and the Greek makarioi. It does not mean "ripe" or "attuned."
Are the "ripe are those" translations of the Beatitudes accurate?
No. Translations that render the Beatitudes as "ripe are those who" or "aligned with the One" come from Neil Douglas-Klotz's devotional reinterpretations, not from scholarly translation. The Peshitta Tubwayhun straightforwardly means "blessed are" or "happy are."
How many Beatitudes are there?
There are eight Beatitudes in the traditional count (Matthew 5:3-10), each a short blessing on a disposition of the heart. A ninth verse (Matthew 5:11-12) extends the eighth, blessing those persecuted for Christ's sake, and is sometimes counted as a ninth Beatitude.
What is the Peshitta?
The Peshitta is the standard Syriac Bible, used by the Maronite Church and the other Syriac Christian traditions since the early centuries of Christianity. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, so the Peshitta preserves the Gospels in a language very close to the one Jesus spoke. Read more about the Peshitta.
See also: The Our Father in Aramaic. What Language Did Jesus Speak? The Peshitta. Lebanon in the Bible. The Maronite Tradition.