“Filled with the Holy Ghost” in Matthew 5:6 and 3 Nephi 12:6 (Howlers # 24)

In 1978 Krister Stendahl, a prominent Lutheran Leader and scholar of the New Testament was invited by Truman Madsen to read and comment on the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi. Stendahl graciously provided an insightful discussion on the subject which was subsequently published in a collection of essays written by other non–LDS scholars entitled Reflections on Mormonism, a volume which is still of value and well worth reading. In his article, however, Stendahl did take note of 3 Nephi 12:6, which parallels Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” except that the passage in Jesus’ sermon in 3 Nephi adds the phrase “with the Holy Ghost.” Stendahl thought that the additional phrase seemed out of place:

The Greek word behind filled is chortazo, which means “fill the stomach,” as one fills the stomach of animals, not “fill up” in the sense pleroo, which is the biblical term for being filled with the Holy Spirit. it is rather unnatural to use the Greek chortazo for making the addition “with the Holy Spirit” (Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Truman G. Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism, 1978, 142).

The following is taken from John W. Welch, The Sermon At the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount. Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990, 114-15].

Krister Stendahl has suggested one such translation problem in the way the Sermon at the Temple renders the fourth Beatitude. It reads, "Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 12:6). He remarked that it seemed unnatural to associate the Greek word chortazo ("physically filled") with a spiritual filling, since the New Testament Greek usually uses a different word, pleroo, when it speaks of being filled with the Spirit and since chortazo appears in passages about actual feedings of multitudes, eating crumbs, and so on.

The problem, however, is solved when we turn to Old Testament backgrounds of the Sermon. The promise of Jesus, that those who hunger and thirst after "righteousness" (dikaiosunen) shall be filled (chortasthesontai), is closely related to the last two verses of Psalm 17 in the Greek Septuagint (the "LXX"), a rarely mentioned text that Stendahl apparently overlooked. The Psalm contrasts the filling (echortasthesan) of the stomach in uncleanliness with beholding the face of God in righteousness (dikaiosune): "I shall be satisfied [chortasthesomai] when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Here the word chortazo is used to describe one's being filled with the Spirit and being satisfied by beholding the righteousness of God.

The distinctiveness of this use of chortazo in Psalm 17 and Matthew 5:6 only increases the likelihood that Jesus' New Testament audience would have recognized his allusion to these words in the Psalm, a passage that would have been quite familiar to them. It shows that the translation in the Sermon at the Temple does well by making explicit this particular understanding of chortazo as having reference to a spiritual filling by the Holy Ghost, such as that which comes when a person beholds the face of God in righteousness.