An additional argument that Pennington's uses in defense of his translation of makarios as "flourishing" concerns the contrast between asre and brk, another Hebrew word translated as "blessed" in the Old Testament.
As Pennington points out, the Hebrew rook brk occurs 327 times in the Old Testament as a verb. An additional 71 times brk occurs as noun. This tilt toward the verb is significant. Just as significant is how brk shows up heavily in the Torah, Genesis and Deuteronomy especially.
Why are these contrasts significant? Recall how asre was a descriptive of a flourishing life. Brk, by contrast, is an action, generally an action of God's. Also, recall how asre was concentrated in the Wisdom tradition. Brk, by contrast, is strongly associated with the Torah, the stories that focus upon God's covenantal relationship with Israel and the patriarchs.
All this leads Pennington to conclude that while both asre and brk are translated as "blessed" they have fundamentally different connotations. Specifically, brk refers to a blessing/reward conferred by God upon a faithful person. Asre, as described in the last post, speaks to something more intrinsic and integral, the state of flourishing of one who has been "blessed." Here's Pennington making the contrast:
[T]here is a basic and significant distinction maintained between the (verb) "blessing," which is an active word and whose subject is typically God, and the state of those who receive this blessing or flourishing, described as the asre person. The one who pronounces an asherism (or macarism), such as Psalm 1 ("How happy is the one...") is not "blessing" others in the brk sense of initiating, effecting, or inaugurating favor. Rather, asre is an exclamatory description of the state of happiness, privilege, or fortune that is upon someone as observed by someone else, a bystander, not the one providing or initiating the blessing. Asherims/marcarisms are not "words of power" or statements about God actively favoring someone; they do not occur in ritual settings, and one never prays for a macarism/asherism nor refers to oneself as asre.
Can you see the distinction? I can "bless" you. That action, blessing you, is brk. I can also look upon people who are flourishing and thriving and describe them as "blessed." That's asre. The contrast is that brk is an act of conferral whereas asre is a description of a flourishing state of existence. Biblically, of course, the two are intimately related. Receiving God's blessing (brk) creates a state of blessedness (asre).
This contrast is critical to Pennington's choice to translate makarios in the Beatitudes as "flourishing." The traditional translation of makarios as "blessed" obscures the contrast between asre and brk. Specifically, is Jesus conferring a blessing (brk) upon the meek and the pure in heart? Or, is Jesus describing meekness and purity of heart as a state of human flourishing (asre)? As we learned in the last post, makarios describes asre rather than brk. Thus, concludes Pennington, the Beatitudes are describing states of human flourishing and well-being.
