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Mat_5:8. Οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ ] denotes the moral blamelessness of the inner life, the centre of which is the heart, in conformity with the view that πᾶσα ἁμαρτία ῥύπον ἐντίθησι τῇ ψυχῇ , Origen, Hom, in Joh. lxxiii. 2. Comp. Psa_73:1; Psa_24:4; 1Ti_1:5; 1Ti_3:9; Plat. Crat. p. 403 E, ψυχὴ καθαρά , p. 405 B, al. How this purity is actually attained (by justification and the sanctification of believers) remains even now left over to the future.
τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται ] certainly refers, according to the analogy of all the other beatitudes, to the αἰὼν μέλλων , but is not (in accordance with the Oriental idea of great good fortune in being an intimate friend of the king’s, 1Ki_10:8; Est_1:14) to be taken as a typical designation of the Messianic happiness in general (Kuinoel, Fritzsche, and others), nor as an inward seeing of God (knowledge, becoming conscious of God, inmost fellowship with God), as de Wette also understood it to mean direct spiritual fellowship with God here on earth and there in heaven; but, as the words do not allow us to understand it differently: of the seeing of God who gloriously reveals Himself in the Messiah’s kingdom, a seeing which will be attained in the condition of the glorified body, Rev_7:15; Rev_22:4; 1Jn_3:2; Heb_12:14. Passages like Exo_33:20, Joh_1:18; Joh_6:46, Col_1:15, Rom_1:20, 1Ti_6:16, are not opposed to it, because they refer to seeing with the earthly eye. The seeing of God, who, although Spirit (Joh_4:24), has His essential form of manifestation (Php_2:6), will one day be the consummation of the προσαγωγή obtained through Christ (Rom_5:2). Comp. Clem. Hom. xvii. 7.