The Beatitudes - "A Portrait of a Kingdom Person" - was Jesus' introduction to His famous Sermon on the Mount. Most people read, or hear taught, the beatitudes as attributes of different persona. Although this has some true merit, an even deeper, and more challenging perspective, is to understand them as Jesus' description of what a true Christ-follower, a "kingdom person," would "look" like!  Great weight for this paradigm is given when we consider that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi would taught in the Hebraic tradition of His people. A part of this tradition is seen in the use of "parallelism," the repeating of an idea or concept using slightly different words but carrying the same meaning for emphasis and to aid the memory in retaining and sharing the idea or concept presented. Remember, Jesus lived in a society that used and honored an oral tradition. They were without the printing press, and no one owned or rarely even had the opportunity to read the text of the Torah. Parallelism would most typically employ the use of couplets - a pair of lines that repeated the same thought, e.g. Psalm 34:1 - "I will bless the LORD at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth."  Therefore, as we engage in the study of the Beatitudes, we will do so first by examining them in the structure of couplets, and then, at the conclusion of our study, we will bring them all together to see how they fit together as one whole "portrait of a Kingdom Person!"  God Bless!