There is a definite context in the Old World for this particular blessing. The conditions in Israel at the time of Christ were tense. After a number of years of domination by various external nations, Israel was in both a familiar and unfamiliar relationship with another nation. Rome was the new boss, but it wasn’t the same as the old boss. Rome introduced types of taxes and overlords that disrupted the nature of land ownership and created the conditions that were pushing so many Israelites into poverty. In addition to the poverty was the sacrilege that land that God had promised in perpetuity to Israelites was now taken from them and owned by the Romans. The tense conditions were creating political tensions that erupted into warfare. Israel had most recently seen the Maccabean revolt which was temporarily successful, but eventually shut down with dramatic and devastating force. Within slightly over thirty years from the time Jesus was preaching these words, violent rebellion would once again erupt, and the retaliation would be so severe that the beloved Temple would be destroyed.
In the Old World, Jesus was speaking in a political climate that was tremendously volatile. In such a case, there were likely many who were looking for the Triumphant Messiah, the military leader who would vanquish all of God’s (and Israel’s) enemies. The message of the Atoning Messiah was quite different, and it is in those complex and volatile political climes that we should see the blessing on the peacemakers. This was not an admonition to talk nicely to one’s next-door neighbor, but a firm declaration of the way the people ought to act in the face of the Roman domination. Rather than foment rebellion, Jesus blessed the peacemakers.
“We should take the adjective in its more literal, active sense of one who makes peace, who brings reconciliation between opposing parties rather than one who patiently endures in a passive posture of nonresistance for the sake of peace.” (Robert Guelich. A Foundation for Understanding the Sermon on the Mount. Word Publishing, Dallas. 1982, p. 91).
The reversal again comes not in the statements, but against expectations. There were those in the political climate who expected that they would be members of God’s kingdom by creating it through violence and calling upon or creating the Triumphant Messiah whom they expected would lead this earthly political uprising. They intended to be “children of God” through the violent overthrow of the Romans, and the restoration of the political glory of Israel. In contrast, Jesus tells these people that it would rather be the peacemakers who become “the children of God.” Their kingdom was not yet, but it was to come, and the access to that kingdom and position would come as peacemakers, not as revolutionaries.
Book of Mormon Context: The political situation was quite different in the New World. However, in spite of the specific differences, there was yet a context in which the idea of being peacemakers rather than espousing violence would be entirely appropriate. Mesoamerica at this period was developing the cult of war, and the Nephites had had some experience with this. The experience with the Gadianton robbers is punctuated with the concept of “robbings and plunderings” which may be a direct reference to the types of wars that were typical among city-states in Mesoamerica. When the Gadianton robbers were the governing body of the Nephites not that many years previously, the Nephites themselves engaged in such “robbings and plunderings.” Certainly there had been many times in the past when the Nephite polity had been involved in warfare. In that context the reference of this Beatitude would be to eschew that type of cultural warfare.