What Does Meek Mean?
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." — Matthew 5:5 CSB
"Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth." — Numbers 12:3 CSB
In the Bible, the word meekness means submitting whatever strength or power we have to God. It’s power under control. In everyday English, meek has come to suggest timidity or passivity. Most people use it as something like a synonym for weakness. The Greek word we translate meek (praeis) describes the character of a powerful animal trained to act under direction. It’s as strong as it ever was, and that strength is channeled outward in service rather than inward for self-service.
A meek person is not someone who has no power. They instead have decided that what they have belongs to God.
Why the English Word Misleads Us
In modern English, calling someone meek is rarely a compliment. Dictionaries define it as quiet and submissive, easily imposed on, without much assertiveness. The word carries the sense of someone who is easily defeated, who stays small, who gets passed over because they don't push back.
With that definition in mind, the Beatitude "blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" sounds almost paradoxical. How would a person with no assertiveness inherit anything at all, much less the earth?
There’s probably more than one issue going on here. First, the meaning of words drift over time. When Jesus said “blessed are the meek” (makarioi hoi praeis) he’s using an expression that had a meaning that his original hearers understood. It was still a surprising meaning—people who control their power generally aren't in position to inherit the earth according to our way of thinking. But Jesus certainly didn’t mean weak.
The second issue is that our English word, “meek” has drifted in meaning over time. When Matthew 5:5 and similar passages were translated into English using the word meek, that word had a meaning that was much more correctly understood than perhaps it is today.
What the Word Actually Meant
The Greek word Jesus used in Matthew 5:5 comes from the word praus, and it’s helpful to understand that this word was used to describe the power possessed by a domesticated horse. Anyone who has spent any time around horses knows that they are anything but weak. Besides being large and intimidating (think about the military applications Jesus’s hearers would have been used to seeing) they are incredibly strong. Even experienced handlers have to be careful when they’re dealing with their horses because of the amazing strength of a horse.
Nevertheless, when a horse is trained and bridled, it can potentially be controlled even by a child. It has learned to accept direction and to channel its strength in submission to the rider's authority. It did not become weaker when it accepted the bridle. Its full power remains.
What has changed is that now the horse’s power is in service to the rider's purpose rather than the animal's own instincts. This character — strength deliberately submitted to authority — is what praus (meekness) describes.
The same word appears in the Greek translation of Numbers 12:3 to describe Moses as the meekest man on the face of the earth. Helpfully, some Bible translations have this word as “humble” instead of “meek”. We’re at least a little more comfortable understanding “humble” and the two ideas are connected.
The humble person isn’t weak or self-deprecating. He just knows who he is in relationship to God and everyone else. The same is true about meekness. Meek people aren’t weak. They just know that their strength is given by God to be used in His service for the blessing of others.
Back to Moses. This Moses who is described in Numbers 12:3 as the meekest man on the face of the earth is the same Moses who confronted Pharaoh, led an entire nation out of slavery, kept them (basically) together in the wilderness for 40 years, and spoke with God face to face. Moses was not weak by any reasonable definition.
But Moses did know who he was in relationship to God and others. He must have remembered what God told him at the burning bush: all his strength was ultimately from God to be used in His service. (Exodus 4:10-12) Moses was strong, and his strength was consistently held under God's direction rather than deployed for his own protection, advancement, or vindication.
The Characteristics of a Meek Person
So what does meekness look like in practice? Meek people are not necessarily sitting quietly, hoping to be overlooked. We know people are meek by what they do with the power and influence they hold.
A meek person serves rather than lords it over others. When Jesus describes himself in Matthew 11:29 as gentle (this is the praus word again) and humble in heart, He says immediately afterward that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The meek person in authority does not use their authority to make life more comfortable for themselves at other people's expense. They use what they have been given in service of the people under their care, whether that is a parent raising children, a manager overseeing a team, or a pastor shepherding a congregation.
A meek person does not retaliate when they are provoked. When Moses's own brother and sister challenged his authority in Numbers 12, he said nothing in his own defense. He did not invoke his position or remind them of what God had given him.
Moses instead relied on God to support him. God heard what had been spoken against Moses (Numbers 12:2) and God acted in his defense (Numbers 12:4). This is not passivity or indifference. It is a deliberate choice to only use your strength as God directs, and to leave the outcome up to Him.
A meek person understands that they are stewards of the power and authority that God has provided. Our strength is not ours to hold onto or to use however we want. This realization allows us to not be anxious about protecting our status because we do not see it as ultimately ours to protect.
What a Meek Person Is Not
The most persistent confusion about meekness is the assumption that it means weakness, and it is worth clearing up directly. A meek person is not someone who lacks strength or who has learned to suppress the position and abilities that God has given them. (Consider Matthew 25:14-30.) The Bible treats meekness and weakness as genuinely different virtues, each honored for different reasons, and confusing or combining them produces a lesser picture of both.
A meek person is also not a doormat. Meekness does not require absorbing mistreatment without limit or pretending that wrongful uses of power are acceptable.
The most famous example of Jesus wielding earthly strength is the story of Jesus overturning tables in the Jerusalem temple. In summary, Jesus seems to have done this in defense of God’s honor and in defense of the people who were trying to worship God, but were being prevented from effectively doing so by the commotion and business that was happening in the temple. (Mark 11, Luke 19, John 2) This is common for meek people: their strength is most often deployed in the service of others.
Meekness in the Relationships You Already Have
Most of us do not think of ourselves as powerful people, but almost all of us hold some form of authority or influence over others. Parents over children. Teachers over students. Employers over employees. Older siblings over younger ones. Spouses over each other. In each of these relationships, there is a daily choice about how to hold what you have been given, and meekness is simply the name for holding power and authority the way Jesus holds His.
The practical question meekness asks is not how to become less assertive or more deferential. The question is whether you are using the power and authority you have been given in service of the people around you or in service of yourself.
Jesus's teaching on this in the Beatitudes is one of the most searching places to begin, and it connects directly to what it means to walk in love the way He walks in it. (1 John 2:6) Jesus said the meek will inherit the earth, and it is worth taking that promise seriously. The person who has genuinely submitted their strength to God has access to something far more durable than whatever they could accumulate through self-promotion, and what they give up in controlling others they more than recover in the kind of life that actually lasts.