What does Matthew chapter 5 verse 3 say?

Answer 1

Matthew 5:3, "blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven", is part of a passage known as the beatitudes. This is believed to come from the hypothetical 'Q' document. The equivalent verse in Luke is at Luke 6:20, but Luke speaks of "the poor", not the poor in spirit.
Normally, Luke is believed to follow 'Q' more faithfully than Matthew, meaning that the original text should be "the poor" and we should wonder why Matthew altered this from a reference to poverty to an unclear statement. The next verses refer to "those who mourn" and "the meek", so Matthew probably had a similar meaning for "the poor in spirit".

However, this passage could be an exception where Luke was the evangelist who changed the original, given Luke's emphasis on the virtues of poverty. However, the order in Luke tends to confirm Luke's "the poor" as the original text. If "the poor in spirit" is, in fact, original to 'Q', we need to look at what 'Q' was trying to say.

Either way, we may never really know what Matthew meant by verse 5:3. The best we can do is accept the theological preference for relating "the poor in spirit" to "the meek".