How wE don't pray the lord's prayer
Are We Covered?
In the very first line of the Lord's Prayer, we have had a barrier put up in English. (We will see who is responsible for this later.) The barrier is a translation inconsistency which might have the effect of inhibiting God's children from directly speaking to their Father. This issue centers around the use of the vocative case in koine Greek, the grammar case used for direct address.
In an example English sentence, "John, come here!", the proper noun "John", is the noun of direct address. The command is addressed directly to John. In the same sentence, but in koine Greek, "John" would be in the vocative case. In Greek a vocative noun has a slightly different form. As in English, definite articles often precede nouns as in "the floor" and "the king", and so Greek articles before vocative nouns are also vocative and often translated in English by an "O", as in, "O Lord!"
Vocatives can be translated into English in two basic ways depending on the context. First, the Greek vocative case may be used for formal, respectful direct address and is usually translated in an English New Testament as an "O", as in "O Lord" or "O King". You might also think of it as a much more reverent form of the "O" in the expletive "OMG".
Second, the vocative case can also be translated, "O-you" or "O-one(s)" in an informal or confrontational context, as in Mt. 6:30 - "O you [ or 'O ones'] trusting little...". Although the difference between singular and plural in Greek is indicated by different singular and plural word forms, an English speaker must use "ones" instead of just "you" to make the plural clear in English --even though it sounds a bit stiff. In much of the southeastern USA, the plural vocative form is "y'all" (from "you-all"), which I think is an elegant solution, y'all.
The Greek vocative/direct address form is much simpler than English translations of it. English translation style would determine whether "O" , or "You" or "One(s)" or "You-ones" or "O You(-ones)", make it the clearest concerning how many are being addressed and how formal the context is. If current English had a vocative case, it would cover: "Your Majesty", "Ladies and Gentlemen", "Folks", "People", "Guys", "Excuse me", "Mate", "Hey", "Dude", "Bro" and "Yo" -- and I am sure there are more that I don't know and more to come.
The Greek vocative case is used hundreds of times in the NT, including in Matthew 6:9 at the beginning of The Lord's Prayer, which is addressed directly to Father[-YHWH]. However, in the KJV English translation of that verse, there is no indication at the beginning that the first two words, "Our Father", are being spoken directly to Father(-YHWH)! We only assume it because we already have knowledge of it. Granted, we do get a minimal clue when we read, "Our Father..." , but the next "who is in Heaven" puts us back on the road of confusion, making us think we are praying about Him and not to Him.
In the case of the Lord's Prayer in written English translation we don't get the most important information at the beginning where it can help us know if the words are to be spoken to someone or about someone. How can we think we are praying to God when it looks and sounds like we have begun to talk about God? In spoken English, "Our father came back from the store" starts exactly the same way as "Our Father who is in Heaven,..."
English readers do not know at a first hearing, at the beginning of the prayer (where any direct address should be indicated), whether the "Our Father" is being spoken to our Father, or about our Father! The ancient Greeks made it conveniently clear from the beginning. They knew that what they wanted to say should be tailored to whom they were speaking, and so they used the vocative case to indicate just that.
Now, AS IF to then confirm to English readers that the first line of the prayer is a sentence about God and not to God, we have the English translation again immediately against the Greek vocative in the phrase translated, "who is in ..." when it really says, "O One in ..."! In a traditional English Lord's Prayer we do not have any direct address at the beginning where it belongs. However, it's there in the Greek two times.
Perhaps the early English translators translated it that way because they didn't know biblical Greek well enough, or were translating from Latin, or because they may even have thought that it was improper to address God directly. The written Greek vocative case allows us to see it, and the correct meanings ignored in the written English Lord's Prayer for His children makes it an important issue! Here's why...
Yeshua wanted His disciples to know, with certainty, that they could pray directly to Father(-YHWH). In John 16:26-27, Yeshua said: "In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request Father(-YHWH) for you; for Father(-YHWH) Himself loves you because you have loved Me, and have come to trust that I came out from The Mighty One."
So when Yeshua taught His disciples how to pray to our Father by actually praying the prayer Himself, He used words in Hebrew or Aramaic which, when translated into Greek, were put in the vocative case twice at the beginning. If we want to understand the words of His prayer correctly, they need to be translated fully and accurately. The TENT translation always makes this a priority, fully translating all deistic functions and "sacred names" (nomina sacra), implied or abreviated in the Greek, but commonly left out of New Testament translations in English.
So in MT6:9-13 the TENT translation has:
O Father...Ours! O One in the spiritual realms [of YHWH], Your Name/identity/reputation be seen as pure.
Your Rulership come and Your will come to be, as in Heaven, so on earth.
Give us this daylight for our next day's bread, and forgive us our debts [fig.: wrongs/failures in God's sight, i.e. sins of commission/omission] just like we forgive our debtors [fig.: ones who wrong/fail us]. Then You would not carry us into testing. Instead, pull us away from the bad thing / the bad one / our bad.
Why is the Lord's Prayer so misunderstood in English translations?
When I studied The Lord's Prayer in Matthew, I found out that the last bit, the doxology, was added later. I began to wonder, ‘Why did later Church leadership add that ending, the one that appears in most of our English Bibles? It seems to indicate that Church leadership at some point felt it necessary to wrap it up with a grand closing, as the King James Version has it: "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Did they feel there was something missing or something that needed to be closed off there? What was it? Why add the doxology?
If you look at the last line before the doxology in Matthew and you know the Greek grammar, you can see how it is left in a strange way, with three valid translation possibilities. The Greek grammar in this line in Matthew allows these three different translations -- “the bad one” (masculine article), “the bad thing” (neuter article - Greek form identical to the masculine article here), and “our bad”, with what I call the "possessive article", commonly translated from idiomatic Greek by an appropriate English possessive pronoun, "my, your(sing.), her, his, its, our, your(pl.), their.
This pleasing-to-English-ears transformation of a Greek article into an English possessive pronoun occurs in many places in the NT, such as in John 5:20 - "...Father loves the/HIS Son," or in Rom 7:2 - "...the/HER husband". This Greek "possessive article" functions as a translation helper in English. In Jn 5:20 quoted in the previous sentence, its translation as a possessive pronoun appropriate to the context, refers to the noun 'Father' and modifies the noun 'Son'.
In the Lord's Prayer, because of the Greek grammar, Yeshua could be saying any or all three of the following: “Pull us away from (the one bad / the thing bad / our) bad.” Then He stops. Period. End of prayer. Did Yeshua stop there to imply all three translations were valid? If not, then why not narrow it down and close it off with a simple “Amen”? An 'Amen' is included only with the later added doxology. Remember: the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament do not contain any "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen" here.
Whether by Yeshua, or Matthew, or the earliest Greek translator of Matthew that we have, it is left hanging. In koine Greek this is significant. There is something meant to be missing there. Any native koine Greek speaker would have understood that. A common way biblical Greek gets the reader's/hearer's attention is to leave something out. You can find this Greek function in the common ellipsis, in the anacoluthon, and similarly, I believe, with the article as a possessive pronoun. The function of its unexpectedness signals Greek readers and speakers to give attention to it.
If all three of those acceptable translation meanings are supported by Greek grammar, then how can we choose only one as the "valid" one for the translation? Counter question: Why do we think it is an unresolved problem? Why can't it be all three? Yeshua was the most careful and exact speaker who ever lived. So what was He saying to His students that day, which caused Matthew to write down His prayer in a way that eventually left those three possibilities floating in the air for later Greek readers?
When Yeshua spoke the prayer, He was probably not speaking in Greek, but in Aramaic or Hebrew. Did He indicate these three possibilities also in His original language? My answering that question would be speculation. However since, as He tells us, He spoke what the Father gave Him to speak, we must trust that He communicated whatever His students heard and eventually wrote down.
In English we call this prayer the Lord’s Prayer because He created it. Or should we call it, ‘The Disciple’s Prayer’, or ‘The Student’s Prayer’ to indicate by whom He meant it to be said? I remember reading in my studies of Church history that there is an ancient mention of the early Church reciting the Lord's Prayer to cause demons to flee. We should make every effort to understand what our Lord's commanded prayer says and doesn’t say because He said it for our use and benefit. In MT 6:9, He tells His students in the imperative voice, the voice of command, "Pray this way!" It wasn't a suggestion.
Lord, make it real for us and not just some sort of ritual chant we say so we can feel we’ve done our duty. Thank You, Yeshua, for waiting for us, for leaving Your words hanging there in the air on “our bad”. Thank You for indicating to us the perfect time that Your Body in unity can be cleansed through our heartfelt public declaration of the prayer You gave us to pray.
Lord, we need so very much to ask You to pull us away from the bad we might do when we stray even half a step from the Way You have for each of us. Please forgive us for the bad that many, if not most of us, did in the last 24 hours, (or in the last seven days if we only pray the Lord’s prayer once a week in church)….Oh! Wait!….when DO we pray the Lord’s Prayer? Has God's enemy actually managed to obliterate it from Church life? Indeed, it mostly seems to "survive" in many denominations only as a ritual chant! Do children in Sunday school know what it means even when they can recite it?
How Did This Happen?
Church has become so comfortable and fun, hasn’t it? We have coffee bars and movie nights! Like kids again we get excited by the "caped crusaders" and the characters with superpowers like Superman, Spider-Man and Ironman! I have invented a new title for a super-villain, ...Religion-Man! I call God's Adversary ‘Religion-Man’ because the Church is his special playground. Religion-Man doesn't want you to ever feel uncomfortable or sad in your church, that is, if you are an affluent westerner.
If there is one thing Religion-Man does NOT want in a church setting, it’s a regular time set aside as an opportunity to confess and ask forgiveness among our spiritual family, like when some people might actually cry over their wrongdoings, or not...tears are not a requirement, but confession and repentance are. Because we might feel uncomfortable doing this, we tend to skip this part and go right to the testimony time, that is, if Religion-Man hasn't yet "suggested" we can dispense with that as well. But Scripture says:
Therefore acknowledge to one another your wrongs/failures and pray for one another so that you could be healed. The prayer of a person seen as righteous (by-God) [i.e. repenting whenever needed], being active, has strength. [James 5:16]
How do we dare march off to spiritual battle in the world without having submitted to the repentance, the admission of guilt, which God waits to hear for our, at least weekly if not daily, cleansing? After Yeshua spoke His model prayer, did He dismiss the disciples to go off alone to pray? No! Yeshua was the greatest teacher on the planet. After praying "His" prayer, He summed it up for them. He said that if we forgive others, our Father will also forgive us, but if we do not forgive, neither will our Father forgive us. Let that sink in.
Who is going to remind us to confess our sins and pray for one another and provide us with the opportunity to do that, if not our own church leadership? That’s why I believe that ancient account of demons fleeing. When the o-r-i-g-i-n-a-l Lord’s Prayer was recited in the early Church gatherings and after the last line was prayed, ending on "the bad thing/the bad one/our bad", I'm sure some if not all were quietly or loudly repenting. That is how faith/trust begins and continues and how true revival starts.
If we do not start with repentance for wrong behavior or thought, how can we follow Him? He looked beyond His cross and He wants us to look there as well, so that where He is, we may be also. But we need to take the road with Him, that less traveled road, the way of self-sacrifice.
However, to prevent our considering this key, Religion-Man has not only tried to steal repentance from the Lord's Prayer, he has often successfully removed repentance from baptism! A long time ago I thought it was only the Roman Catholic Church that instituted infant baptism. ‘Religion-Man’ told parents that their babies would go to "hell" if they died before having been baptised into the Church. This is not biblical. How can infants obey the Word of God to, as Peter commanded, "repent and be baptised, every one of you in the name of Anointed Yeshua, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Pure Spirit [of-YHWH]" (Acts 2:38 ).
I did an internet search and found: "Branches of Christianity that practice infant baptism include Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and among Protestants, several denominations: Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and other Reformed denominations, Methodists and some Nazarenes, and the Moravian Church." Historically, the Anabaptists, those believing that infant baptism was unbiblical, were hunted down and exterminated for this belief. Religion-Man saw to it.
I suspect most adult self-professed "Christians", saved or not, think that baptism is just a ritual sprinkling or dunking, at the most with a few words about believing Jesus/Yeshua has saved them. The biblical account is a bit different. John the Baptist came preaching a “baptism of repentance,” a confession and an immersion signifying that the person had repented or was repenting -- turning away from their “bad” and turning to God for cleansing.
It was public in the sense that the person was taking a stand and publicly owning their "badness" and asking God to forgive them. How else will unbelievers observing this event be convinced of the "Good News" that they are sinners and that their sins can be forgiven? Of course that particular purpose is defeated when we sequester baptismal ceremonies inside a building where unbelievers are not usually found.
The one being baptised doesn’t have to list all their sins. It is simply admitting that, just like any human being, one has become guilty before God and in need of His forgiveness. It would be good for the whole gathering to confess their need together. It's not only about one person. It's about the whole Body of Messiah.
Here's an example prayer which might be prayed once in unison by the church before the baptisms (as a whole, not before each one):
"O Father, You know everything I've ever said or done or thought.
Your Son gave His life for me, so please forgive my wrongs and failures, and help me do what's right.
Pick me up when I fall. Correct me when I'm wrong. Make me the new person You want me to be.
Help me run to You for forgiveness, and help me obey Your Word.
Thank You, Father YHWH! Your Name be praised forever!"
Let’s also seriously consider inviting the original "Lord’s Prayer" back into our lives, individually and corporately. Yeshua left it hanging as an open-ended prayer pointing to “our bad” and therefore pointing to repentance. The wonderful doxology of praise added later, although well-intentioned, did add to God’s Word and broke the all-important connection that Yeshua, I believe, intended.
O Lord, help us restore that significant “fill-in-the-blank" moment that You obviously left for us to use. You didn’t “forget” to add a doxology. You expected us to finish the prayer by doing our part, the part that You wait for, and that’s what we need to do.
Did the early Church see demons cast out because they didn't have the version of the Lord's Prayer that ended with a doxology? Were they regularly faced with their need to repent and given a few precious minutes to do so, perhaps before baptisms, perhaps after reciting the Lord's Prayer? Who do you suppose didn't want that to ever happen? Do you think it could have been...Religion-Man?