Praying Words

“Pray, then, in this way.”  Matthew 6:9

Pray – Do you say the Lord’s Prayer?  Most of us do.  We have since childhood.  It’s part of the liturgy now.  But I wonder if we actually pray as the Lord instructed.  You see, Jesus was not teaching us a prayer.  He was teaching how to pray.  It’s possible that He anticipated that the disciples would learn this prayer.  After all, Jewish believers often memorized many prayers.  They continue today to recite these prayers.  But Jesus is not instructing the disciples in another rabbinic prayer worth learning by heart.  He is teaching the disciples about the nature of prayer.  When we repeat His words without giving them a second thought, we probably insult the author and we certainly miss the point.

In order to understand what Jesus is teaching, we must first recognize the wide vocabulary of prayer in Hebrew.  We have one word in English.  The Greeks had one official word as well.  But Hebrew has dozens of words for prayer.  From growls to dancing, from cries to shouts, from utter silence to jubilant singing, Hebrew is stocked full of prayer words.  Prayer cannot be contained in a few simple jars on the spiritual shelf.  In one important sense, prayer is breathing – and all of life is animated with prayer.

In this verse, the Hebrew has been translated by the Greek proseuchesthe.  But even a cursory search of the LXX shows that this Greek word is used for many different Hebrew words (you can take a look at Genesis 20:7, Judges 13:8, 1 Samuel 1:10 and Psalm 31:7 as a few examples of the diversity).  We’re left with complexity, not the straightforward routine of “bowing your head and closing your eyes.”  Perhaps a great number of the Hebrew words actually lie behind the stanzas of this simple model.  What we know for sure is that it is not a formula.   It’s more like those skyrockets that contain dozens of explosions in a rainbow of colors.  Once it’s set aloft, the wonder begins.

Notice that Jesus begins with a verb.  It is a present tense imperative.  That means Jesus is not making suggestions about prayer.  He is commanding.  You pray in this way.  We might be under the misapprehension that Jesus is merely providing a discourse on prayer, but He isn’t.  His disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray and now He is doing just that.  Pray like this.  Of course, He does not* mean “recite after me.”  He means that praying takes a certain attitude and action.  That leaves us with a very real question.  If this is the command of the Son of God, then it is the official word about the proper elements of praying (a verb, not a noun).  Are we following His command?  The only way to know if we are is to look deeply at the process and implications of His model for praying.  And that’s just what we intend to do.  Stick around – and while you’re waiting, perhaps you might ask Him to give you enlightenment on this matter.  I’m quite sure that He is listening.

Topical Index: prayer, praying, proseuchesthe, Matthew 6:9, the Lord’s Prayer

* Thanks to Today’s Word reader Paul Michalski for spotting that the word “not” was missing in this sentence when the email went out a originally. Paul gets a free download of The Hebrew view of Prayer for his effort. =) -Patrick, Skip’s Tech Geek.