 REV Bible |   |   |
| REV Bible | | |
“So pray in this way.” Matthew 6:9-13, five verses, are commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer,” and it is found here in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus also taught it in an abbreviated form months later (Luke 11:2-4). The two prayers are quite similar, but Matthew’s prayer consists of seven requests and Luke has five. Luke omits the requests, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and “Deliver us from the Evil One.”
By teaching on how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount, which was Jesus’ first major teaching to the crowds after he started his ministry, Jesus emphasizes the importance of prayer.
Although the Lord’s Prayer is repeated verbatim on many occasions, Jesus taught not to repeat the same prayers over and over (Matt. 6:7). So the Lord’s prayer is a model prayer, pointing out things that are important for us to pray for, but as we see from reading the entire New Testament, especially the writings of Paul, there are lots of different things that believers need to be praying for.
“in heaven.” The Greek text literally reads “in the heavens.” While Jesus would have been speaking Hebrew (possibly Aramaic), and in Hebrew, “heavens” is always plural, the Greek text reflects this Hebraism that Jesus would have likely been using here. It is always best to represent the idioms of the culture accurately if possible in English. Sometimes that means replicating them literally and other times it means adapting them to the understanding of the reader.
“may your name be treated as holy.” This is a reference to the coming kingdom when the people will “keep My name holy” (Isa. 29:23) and Cp. Ezekiel 36:23.