Matthew 6:1-4_Generosity and the true reward AND Matthew 6:5-13_The Lord’s Prayer

15/12/25

Matthew 6:1-4_Generosity and the true reward

1. What were three common practices by which the Jews practiced δικαιοσύνη?

2. Why does Jesus warn his followers to be careful about how they practice δικαιοσύνη?

3. Where does the English expression “blowing your own trumpet come from”?

4. What did the Greek word ὑποκριτής originally refer to and how does Jesus use it in this context?

5. According to Jesus, how should his followers practice generosity?

6. What does Jesus mean when he says that those who give for show "have fully received their reward"?

7. What is described as the "true reward" for those who give in secret?

6:5-13_The Lord’s Prayer

1. What does holy mean? Who is uniquely holy? Why do we pray for God’s name to be recognized as holy?

2. What might Matthew have put the Lord's Prayer at the centre of the centre of the centre of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount? What is at the centre of the centre of the centre of the Torah?

3. Why does Jesus instruct his followers to address God as “our Father” when praying?

4. What are we asking for when we pray “may your Kingdom come, and may your will be done, as it is in the skies so also on the land?”.

5. What story from the Old Testament is Jesus referencing when he prays, “give us today our daily bread?” Why might this connection be significant?

6. What’s the relationship between receiving God’s forgiveness and extending forgiveness to others?

7. In the biblical story, what is God's purpose for testing people? How is a test different from a trap?

More

Our Daily Bread

Give us this day our daily, ἐπιούσιον, bread.

Matthew 6:11

Similarly, in the Tefillah, that was prayed three times a day, there was a clause in the middle asking for God’s blessing on the agricultural year¹.

Bread was, and is still, in the Middle East the basic sustenance of life. Breaking bread meant eating together [Acts 2:42]. I was told by a Kurdish friend that in Kermanji naan means both bread and food. Even in English the term “breaking bread” indicates eating together.

The Greek word ἐπιούσιος, usually translated “daily” in English, is problematic in that it occurs only twice in the NT [here and Luke 11:3] and is not found in any other extant literature. It is still used untranslated in modern Greek in the Lord’s prayer. What does it mean? Etymologically we have ἐπι [super] and ούσια [substance] so supersubstantial [?]. It carried over in the western Latin church as substantialis² Roman Catholic theology has nudged meaning toward an inclusion of the eucharist³. Eastern Orthodoxy leans in a similar direction⁴. We would caution against loading so much speculation into an obscure word. Shall we follow the example of modern Greek and leave it untranslated. Bailey proposes the following solution…

Jesus, of course, spoke Aramaic, and Syriac is closely related to Aramaic. Syriac Christians, as they translated the Gospels into Syriac, were therefore taking the words of Jesus out of Greek and returning them to a language very close to his native Aramaic. Most words are the same in these two languages and the Old Syriac translation of the Lord’s prayer reads: Lahmo ameno diyomo hab lan (lit. “Amen bread today give to us”).

Lahmo means “bread.” Ameno has the same root as the word amen, and in Syriac ameno is an adjective that means “lasting, never-ceasing, never-ending, or perpetual.” This Old Syriac second-century translation means, therefore, “Give us today the bread that doesn’t run out.” Does this provide the clue to the mysterious Greek word epiousios? I think it does.⁵

In the wilderness the manna was the bread that did not run out. Knowing that God provides removes objections to obedience and exposes our weakness and lack of trust in God [Exodus 16:4, Deuteronomy 8:2-3]. Revelation 2:17 promises “hidden manna” to those who overcome and are victorious. In the Judaism of Jesus’ day the provision of a previously held back manna was a identified with the coming of the Messiah and his kingdom…

And at that time, the reservoir of manna will again descend from on high, and they will eat of it in those years, because these are the ones who have reached the consummation of time.

2 Baruch 29:8⁶

So, our material needs are met by our Father in heaven as they were in the wilderness but even more so with the coming of the kingdom. The bread is literal and physical but is a gift from heaven. It is here that the “thou petitions” and the “we petitions” meet. It is here that heaven and earth meet. Our food is a good gift from heaven. As noted already there seems to be a deliberate parallelism…

…and even an echo of the creation story of Genesis 1⁷ and the kingdom being inaugurated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is a creation reboot. God then populates the “big picture” characteristics of the coming kingdom with the details of the lives of his obedient people doing Torah from the heart. As we said in the introduction, the first parallelism is least obvious to the modern reader but in the ANE and much of the world even today it is the gods who provide our needs, our daily bread. We remember with sadness how Israel having entered the Promised Land quickly turned to the gods of that land. The gods were believed to provide sustenance: favourable weather, crops to crow, animals to birth etc. The people would seek to appease these Gods even sacrificing their own children lest they perish. They had forgotten Genesis 1 and the fact that it is YHWH who orders and populates all aspects of the world, the created order including the elohim, the gods⁸. We too must acknowledge in our prayers the provision of YHWH God for all his creatures. To not be grateful for our bread and basic sustenance is to dishonour his name and turn to other gods. This may seem an overstatement for the “modern world” but think how enslaved people are and the lengths they will go to see their material needs met and increased. Who is the god of consumerism? It is not YHWH!

1. Bailey, K. E., Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008, 119.

2. Whitaker, W. (2012). Dictionary of Latin Forms. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

3. ""Daily" (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of "this day," to confirm us in trust "without reservation." Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us. Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: "this day" is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day." Catechism of the Catholic Church - The seven petitions", www.vatican.va

4. “...epiousios... [is] an absolutely unique word. Etymologically..., epi- means "on top of" and -ousios means "substance" or "being". So it means suprasubstantial bread. Suprasubstantial bread: more-than-necessary bread. In the first Latin translation of the Lord's Prayer, done by Jerome it was..., panem supersubstantialem. Somewhere along the way it became "cotidianum, daily". Luther translated "daily" from the beginning: tägliches Brot. But in all languages that traditionally Eastern Christians use—Greek, Slavonic, and all the Arabic languages: Aramaic, Arabic—it doesn't say that; it just says a word that's similar to that... How do they translate it [into those languages]? ...they claim that the best translation would be: "Give us today the bread of tomorrow". Give us today the bread of the coming age, the bread that when you eat it, you can never die. What is the food of the coming age? It's God himself, God's word, God's Son, God's lamb, God's bread, which we already have here on earth, on earth, before the second coming. So what we're really saying is, "Feed us today with the bread of the coming age", because we are taught by Jesus not to seek the bread that perishes, but the bread that, you eat it, you can never die.” www.ancientfaith.com/specials/hopko_lectures/the_lords_prayer

5. Bailey, K. E., Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Downers Grove, IL, IVP Academic, 2008, 121.

6. Stone, M. E., & Henze, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press, 2013.

7. God ordered the spaces: sky [day 1], air and water [day 2] and land and plants [day 3]. God then populated these spaces: lights in the sky [day 4], birds and sea creatures in the air and water [day 5], and animals and humans on the land [day 6].

8. For the modern reader the lights in the sky are stars or suns. This possibility was not suggested until 450BC by Anaxagoras [j.mp/3wdbrZA]