In my ongoing struggles with prayer, I have been saying The Lord’s Prayer at least once a day for the last several years. That doesn’t mean I understand it. Sometimes I wonder about the accuracy of the translation, and so recently I tried going back to the original Greek, and delving more into the meaning behind the words.
One line in particular has always bothered me: “Lead us not into temptation.” Before giving this prayer, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ has just stated that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Why would God need us to ask him not to lead us into a temptation he already knows is not good for us? Why would a loving Father even consider throwing his child into the fire?
I think this English expression needs an overhaul. If nothing else, it has to mean something very different from our modern assumptions about it. Maybe in the past it was useful, but today, I think we are called to be more active and autonomous in our approach to the Spirit. Rather than asking God to do something for me, what is it that I can be asking him to help me do for myself?
In looking at the meaning of individual Greek words, I found that the word translated as “lead,” isenengis, has a less common meaning of “to rush.” This immediately sparked my interest. When it comes to trials and temptations, my personal problem is that I’m always rushing into things that are too much for me. I launch myself unprepared, unshielded or undefended into situations that with more preparation and wise guidance would not end up as unmitigated disasters; it’s purely due to my impatience and haste that they do. I’m then left to put myself back together again and painfully consider where I went wrong.
Respecting our freedom, God allows us to make our own way against all the temptations that lure us to diverge from our true being, just as a good teacher will allow students to make mistakes. There is no other way to truly own one’s knowledge, than to fully know the cost of error. But there are ways of making errors that are more harmful and debilitating than others. The very worst way to make a mistake is to refuse all offers of instruction, protection, and guidance, and charge into it naked and blind. That’s what I have usually done, with predictable results.
But I’m trying to do it differently now. Having become more humble and less hasty through my painful experiences, I now would like to pray for God’s protection and wisdom to shelter me as I walk through the trials of life. I would like to pray, “Let me not rush unprotected into danger, but be guarded, defended and guided by you through all evil.”
God would never want to push us into harm that would permanently separate us from him; he walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, leading us as does a good shepherd. But he can only do this when we consent to walk with him, and don’t rush ahead into the darkness and throw ourselves at the wolves. It is my own stupid heedlessness and pride that I need to quell with this prayer, so that I slow down, look to my shepherd, and let him guard and instruct me on my way. That is how the prayer makes sense to me, and how I will interpret it from now on. It just feels like the right and healing thing to do.
Are there prayers that have puzzled you? How have you worked with them?
An interesting interpretation of that line, Lory. Mark Twain centered one if his stories on it. At the start of “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg”, that line was a town’s motto. The story explains why they eventually decide to change it. Typical of Twain’s cynical view of human nature, it’s one of his later works, written after he had failed at a few financial ventures and, if I remember correctly, lost a child. I think your interpretation gives a much more positive spin than does Twain’s, but both address the seeming naïveté of the request.
Interesting, thanks for that reference.
Yes, going back to the original Greek is very helpful. I’m so often appalled at what modern translations have done, especially in English, and the more modern we try to make the text, the further away from the original meaning we get.
Thank God we have access to useful tools. Even the Interlinear is now online for free. For instance for this passage, it’s here:
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/6.htm
In case you or some of your readers are not familiar: it shows the original Greek, the transliteration into English characters, and a literal translation. The most useful though is the numbers above the words, so 1533 for lead and 3986 for temptation. The main issue I believe is how most translate “temptation”.
When you click on these numbers, you see how the same word is used in the whole NT, and also in the OT (on the left) and sometimes in other Greek texts.
I have recently read a fantastic modern Orthodox translation of the NT(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34746515-the-new-testament), by a scholar who really tries to stick to the text. He translated it as, “Do not bring us to trial”. Indeed this word was often used for trial or test, like when you want to put somebody to test, when you test somebody to see their worth.
The Interlinear Bible site exist also for Hebrew. And modern English translations are even more appalling here!
Yes the online inter linear text is an amazing tool. One wants to ponder all the hyperlinks of every single word.
I love your rephrasing, Lory! “Let me not rush unprotected into danger, but be guarded, defended and guided by you through all evil.” That makes so much sense and is definitely a worthy prayer for each of us to ask.
I can say that prayer without any reservations. Saying one that I can’t fully agree with always feels wrong to me.
Lory, such a great perspecive on the Lord’s prayer, especially that line, “lead us not into temptation”. Truly when we take a moment, the Spirit enlightens us. I want to pray that way too, for I am always rushing headlong into trouble! May I learn to trust him and allow him to lead me into a guarded place of safety.
I’m glad this resonates with you too. Trusting and letting go of my impatient agenda is something I really struggle with, so it’s good to know I’m not the only one.
That sentence you have come up with (“Let me not rush unprotected into danger, but be guarded, defended and guided by you through all evil.”) is lovely. I appreciate how you have adapted the original prayer to better fit your understanding of the text and your relationship with God. I don’t say prayers myself but your thoughts here highlight why religion and language are two of my favourite subject to learn about.
That’s a lovely thing to say, thank you Jenna.
I have struggled with that line, too. I love the rephrasing you have come up with, although the standard translation is so ingrained in my head and in my mouth that I would have trouble changing it. I don’t think of it as God deliberately tempting us to do what is wrong; instead, I try to read it and pray it with an interpretation of “let me not fall into tempation or sin.”
Lately I’ve taken to saying the prayer in Greek because it frees me from any old associations, and also is much more beautiful as poetry. But I think that we can also use the familiar words and invest them with the meaning that we think they truly represent.