Matthew 6: 9-13 Exegesis Paper

Exegesis Paper – Matthew 6:9-13

Literary Criticism: The example of what Christian prayer should be like contrasts it now, not with prayer of the hypocrites, but with that of the pagans.

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees you in secret will repay you. In praying do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of there many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Senior, 1345).

When they refer to the

Moreover, little attention has been given to the problem of how these relate to each other. This general situation has produced two negative results. The first is that there have been only a handful of commentators in the last decades that have attempted to ascertain the nature of the purpose of Matthew’s Gospel from its structure or scheme f salvation-history. And the second is that there are fewer still who have endeavored to let the structure of the Gospel be their guide as they determine its portrait of Jesus (Kingsbury, 1).

The Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 is an example of a parallelism. A parallelism is the use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose that correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc. The beginning starting with Our Father and the sentences to follow relate more to God and his honor. Towards the end of the prayer the lines relate to our own concerns. We pray to seek righteousness in God’s

“ ‘Bread’ refers to both spiritual nourishment (e.g., Wisdom’s banquet, Prov 9:1-6) and physical nourishment” (Bergant, 30). “The meaning of epiousios, ‘daily’ or ‘for the coming day’ is ambiguous. It may refer to the food one needs to survive each day, or it may allude to the eschatological Day of the Lord. The prayer recalls God’s providing of manna to the Israelites (Exod 16:12-35) and cultivates in disciples this same kind of trust” (Bergant, 30).

Theological Analysis: In the passage Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus is teaching His disciples how to pray. Matthew doesn’t want the disciples to pray in public like the pagans, but to pray in secret or quiet. This is how someone develops a special relationship with God. The first two words of the prayer tell us a lot about the relationship to God. By Jesus starting with the word our and not my, it shows that he is there for everyone praying. Questions this passage may have addressed in the community for which it was originally written might be how to pray? Jesus audience were Jewish Christians and he tells us how to pray and that it is personal, and you should pray in quiet and secret. Unlike the pagans who preach for all to hear, Jesus tells us to be alone with the Father and pray to him. Works