(PIANISSIMO)

 

 ⁵ `And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites [lit. “play-actors”], because they love in the synagogues, and in the corners of the broad places -- standing -- to pray, that they may be seen of men; verily I say to you, that they have their reward.

⁶ `But you, when you pray, go into your chamber, and having shut your door, pray to thy Father who [is] in secret, and thy Father who is seeing in secret, shall reward you.

⁷ `And -- praying -- you must not ?babble like the goyim [the ethnikoi, lit. “nations”] for they think that in their much speaking they shall be heard,

⁸ be not therefore like to them, for your Father doth know those things that you have need of before your asking him;

 

The target of Yeshua’s criticism here is a certain kind of observant Jew, most likely a member of the perushim or “pharisee” movement but not necessarily typical of them. The pharisees were liberal in some aspects of their theology but very strict in the minor observances they called “the fence around the Law”. For prayers, they wore on their forehead and their left arm large tefillin or phylacteries containing tiny texts telling men to do that (Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18; Ex. xiii. 9, 16), as well as prayer shawls. The morning prayers or Shacharit were lengthy and had to be recited at the proper time, wherever the observant person happened to be. And all this, combined with human nature, clearly led upon occasion to role-players (hupokritoi) or pretentious men showing off their perhaps quite real piety with unctuous ostentation: “For the hour of the phylacterical prayers being come, their care and endeavour was, to be taken in the streets: whereby the canonical hour compelling them to their prayers in that place, they might be the more seen by all persons, and that the ordinary people might admire and applaud both their zeal and religion. To which hypocritical pride they often added this also, that they used very long pauses, both before they began their prayers, and after they had done them: so that very usually, for three hours together, they were seen in a praying habit and posture. See the Babylonian Talmud” (17^th-century commentary by John Lightfoot)

            In criticising such manners, Yeshua is of course not alone; and when he enjoins us to retire to our most private places and pray in secret, he is reminding us that, as Proverbs 15:3 says, “the eyes of the Lord are in every place”. Again, he is emphasising the movement from the outward to the inward, this time in the act of prayer itself, for Him the most intense and permanent contact with the Father. This inwardness is shown throughout the Gospels when Yeshua himself prays, which most often he does by himself in a place to which he retires from the crowd and even the disciples. 

            He adds a comment on the form of prayer to be avoided, and for this, Matthew the exciseman (or his ghostwriter) used a word found nowhere else in Greek: battalogein. Most translators refer to “vain repetitions” perhaps thinking of Hebrew batel which means “vain” plus the polulogia or much, or repetitious, speaking referred to later. It may denote prayers of repeated incantations, or simply the fact that Jews considered pagan prayers to be a useless babble compared to their own prayers, which their Deity heard at once. 

            What is more interesting is the assurance with which Yeshua ends: the Father knows what we need before we ask. This is both welcome and reassuring; and yet it leaves us with the question, In that case why ask? Why pray? If we know (as we often do) what our child needs before (s)he asks for it, that fact pleases us, and we would rather the child did not ask.

            I think the point he is making is that the Father takes pleasure in our asking for what He wants in any case to give us, because our asking restores the intimacy, the presence of us with Him, that was His joy in creating us and our breaking or ignoring of which is His abiding grief. It is true that we can give Him nothing that He has not already created and provided, but we can give Him back what He gave us in the first place: love and trust.