When Devotion Chooses Its Audience

Many of the oldest manuscripts read “righteousness” here instead of “alms”, which makes the verse a heading over all three practices that follow: giving, prayer and fasting. “To be seen” is theathenai, from the same root as our word theatre.

A “hypocrite” in Greek was first a stage actor, one who spoke from behind a mask. No source records anyone blowing a trumpet over a gift; some point to the temple’s trumpet shaped offering chests, which rattled when coins went in, but that remains a guess. The phrase may simply be comic exaggeration.

The address narrows from “ye” to “thou”, one giver at a time. The picture is deliberate hyperbole, since hands know nothing, and it goes further than hiding the gift from the neighbours. The right hand was the giving hand, and not even its partner at the end of the other arm is to watch.

The Mishnah describes a “chamber of secrets” in the temple where the devout left gifts without being seen and poor families of good standing were supported from it without being shamed. The word “openly” here, and again in verses 6 and 18, is missing from the oldest manuscripts.

Standing was the normal posture for Jewish prayer (1 Samuel 1:26; Mark 11:25), so posture is not the fault. The “corners of the streets” are where broad streets met and traffic slowed. “They have their reward” uses a word written on business receipts: paid in full, nothing further owed.

The “closet” is a storeroom, often the one inner room in a small house with a door that shut. Isaiah 26:20 uses nearly the same words: “enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee”. The storeroom was where the household’s valuables were kept, fitting for a chapter about treasure.

“Use not vain repetitions” renders a rare verb, battalogeo, that may imitate the sound of babbling. The prophets of Baal on Carmel called their god’s name “from morning even until noon” and slashed themselves when no answer came (1 Kings 18:26–28).

Isaiah 65:24 has the LORD say, “before they call, I will answer.” The logic is striking: the Father’s knowledge is given as the reason for praying simply, not as a reason not to pray at all. The prayer that follows is short enough to learn by heart in a morning.

“After this manner” means in this way: a pattern, not only a script. Luke gives a shorter form on a different occasion (Luke 11:2–4). “Hallowed” is the old English word for “made holy”, and the prayer asks that God’s name be treated as holy, as the LORD promised to sanctify his name in Ezekiel 36:23.

“In earth, as it is in heaven” may govern all three opening petitions, name, kingdom and will alike. In Gethsemane Jesus prays these same words for himself: “thy will be done” (26:42). The first request he taught became the hardest one he prayed.

The Greek word behind “daily”, epiousios, occurs almost nowhere outside this prayer. Origen thought the Gospel writers coined it. It may mean bread needed for existence, or bread for the coming day; Jerome reported a Hebrew Gospel that read “bread for tomorrow”. The plain request is enough for one day either way.

In Aramaic one word, hoba, covers both a debt and a sin, which may be why the prayer can use money language for wrongdoing. Luke’s version says “sins” and then “every one that is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). The Greek tense of “we forgive” is past: as we have forgiven.

“Temptation” is the same Greek word as the testing of chapter 4, and it can mean trial as well as enticement. The closing doxology is not in the oldest manuscripts. An early Christian manual, the Didache, has a form of it, and its wording leans on David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:11.

Of all the prayer’s requests, only this one gets a comment afterwards. “Trespasses” is a different word from the “debts” of verse 12: paraptoma, a false step, a stumble off the path. The shift explains the debt image in plain moral terms.

The negative form leaves no third category between forgiving and not forgiving. A Jewish teacher about two centuries earlier wrote, “Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done unto thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest” (Ecclesiasticus 28:2).

There is a pun in the Greek: they “disfigure”, literally make disappear, their faces so that they may “appear” to fast. The law commanded only one fast a year, on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29), so the fasting here is voluntary piety.

Washing and anointing the head with oil were ordinary daily grooming, and mourners left them off. When David’s child died he rose, washed and anointed himself (2 Samuel 12:20). The instruction is to look like any other day, not to put on a festive show in the other direction.

In the oldest manuscripts “in secret” here is a slightly different Greek word from the one in verses 4 and 6. The Didache later tells Christians not to fast with the hypocrites on Mondays and Thursdays but on Wednesdays and Fridays, so the practice carried on in the early churches with a new calendar.

Fine clothing was a store of wealth, which is why Achan hid a Babylonish garment (Joshua 7:21). “Rust” is literally “eating”, anything that gnaws: worm, mould or corrosion. “Break through” means “dig through”, since house walls were often mud brick and a thief could tunnel in.

Jesus uses the same phrase with the rich young man: sell, give to the poor, “and thou shalt have treasure in heaven” (19:21). The idea had Jewish roots; Tobit tells his son that giving alms lays up “a good treasure” against the day of need (Tobit 4:9).

In Hebrew thought the heart is the seat of thinking and choosing, not only of feeling. The sentence runs in an unexpected direction: it does not say the heart decides where treasure goes, but that the heart travels after it. Luke places the same saying after a command to sell possessions (Luke 12:33–34).

Many ancient writers thought the eye worked like a lamp, sending light out rather than only taking it in. “Single” is haplous, whose related noun Paul uses for generosity, “liberality” in 2 Corinthians 8:2. A sound eye and an open hand may be one idea here.

An “evil eye” in Hebrew idiom is a grudging, stingy one: “beware... thine eye be evil against thy poor brother” (Deuteronomy 15:9), and “he that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye” (Proverbs 28:22). The exclamation turns on a paradox: a lamp that gives out darkness.

“Serve” is the verb for a slave’s service. A slave could be jointly owned, but a divided household of masters makes divided work. “Mammon” is the Aramaic word for wealth or property, left untranslated so that it stands in the sentence almost like the name of a rival god.

In 1611 “thought” carried the sense of anxiety; an Elizabethan could “die of thought”, meaning of grief. The Greek merimnao means to be anxious or troubled. “Meat” is food of any kind, and “raiment” clothing, the two things Jesus has just told them not to hoard.

Luke’s version names ravens (Luke 12:24), birds the law counted unclean. Sowing, reaping and storing in barns are the men’s labours of the farming year, and the birds skip all three. “Much better” is literally “differ much”, of far greater worth.

A cubit is a forearm’s length, about eighteen inches. The word for “stature” also means age or span of life, and many read the line as adding a single hour to one’s life. Adding eighteen inches to one’s height would be enormous; the saying works as a joke either way.

“Consider” is a strong verb: study closely, learn thoroughly. The lilies are probably any of Galilee’s spring wildflowers, perhaps the red anemone; the exact flower cannot be fixed. Toiling and spinning were the women’s work of making cloth, set beside the men’s farm work of verse 26.

When the Queen of Sheba saw Solomon’s house, his table, and “the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel”, the Book of Kings says “there was no more spirit in her” (1 Kings 10:4–5). All that glory was woven and dyed by human hands; the flower wears what it did not make.

Dried grass and weeds were burned to heat the clay bread oven, since wood was scarce. “O ye of little faith” is one of Matthew’s own words, a single Greek term, and it returns in a boat in a storm (8:26), to a sinking Peter (14:31), and over forgotten bread (16:8).

The anxieties are now voiced as speech, as if overheard at a household table. “What shall we drink?” is exactly what Israel murmured against Moses at the bitter water of Marah (Exodus 15:24). “Wherewithal” means with what.

The King James brackets the first clause as an aside. “The Gentiles” here are the nations who do not know God as Father, and “seek” is intensive, to hunt for eagerly. The second clause repeats verse 8 almost exactly, now with “heavenly” added.

Matthew usually writes “kingdom of heaven”; “kingdom of God” appears in only a handful of places in this Gospel, and some manuscripts here read simply “the kingdom”. “Added” recalls Solomon, just mentioned: he asked for wisdom and was given riches and honour besides (1 Kings 3:11–13).

“Evil” here means trouble or hardship, not wickedness. Tomorrow is given a personality, an anxious creature that can worry about itself. A saying in the Talmud runs close to this: “sufficient is the trouble in its hour”, which suggests the proverb was common coin.