Matthew 6:11

A 19th century depiction of this verse

Matthew 6:11 is the eleventh verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse is the third one of the Lord's Prayer, one of the best known parts of the entire New Testament. This brief verse contains the fourth petition to God.

Text

The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads:

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

Give us this day our daily bread.

The English Standard Version translates the passage as:

Give us this day our daily bread.

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 6:11

This petition marks a change in the character of the prayer. The first three petitions called for the glory of God in the second person. This petition, and the two that follow, call for personal needs to be met in the second person plural. Unlike the earlier parts of the prayer, there is no clear parallel to this one in Jewish prayers of that era.

Meaning

What precisely Jesus intends by this part of the prayer has long been debated. Boring notes three major schools of interpretation. The most basic and literal is the need for bread in basic life and survival. In this era bread was the most important food, especially for the poor and dispossessed segments of society that Jesus references frequently in the Sermon on the Mount. Boring believes that while there may be other metaphorical meanings, this basic meaning of bread as sustenance would always have been read into the verse. Building on the centrality of bread to survival, this verse can also be read as a metaphor, not a specific reference to God giving us bread, but to providing all those things needed in life. Without God life would be impossible.

It is also possible to read an eschatological message into the verse. In the New Testament bread is common "symbol of eschatological blessedness." It is linked to the manna provided by God to the Israelites during Exodus, and bread thus represents the reward the faithful can expect from God at the end of times. This understanding was a popular one in the early church. The metaphor of the Kingdom of Heaven as a divine banquet was a common one at the time. Schweizer doubts this interpretation, however. Throughout the gospel Jesus has been portrayed as caring for the daily needs of his followers, and his miraculously providing them with bread is a symbol of this. Schweizer feels bread was a very real need, not a metaphoric one.

The third interpretation is that this verse is referencing the bread of the Last Supper and the eucharist, the accepted view of the Catholic Church. Boring disagrees with this interpretation noting that nowhere in the Gospel does the author of Matthew seem to have any knowledge of or interest in the rituals of the eucharist. Historically the ritual only developed some time after the Gospel was written.

Epiousios

Main article: Epiousios

The word in this verse that is usually translated by the adjective "daily" is ἐπιούσιος (epiousios). Its meaning is uncertain, there being no context in the whole of Koine Greek literature other than in this verse and its counterpart in Luke in which it appears. This problem was noted as early as Origen, who did not recognize ἐπιούσιος as a Greek word.

The entry about the word in Barclay M. Newman's A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, published in a revised edition in 2010 by the United Bible Societies has the following entry:

ἐπι|ούσιος, ον (εἰμί) of doubtful meaning, for today; for the coming day; necessary for existence

The usual translation, "our daily bread" corresponds to the first of these possible meanings.

In the second meaning, the petition is "Give us today the bread for the coming day." The second-century Gospel of the Nazareans writes the prayer in this manner, and it is argued that the writer of this early though apocryphal document would likely have known the meaning of the word. Luz considers this to be the most likely translation. The main problem with this translation is that it might seem to conflict with Matthew 6:31: "Do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'."

Schweizer's view is that the "tomorrow" intended is an eschatological tomorrow, and that this verse is a specific reference to the ends times.

In the third meaning ("necessary for existence"), the verse is a call for God to provide the bread that is necessary for survival. In the Vulgate it is translated as supersubstantialem (Matthew 6:11), and accordingly as supersubstantial in the Douay-Rheims Bible (Matthew 6:11).

The most common translation in Bibles remains daily. William Hendriksen observes that, without any real proof for alternate readings, there is no real need to abandon the traditional translation that readers are familiar with. "Daily", he says, is also quite close to both the "necessary for survival" and "for the coming day" meanings, which are the most popular among scholars.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sees a range of meanings in the word:

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.

References

Preceded by Matthew 6:10

Gospel of Matthew Chapter 6

Succeeded by Matthew 6:12