Chapter 1
Our Father
Matthew 6:9a · Luke 11:2a
At a glance
The word [our father] with which heirs spoke about someone absent now stands in the second person.
Where "our father" occurs
1Num 27:3-4
the five sisters
three times "our father", and he hears none of it
2Isa 63:16
the man in the ashes of Jerusalem
"Abraham does not know us": You are our Father
31 Chr 29:10
an old king
"our father": with Israel or with YHWH, the Hebrew leaves it open
the Septuagint reads: God is our Father; a witness to the early reading, not the original text
4Mal 1:6
God himself
"If I then am a Father, where is my honor?"
no quotation in the prayer: a sequence that coincides, and coincidence is not borrowing
Not about Me
that is how they said it to each other, about a father who no longer answered
to Me
first, every day, before anything has been asked
19 times in the bare form: 15 about a human being (six men), four about God, one of them disputed.
CALCULATED, over 306,785 words
- DOCUMENTED In Isa 63:16 LXX the address, the name and ῥῦσαι stand in one verse; the Greek text has been checked.
- CONSTRUED That the prayer echoes Isa 63:16: there is no citation formula, and the translator rendered a Hebrew construction that can also be read differently.
- CALCULATED The counts of אָבִינוּ, πατὴρ ἡμῶν and the 193 words of Isa 63:15-64:12.
I. The Request
He was praying somewhere, Luke writes, and one of his disciples stood waiting until He stopped. The man had been watching someone pray, and what he asked afterward was about nothing else.
These men had grown up in a people that prayed; the psalms were in them the way a mother tongue is. And still he asks, on behalf of them all: teach us. In the praying of this Man there was something they understood they did not have.
The answer is not a doctrine. It is two words.
II. At the Tent Door
Five sisters stand at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
Before them stands Moses, and beside him the priest, and behind those two the leaders and the whole congregation. What they have come to bring is a legal question for which no law exists, and they have drawn it up together, for they speak as one.
Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah. They name him three times in four sentences — our father, our father, our father — and he hears none of it. He lies somewhere in the sand between Egypt and the Jordan. What is left of him stands here at the tent door: five daughters, and a name about to disappear.
That is how the word sounds in the Hebrew Bible almost every time it is spoken: whoever says "our father" speaks over his head, and usually it is about what he left behind.
Almost never does anyone say it to him.
Expertאָבִינוּ, 19 times, and six men
The form אָבִינוּ occurs in the Masoretic text 19 times: Genesis 19:31 · 19:32 · 31:14 · 42:13 · 42:32 (2×) · 44:25 · 44:31 · Numbers 27:3 · 27:4 (2×) · Judges 11:2 · 1 Chronicles 29:10 · Isaiah 63:16 (2×) · 64:7 [MT] · Jeremiah 35:6 · 35:8 · 35:10. With a preposition in front — מֵאָבִינוּ, לְאָבִינוּ — six more are added: Genesis 19:32 · 19:34 · 31:1 (2×) · 31:16 · 43:28. 25 in total, 19 in the bare form.
15 of the 19 concern a human being, and the men are six. Lot — two daughters in a cave above Zoar: "our father is old, and there is no man in the land" (Gen 19:31). Laban — Rachel and Leah out by the flock: "do we still have any portion or inheritance in the house of our father?" (31:14). Jacob — five times, from the mouths of Joseph's brothers, before a viceroy they do not recognize (42:13 · 42:32 2× · 44:25 · 44:31). Zelophehad — three times, at the tent door (Num 27:3-4). Gilead — once, and it is said against someone: "you shall not inherit in the house of our father" (Judg 11:2), and the one driven out is Jephthah. Jonadab — three times, in a side room of the temple, where a clan refuses wine because a man two centuries dead once forbade it (Jer 35:6, 8, 10).
Four of the 19 concern God: Isaiah 63:16 (2×), Isaiah 64:7 [MT] — in the English numbering 64:8 — and the disputed 1 Chronicles 29:10.
With three of the six men it is literally about an inheritance — the portion in Laban's house, the possession of Zelophehad, the right of inheritance in Gilead. With the other three it is about a father who is not there. (Counts CALCULATED over 306,785 words; the grouping around inheritance and absence is CONSTRUED, and it holds for half: Genesis 42 and 44 are not about an inheritance but about the grief of an old man.)
An earlier working note for this book gave ~~22×~~. That count does not stand: there are 19 bare or 25 with a preposition, and there is no way of counting by which there are 22.
III. Where Abraham Steps Aside
There is no temple anymore.
The house where the fathers praised God has been burned with fire; Zion lies there like a wilderness. Whoever prays here has nothing in his hands but the question whether God is still watching — and he begins by pointing upward.
Then comes the line that matters.
He addresses God as Father by setting the patriarch aside — not out of contempt, but because the family tree has given way.
And in the same breath the second word — our Redeemer. The man who begot you and the kinsman who takes over your debt and buys you back, in one line.
That is what the five sisters at the tent door did not have. The man in the ashes of Jerusalem has less than they did — and keeps more: the Father himself, and the Father is the Redeemer.
ExpertTwice "Our Father", Two Ways
In the New Testament the contiguous expression πατὴρ ἡμῶν / πάτερ ἡμῶν occurs in six verses. Two are the prayer itself (Matthew 6:9 · Luke 11:2). Two are Paul's, about God (1 Thessalonians 3:11 · 2 Thessalonians 2:16, "our God and Father"). And two concern Abraham: James 2:21 and, said to Jesus' face, John 8:39 — ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν Ἀβραάμ ἐστιν, "our father is Abraham".
Isaiah 63:16 says exactly the opposite with the same two words: "for Abraham does not know us [...] You are our Father." The only prayer in the Old Testament that calls God "our Father" does so by pushing Abraham aside; and the only people in the gospel who say "our father" of a human being say that it is Abraham.
(Counts CALCULATED over the Textus Receptus, 140,987 words. That the second mirrors the first is CONSTRUED: John does not quote Isaiah here, and this book does not claim that he does.)
The prayer that begins here does not stop at this one line; it runs on, and along the way it asks for the things the disciple would ask to be taught seven centuries later. Not as a lesson but as a cry, from a man with a burned city behind him.
ExcursusThe Prayer of Isaiah 63:15-64:12, and Whose Comparison This Is
This comparison is not this book's. Werner Grimm, in Die Motive Jesu: Das Vaterunser (1992), already laid the Our Father alongside Isaiah 63:15-64:11, and that is the core of what stands above. The book has not been consulted; what is known of it comes from reviews and carries here as [secondary]. That changes nothing about the attribution: the comparison was made before this book made it.
What lies underneath is the count: the name occurs four times in this one prayer, heaven twice, and גאל exactly once — and that is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where it stands next to "our Father". (CALCULATED over the 193 words of the range.)
Versification. The English numbering departs here from the Masoretic. The second half of MT 63:19 is 64:1 in English, so that the rest of chapter 64 shifts up one number: MT 64:7 = EN 64:8, MT 64:11 = EN 64:12. The running text follows the English numbering.
ExpertThe Greek Layer of Isaiah 63:16
The Septuagint reads the second half of the verse not as a statement but as a petition. Where the Masoretic text has "our Redeemer from of old is your name", it reads:
> *ἀλλὰ σύ κύριε πατὴρ ἡμῶν ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς τὸ ὄνομά σου ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἐστιν*
> "but You, Lord, our Father — deliver us; from the beginning your name is upon us."
The address of this prayer, the name from the first petition, and ῥῦσαι — the verb of the seventh — stand here in one verse. That they stand together is DOCUMENTED; the Greek text has been checked. That the prayer echoes this verse is CONSTRUED: there is no citation formula, and the translator has rendered a Hebrew construction here that can also be read differently. Chapter 9 tallies ῥῦσαι.
IV. The Disputed Verse
There is one more place in the disciple's Scriptures where the word occurs and where no one can say with certainty to whom it belongs.
An old king stands before the whole assembly with the materials for a house he will not build. He blesses YHWH, aloud, in front of everyone.
To whom that "our father" belongs — to "Israel", the patriarch, or to YHWH himself — the Hebrew leaves open.
The king has not finished speaking.
And when he has listed the gold and the bronze and the precious stones he has had brought in for the house, he says where it comes from: "For everything is from You, and from your hand we have given it to You."
The kingdom, the power, the glory. And "in heaven and on earth". Nowhere else can the closing line of this prayer be read so fully in Hebrew — and it comes from the same mouth as the disputed "our father", from a king who works out that he can give his Father nothing he does not have from Him.
ExpertWhat the Greek Does with 1 Chronicles 29:10
The Septuagint settles the question, and it settles it one way:
> *εὐλογητὸς εἶ κύριε ὁ θεὸς Ισραηλ ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος καὶ ἕως τοῦ αἰῶνος*
Ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν stands in the nominative, in apposition to ὁ θεὸς Ισραηλ. Had Jacob been meant, a genitive would have been required. The translators read: God is our Father. That is no proof of what the Hebrew writer meant — it is the judgment of readers who had Hebrew beside them as a living language. In this book's hierarchy of sources it counts as a witness to the early reading, not as the original text.
One more count belongs to the opening words. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהוָה, "blessed are You, YHWH", occurs twice in the whole Masoretic text: here and Psalm 119:12. The broader formula בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה occurs six times, and the other four are all addressed to a human being: Deuteronomy 28:3 and 28:6, 1 Samuel 15:13 and 26:25. In the whole Hebrew Bible God is addressed with these words twice — and one of those two times "our Father" stands beside it. (CALCULATED.)
Dossier"Our Father" in the Septuagint
The contiguous expression πατὴρ ἡμῶν occurs in the Septuagint (623,693 words) in 13 verses — 14 if Tobit 13:4 is counted separately in both Greek text forms. Nine concern a human being: Lot (Gen 19:31), Jacob (Gen 43:28 · 44:25 · 44:27), Zelophehad (Num 27:3), Jonadab (Jer 42:6 · 42:10 LXX = MT 35:6 · 35:10), Phinehas (1 Maccabees 2:54) and Abraham (4 Maccabees 16:20).
Four concern God: 1 Chronicles 29:10, Isaiah 63:16, Isaiah 64:7 [MT] — and Tobit 13:4, in both Greek text forms: "because He is our Lord and God, He is our Father for all ages."
And there is a small thing in it worth naming. With the nine human instances — and with 1 Chronicles 29:10 — the article is present: ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν. With Isaiah 63:16, Isaiah 64:7 and Tobit 13:4 it drops away. Where the Septuagint speaks about a father, it makes him definite; where it addresses God, it does not. Matthew 6:9 stands on that second side: πάτερ ἡμῶν, without the article.
Tobit is deuterocanonical and this book builds nothing on it. But it is there, it is Greek, and it is older than the gospel. Whoever claims that "our Father" as an address to God was unknown before Jesus has to explain Tobit 13:4 away, and that cannot be done.
What remains then is enough, and it is less spectacular: outside Isaiah the address is rare to the point of being exceptional, and where it occurs it never stands at the beginning of a prayer. It is a cry in the middle of distress. (Count CALCULATED; the placement within the prayer CONSTRUED.)
⚠ Note on the tools. The LXX lemmas in the working corpus are transliterated. Whoever searches it with a Greek lemma gets zero back and records an absence that has not been measured. This count has therefore been done not by lemma but on the text itself.
V. Where the Old Testament Stops
The last prophet opens with a father who asks a question, and the question stays unanswered.
In that one verse God calls himself Father — and misses his honor. He names his name — and hears it despised.
It is not the complaint of a ruler claiming his right. It is the question of someone in the house — of a father who is still there, and who has noticed.
That is how it ends. After that there is silence for four centuries.
And then a Man on a mountain in Galilee, and once more somewhere along the way — where a disciple stood waiting until He stopped — gives a handful of people two lines to pray.
The disciple did not have to work anything out. He received the two lines, and the order came with them.
VI. And Then It Begins
The disciple asked for instruction in praying. What he received was an address.
The word with which heirs spoke about someone absent now stands in the second person. From this day on the man who stood waiting no longer speaks over anyone's head when he says those two words. He says them to the Father who hears them.
HeartTo Whom You Say It
When you pray this, you use a word that in Scripture belongs to people squabbling over an inheritance and to children talking about someone dead. Five sisters who say: he died and he had no sons, do not let his name disappear. A clan that refuses to drink because a man two centuries dead once forbade it. They said "our father" to each other, because the father himself no longer answered.
And then Someone says: say it to Me. Not about Me — to Me. And do not say it when things go wrong, but first, every day, before anything has been asked.
There is one place in the Old Testament where someone dared to do that, and he did it at the worst moment there is — with a burned city behind him, and a patriarch who no longer knew him. Precisely there he said it. Abraham does not know us — You are our Father.
If you have ever thought you first had to qualify before you were allowed to begin like this: that verse says the opposite. It was prayed by someone who had lost everything. It was true then. It still is.
And it leads somewhere. At the end of Scripture stands a Father who does the handing out himself, and the word around which all those caves and tent doors turned — inherit — occurs exactly once in that whole last book, in the verse where He says: he shall be My son.