The Poetry of the Lord’s Prayer: A Study in Poetic Device

Abstract

This study argues the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13) belongs to the tradition of ancient Jewish religious poetry, as evidenced by its use in every sentence of multiple, coordinated poetic figures that were characteristic of the tradition and determinative of its strophic form. The study defines each device using the terms and conceptual categories of the ancient world and identifies examples from poetic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. The study then shows the concentrated use of these same devices in every line of the prayer, as well as the strophic form that emerges from this usage. The devices identified are homoeoteleuton, homoeokatarkton, antistrophe, epanaphora, anadiplosis, polyptoton, antithesis, parisosis, and paronomasia. These devices work together to shape the prayer into two stanzas, each a tripartite petition expressed in tricolon form. The study concludes with English translations that attempt to capture both the devices and their resultant stichometry.

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