WORD STUDY – NEVER ALLOW US INTO TEMPTATION לא תעל נסיונא
Matthew 6:13: “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
I recently attended a Catholic mass where towards the end everyone recited the Lord’s prayer and we all said these words, “lead us not into temptation.“ I could not help but think how many others in that congregation wondered the same thing I did. Does God lead us into temptation such that we must pray and ask Him to not to? Maybe you are ok with that, but I am definitely not. I mean does not James teach in 1:3, “Let no man say he is tempted of God.” So if God does not tempt us, why in the blazes do millions of people every week pray that God will not lead them into temptation?
Well, one thing about all this is that Jesus spoke these words in Aramaic. Perhaps the Aramaic Bible, the Pershitta might help shed some light on this. By the first century the common language of the Jewish people was Aramaic. Greek was the vernacular of the West and the language of commerce for the West. Aramaic was the vernacular of the East and the language of commerce for the East. There were basically three different common dialects of Aramaic in the Middle East. These were the Western dialect (spoken around the old Babylonian area), the Northern Galilean (language that Jesus and the disciples spoke) and the Southern dialect (language spoken in Judea and Jerusalem). Classical Hebrew was a dead language by the first century and used only ceremonially and in scholarly writings such as Latin is today. The synagogue readings and recitation of prayers were all in the Classical Hebrew during the 1st Century. Although Jesus spoke Aramaic, some scholars argue that many of His teachings were in Hebrew as to retain an esoteric nature in His teachings. This becomes even more important with recent discoveries surfacing from the studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
One such very recent discovery from the Psalms Scroll sheds some light on this very troubling passage in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” Why would God lead us into temptation? If it was His divine will to lead us into temptation, why would we pray for Him not to lead us into temptation. Was Jesus actually teaching us to pray and tell God to back off? As mentioned earlier, is this in contradiction to the teachings of James in 1:3?
An identical phrase was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic which matches that of the Aramaic Bible and follows a certain rhythmic pattern. Another thing to keep in mind about this culture is that they had no recording devices and most of what was taught by the rabbis was put to a sort of rhythm, meter or rhyme as a memory device. Although not poetry, it did form a good device to aid in memorization. This would very likely be the case with the Lord’s Prayer as it would be one that Jesus wanted His disciples to commit to memory. We do the same when teaching children to pray: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” It is easier for a child as well as an adult to memorize something in rhyme. The rhythm and rhyme of the Lord ’s Prayer in Aramaic would be lost when it was translated into the Greek. However, when transposed into Aramaic and even Hebrew you recapture much of the meter. This is why you will find so many idiomatic expressions in New Testament. It can be difficult at times to express your thoughts in a rhyme and sometimes the only way to make a thought rhyme is to create an idiomatic expression.
This passage, “Lead us not into temptation” that has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls which was written in Aramaic carries such a rhythm. When you transpose the phrase in the Lord ’s Prayer and the passage in James to the Hebrew or Aramaic you get the same meter or rhyme as found with the identical phrase in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This helps to establish this phrase, Lead us not into temptation as an idiomatic expression.
The difficulty now lies in translation of the Aramaic word for temptation nesiona to the Greek word peirasmon. Nesiona in the Dead Sea Scrolls is found in the Hiphal form signifying a causative sense. Hence if we use the Dead Sea Scrolls as a guide we would find a more proper rendering of this phrase: Lead us not into temptation to be more like: Do not allow us to enter wrongful thinking or testing or even more accurately, keep us from being led into wrongful thinking or testing.
As the Lord’s Prayer is given by Jesus we can assume it is an expression of God’s heart. God wants us to pray that we do not enter into wrong thinking or wrong testing. I just wonder how many of my testing were brought on by myself or by my own lack of submission to God’s will or my own wrong thinking? Or how often do I allow the enemy to bamboozle me into wrong thinking or testing?
In my disability bus I recently drove an elderly lady to a Catholic mass. Due to a recent stroke she was very unsteady as she walked and I had to assist her to an usher who then assisted her to her seat. As I passed her off to the usher she momentarily lost her balance and accidently knocked over the holy water. She was absolutely horrified and the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh no, I’m going to hell.” We all, including a priest, tried to reassure her that knocking over the holy water would not send her to hell but she was not to be comforted. I knew later in the service she would recite the Lord’s Prayer where she would pray: “Lead me not into temptation or do not allow me to enter wrongful thinking.” The enemy can make us believe many lies, some not as ridiculous as going to hell for knocking over holy water. Some wrongful thinking can be more subtle like, “If only my church would play the old hymns and not this loud modern music, I could worship God better.” Worship comes from the heart, not your background music. We know that but we allow wrongful thinking to make an excuse for our lack of taste in music.
But wrongful thinking is even less obvious. How many of us live in wrongful thinking, thinking God is going to get even with us for the errors of our ways, thinking God is going to punish us if we do not come up to some standard, fearing we are not good enough to go to heaven when we die when the Bible clearly says that our salvation is not of works but simply the grace of God, Ephesians 2:8-9.
I know many of us recite the Lord’s Prayer on a daily basis. I do. If you find the rendering, “Lead us not into temptation.” a bit troubling, you might want to take advantage of the discoveries found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and offer an alternative rendering of “Don’t allow me to enter into wrong thinking or testing’s.” The fact is, God does no lead us into wrong thinking or testing, we do that ourselves or we allow the enemy to do it to us. In a very poetic way Jesus taught us to pray using a Semitic idiom that is saying, “Protect us from ourselves and the enemy who will lead us into wrong thinking or wrong testing.”
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