EDPrayer: Unless it is determined that VN was a closet Bible
translator, I pray that we will not be led very far down this trail . .
. .
The Lord’s Prayer, as I was taught it some 45 years ago as a Scottish
Presbyterian.
I have not looked up the prayer to copy the correct punctuation, but
have
typed it as I say it.
Our Father, Who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from Evil,
For Thine is the Kingdom,
And the power, and the
Glory forever.
In Jesus name, Amen.
I claim no special authority in this area, but I think the difference
between the “lead us not” version I learned as a child, and the “let us
not fall” version of the Catalans, the Spanish, and the Portuguese may
be as cultural as it is political.
In our Presbyterian version, it seemed to me that “Lead us not” was a
plea to God to not set us to too stern a task, since we are weak, and
bound to fall, or fail. This plea may have been a daily confession of
humility. God was a tester. We spoke of the “trials” that we had to
undergo as circumstances that God knew about and allowed to occur. We
prayed not to be “lead” into them (since God directs your steps all
through life). But when the disaster finally strikes, it is something
for us
to deal with, though we can freely pray to God to strengthen our
endurance while we did our best. Life would not be life without
temptation and failure and each time a renewed sense that we need God
no matter how little we may like what is happening to us at the moment.
In my private interpretation of the debtor version, I was also always
reminded of the parable in which a dishonest servant confesses to his
master that he cannot pay a debt. The master forgives him, on the
grounds of the servant’s having confessed rather than conceal the
debt. But as he leaves the master’s presence, he encounters a lesser
slave who owes him
money, and in the presence of the master who has forgiven him he knocks
his debtor down and has him arrested (or so I recall it). The master
sees this hypocritical and unforgiving action and retakes the debtor he
had forgiven, but who had failed to forgive in turn, and rescinds his
reprieve.
The “let us not fall” version seems to take a more human view of
temptation, in which the supplicant knows what temptations life holds,
accepts his or her imperfections and passions, and prays to God to help
them tread the narrow way, and not fall as our forebears did in Eden.
Again, the “fall” is inevitable, no matter under what agency.
I don’t know if these remarks have been of even the slightest help.
Andrew Brown