Daily Bread

Abstract

The very ordinary word ‘daily’ in the Lord’s Prayer does not reflect the fact that the original word in Aramaic or Hebrew must have been an unusual one to have needed translating by the rare, if not specially coined, Greek word ἐπιούσιος. This word is more likely to be derived from εἶμι (ibo) than from εἰμί (sum) and to convey some sense of ‘coming’, that is, coming to us soon, today. The word ‘our’ is significant: the bread has been allotted to us. But there was no Greek word that would convey all this; in the tradition of Proverbs 30:8 (LXX), the petition must be for ‘sufficient, but not too much’—a prayer that is highly relevant in today’s unequal world of excess provision and chronic undernourishment.