Two scholars–N.T. Wright and Brant Pitre–have argued that the Lord’s Prayer should be understood as a prayer for the “new Exodus.” When I first encountered this suggestion, I was intrigued. It immediately seemed plausible since so much of this section of Matthew’s Gospel is seeped in Exodus imagery and allusions. Wright claims that this prayer is designed for the people of God in a new wilderness wandering.1 Both Wright and Pitre show how the various elements of the prayer allude back to the Exodus story and also look forward to the hope of new Exodus redemption:
It is no secret that Matthew’s Gospel depicts Jesus as both the New Moses and the New Israel. The first few chapters of Matthew are dripping with Exodus imagery and allusions. The baby whom God sent to rescue the people has to be saved from the evil king who is slaying the baby boys under two years of age (Matt 2:16-18). God tells Jesus’s parents to flee to Egypt for the safety of the child. Matthew notifies us that this happened to fulfill what was spoken in Hosea 11:1 “Out of Egypt I have called my son” (Matt 2:15). Jesus passes through the waters at his own baptism echoing the passing of Israel through the waters (Matt 3:13-17; see 1 Cor 10:1-2 for another passage connecting baptism to the crossing of the sea in Exodus). At his baptism, he is announced to be the Son of God echoing the announcement in Exod 4:22 that Israel is God’s firstborn son. Jesus passing through the waters launches immediately into his temptation in the wilderness which follows the same redemptive pattern as the Exodus story (Matt 4:1-11). The “forty days and forty nights” of fasting in the wilderness recalls Israel’s forty years of hunger in the wilderness (Deut 8:2-3). The first temptation of bread recalls the testing of the Israelites in the wilderness with bread (4:3). The third temptation takes Jesus up on a very high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world which recalls Moses’s view from Mt. Nebo in Deut 34:1-4. In response to each of the three temptations from Satan, Jesus answers with a quotation from Deuteronomy 6-8 (Deut 8:3; 6:16; 6:13) suggesting Jesus is linking his temptation with Israel’s wilderness experience. Then, Jesus “went up on the mountain” where he taught his disciples instructions for living in the kingdom recalling Moses’s function of relaying God’s laws to the people at Mt. Sinai (5:1). These are just a few of the resonances with the Exodus story in the opening chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.
These intertextual links with the Exodus story increase the plausibility of understanding the Lord’s Prayer as a new Exodus prayer. In what follows, I will provide some of the more fascinating insights offered by Wright and Pitre.
- “Our Father”– It is in the Exodus event that YHWH emphasizes His relationship to Israel as a Father to a son (Exod 4:22-23; Deut 8:5; 14:1; Hos 11:1-3). The first explicit use of the Hebrew word “father” for God in the OT is found in the “Song of Moses” in Deut 32:9-14. Thus, to pray to God as “our Father” alludes to Israel as God’s firstborn son but also recognizes that the God being addressed is the God of the Exodus redemption.
- “Hallowed by thy name”– Another way to translate this phrase is that God’s name be “made holy.” A brief read through the book of Exodus reveals the importance of the revelation of YHWH’s name to Moses and the Israelites (cf. Exod 3:12-22). “Bearing the name of the LORD” in vain is one of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:7). This idea of making God’s great name holy appears in Ezekiel 36:22-28 which is itself a new Exodus text. There, God promises to gather His people and He tells them, “You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek 36:38) which contains an allusion to Leviticus 26:12.
- “Your Kingdom Come”– The original Exodus story is a coming to age story of God’s people from slavery in Egypt to the development into a nation with a God, priesthood, temple, common religion, laws, government, and a promised land. At the base of Mt. Sinai, God confers on Israel the status of being his “treasured possession” and the role of being his “priestly kingdom” and “holy nation” if they will obey His voice and keep His covenant (Exod. 19:5-6). Pitre says, “… the expectation of the coming of the kingdom of God and the hope for the new Exodus are one and the same.”2 If the kingdom for which Jesus prays refers to a people, then this petition becomes clearer. “This is especially true if the people in question are in exile, as the tribes of Israel had been for centuries, spread among the Gentile nations. In this light, the coming of God’s kingdom for which Jesus instructs his disciples to pray means nothing less than the ingathering of Israel and the Gentiles in a new Exodus.”3
- “Give us this day our daily bread”– The prayer for mundane, daily bread seems odd especially when Jesus is going to command his disciples not be anxious about what they will eat or drink just a few verses later (Matt 6:25). In all of the OT, one of the most memorable scenes is God’s provision of daily manna from heaven for His people in the wilderness (Exod 16; cf. Ps 78:23-25, 29). The allusion to the Exodus story undergirds that this prayer is not for ordinary bread, but for “bread from heaven” given by God on their way to the promised land. “Seen in this light, Jesus is not merely instructing the disciples to pray for the mundane bread of daily existence. Rather, he is teaching them to pray for the new manna of the new Exodus.”4 Wright shows that manna was not needed in Egypt nor would it be eaten in the promised land. It was the miraculous food that sustained them on their journey while they are not living in the land. The provision of daily bread signals that the Exodus has begun.5
- “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”– The choice of “debt” language with associations to economic debt may be due to allusions to Jubilee where every Israelite was set free from debt-slavery and allowed to return to their own land (cf. Lev 25:1-55). As Pitre points out, the Jubilee was more than just freedom from debt. It also included the return to one’s land (Lev 25:24, 28). Three times in the instructions regarding the Jubilee year, God emphasized the connection to the Exodus: “I am the Lord your God who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God” (Lev 25:38, 42, 55). The Jubilee was a constant reminder that YHWH had freed them from their slavery and given them a land by having the people of Israel free their own slaves and restore their land. Teaching the disciples to pray for the forgiveness of debts is more than a prayer for forgiveness of one’s individual sins—it is also bound up with a prayer for a new Jubilee and a new Exodus.
- “Lead us not into temptation”– Many commentators take this request to refer to the period of trials that would precede the coming of the kingdom of God.6 The same Greek word for “trials” or “testing” is found in three texts in the Exodus story referring to the plagues and tribulation that preceded the first Exodus (Deut 4:27-34; 7:19; 29:3).7 “In other words, there would one day come a new Exodus, in which God would once again redeem his people through a time of peirasmos accompanied by signs and wonders: that is, through a period of suffering and death that would inaugurate the age of salvation.”8 Pitre points out the significance of this. If this is true, then there could be no New Exodus without a climactic new Passover–a time when the firstborn son would be put to death for the sins of Israel and Egypt.9
“When seen in this light, the Lord’s Prayer is not just a prayer to the Creator to save his people in the last days. It is a prayer to the God of the Exodus to see the plight of his suffering children and release them from slavery to sin and death. It is a plea for the Father to hallow his name by giving his children a new heart and a new spirit and bring them home to a land that will be more glorious than Eden of old.”10
Notes:
[1] Wright, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 139-40.
[2] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 83.
[3] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 83-84.
[4] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 85.
[5] Wright, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 143.
[6] Wright, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 144.
[7] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 91-92.
[8] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 92-93.
[9] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 93.
[10] Pitre, “The Lord’s Prayer,” 95.
Bibliography:
Pitre, Brant “The Lord’s Prayer and the New Exodus,” Letter & Spirit 2 (2006): 69-96
Wright, NT “The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm for Christian Prayer,” in Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 132-54
Ministry of Study 
thanks for these insights. Informative, enjoyable and thought provoking.
It is interesting however that neither Tom Wright nor Brandt Pitre was the first theologian to make such a connection. That honour (at least in modern times) goes I think to Anthony Bloom. In his book ‘Living Prayer’ published in 1966 (well before Tom Wright had got to work) he has quite a long chapter drawing out connections between the Exodus and the Lord’s Prayer. It is quite profound. Here’s a sample, “There is one thing that stands as a line of demarcation between Egypt and the desert, between slavery and freedom; it is a moment when we act decisively and become new people… In terms of geography it was the Red Sea, in terms of the Lord’s Prayer it is “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive”. This “as we forgive” is the moment when we take our salvation into our own hands because whatever God does depends on what we do… if we come unforgiving, we check the mystery of love, we refuse it and there is no place for us in the kingdom. (Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer, p.30)”. I do rather wish Bishop Tom would give Anthony Bloom some credit!