The Lord’s Prayer from Aramaic

Introduction 

Recently Derek explained that the way he understood the word ‘sinner’ in the Jesus prayer, was an acknowledgement of our being lost. I found that extremely helpful. He also mentioned that the Lord’s Prayer always uses words like ‘our and us’, not ‘my and me’ - another valuable insight.

Today’s gospel reading and those comments about the Lord’s Prayer got me thinking - about the phrases, “Thy Kingdom come”, and “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven”, in particular. In fact, today’s parable of the sower and the seed is located in Matthew as the introduction to six other ‘Kingdom parables’ of Jesus i.e. this Kingdom teaching is very important.

Well, all this led me to learning more about the Lord’s Prayer, which will be the focus of this reflection. My content is based on the work of two scholars in particular - Neil Douglas-Klotz and Rocco Errico. The former has written books such as, available for you from the AK library!

So today, the goal is to ‘decode’ the Lord’s Prayer.

Some background:

It’s easy to forget that the English version of the Lord’s Prayer came to us through several translations. From Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, into Greek. From Greek into Latin. From Latin into English.

Each translation involved choices — some deliberate, some the consequence of the limitations of the target language — choices that progressively moved the text away from what Jesus actually said.

Two examples of what was was lost of the original meaning of the prayer are the divine feminine as Creator and the understanding of forgiveness as an active release rather than a moral transaction.

Obviously, Jesus taught his disciples in Aramaic, their native tongue. The words he used carried the specific semantic content, emotional resonance, and the metaphysical meanings embodied in that Aramaic language.

However, the Gospels were written in Greek — not by Jesus, not by eyewitnesses in most cases, but by Greek-speaking communities one to three generations after Jesus’ death, the writers working from oral traditions, earlier written sources, and translations of Aramaic material.

However, Greek and Aramaic are fundamentally different languages. Aramaic is a language that holds multiple meanings simultaneously — one word can carry physical, emotional, and spiritual meaning in a single utterance. Greek is more linear, more analytical, more committed to singular meanings. Therefore, this very first translation process necessarily collapsed the multi-dimensional Aramaic meaning into the more restricted Greek framework.

The Latin Vulgate — the official Bible of the Catholic Church for over a thousand years — was translated from the Greek. The King James Bible was translated primarily from the Latin and the Greek. Each step in the chain moved further from the original Aramaic and embedded deeper, the theology of the translating institution.

So now we are going work through the Lord’s prayer, line by line, decoding the original Aramaic. 

LINE ONE: Abwoon d'bwashmaya (Our Father in Heaven)

The Aramaic word Abwoon (Our Father) is a combination of Ab — the root for father, but also for generative creating — and woon, a suffix that indicates a continuous, ongoing process of creating, a breathing into new life.

So Abwoon does not describe a father sitting on a throne but a dynamic, breathing, generative force through which all life is created - “the womb of existence from which all things continuously emerge”. So both the masculine and the feminine actively participate in the creation process. Why should we be surprised by that?! In nearly all Creation myths, this is true. (I wonder why!?!) And of course, we are creatures made in God’s image.… predominantly but not exclusively male AND female.

The woon, the breath bit, is important as it references scriptures such as Genesis 2 where God breathes life into Adam, and John 4 where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that God is Spirit, the same breath-based concept of deity.

Regarding the heaven reference, D’bwashmaya, Jesus was not talking of some place above the clouds, but was referring to the Realm of Light and vibration — the dimension of reality that has created the physical world as we know it.

In Aramaic, a name is a vibration. Because the name of God in the Hebrew-Aramaic tradition could not be spoken, God was referred to as “the vibration of existence”. However, given our strong concept of a relational God, I find that vibration idea rather difficult to grasp….

So, looking at the first line, this prayer is addressed to ”the living breath of all existence” — the source from which all things continuously emerge — the one who dwells in the Dimension of Light.

O Living Breath, Creator of all that is and all that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, who dwells in the Dimension of Light…

LINE TWO: Nethqadash shmakh (Hallowed be your name)

Nethqadash means to be set apart, to be consecrated, to be brought into sacred relationship.

Shmakh means your name but remember in Aramaic, a name is a vibration, so God is understood as the vibration of existence – neither male nor female.

May your Sacred Reality be recognized and honoured.

LINE THREE: Teytey malkuthakh ( Your kingdom come)

Teytey to come, to arrive. It implies a strong, mutual desire, and in early Aramaic interpretations the word relates to a ‘nuptial chamber’ – a place where mutual desire is fulfilled and birthing begins.

And malkuthakhis a word encompassing a much deeper, more mystical meaning than our English word Kingdom with its patriarchal, hierarchical, and political connotations. ( Remember that those translators had no place in their theology for the feminine divine.)

Malkuthakh references the divine feminine, the ‘sacred queendom’, realm, or rule. The deeply loving feminine divine is associated with the bringing of unity, wisdom, justice and peace So one way of translating these words is expressing a deep desire that the queendom may “take root and be birthed here on earth”

Our strong desire is that your sovereign reality actively guides our lives towards unity, so that love, justice and peace are fully realized, here on earth.

LINE FOUR: Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d’bwashmaya aph b’arha (Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven)

Tzevyanach does not mean will in the sense of command or decree. It means desire, longing, or yearning — a conscious intention that arises from genuine love rather than authority.

The God of the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer does not command, but longs, desires, yearns for the full expression of divine creative love in the physical world.

Aph b’arha — on earth— is a statement about the sacredness of the material world. The earth is not a fallen realm awaiting rescue, but the dimension in which the divine creative longing seeks full expression. i.e these words express God’s yearning for a conscious alignment of the human will with the divine, so that our world becomes a full expression of the divine consciousness.

May your longing be fulfilled that the full expression of the divine, be found here on earth.

LINE FIVE: Hawvlan lachma d’sunqanan yaomana (Give us this day our daily bread) 

In Aramaic , lachma — bread —encompasses physical nourishment, understanding, wisdom, and the experience of divine presence. i.e. nourishment at every level of being. Therefore, this is a request for complete nourishment — physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

Yaomana means today or for this day so the emphasis is on the present moment.

Provide us for this day, the nourishment on every level that we need to fully flourish.

LINE SIX: Washboqlan khaubayn aykanna daph khnan shbaqan l’khayyabayn (Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us)

Washboqlan does not mean forgive in the sense of moral pardon granted to someone who has violated a rule. The Aramaic root means to release, to untie, to set free — to return to the original state by releasing what has accumulated and obscured it.

Khaubayn — trespasses or debts in the English — means literally “the knots we have tied” - for example, through unresolved guilt or resentment. The prayer is not requesting moral absolution from a divine judge, but it is asking for the untying of the knots that prevent the free flow of the creative divine energy through each of us.

Notice that the prayer teaches that the release of others from the grip of our own resentment is the mechanism through which our own knots are released. Or put another way, when we let go of the negative way we might see others, then we are also freed. The release of the other is simultaneously the release of ourselves.

Through our letting go of any negativity we feel toward others, set us free from the knots we have created.

LINE SEVEN: Wela tahlan l’nesyuna ela patzan min bisha  (Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.)

Nesyuna is not temptation in the moral sense, but the experience of being lost — specifically the experience of being lost in the illusion of separation from God. The prayer is saying: do not let us become so lost in the world that we forget our origin and our nature.

Bisha — evil in the English — means, in Aramaic, the unripe, the immature, the not-yet-fully-expressed. It describes the state of consciousness that has not yet fully realized its divine nature — the immature consciousness that acts from fear, separation, and unawareness of its true origin.

Let us not become lost in the illusion of being separated from you. May we never forget that we come from you and that we belong to you.

LINE EIGHT: Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l’ahlam almin. (For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.) 

Malkutha — kingdom — is the same malkutha we encountered in line three. The realm of the divine feminine creator. The sacred queendom. The prayer closes by returning to where it began — acknowledging that the feminine creator, the power of life itself, the radiance that illuminates all existence, belongs to the one who breathes life into all things — not into some exclusive way, not into any particular institution, leader, nation, or even religion.

For the Creation, the power of life, and the radiance of all existence belong to you, O God, for ever.

Ameyn. (Amen.) 

Ameyn (Amen) derives from the root aman — meaning to ground, to make firm, to bring into manifestation. It is not simply a full-stop at the end of a prayer but an affirmation of our own conscious participation in the creative process — the declaration that in speaking these words, this understanding is now grounded in us and that we will commit to actively expressing it in the way we do life.

So be it — grounded in us, expressed through us and made real in the world through our conscious participation.

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So the Lord’s Prayer is not primarily request-based, but a recognition of who God is, who we are, where we come from, what we genuinely need, and what it means to live in alignment with God.

However, as a prayer, it needs to be ‘inhabited’, rather than just recited.

So I now invite you to ‘inhabit’ this prayer. We will read each line of the restored meaning slowly, breathing deeply before moving on to the next one. i.e. we will not simply be addressing the Breath of Life, but being at one with her.

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So , finally, what does Seeking the Kingdom of Heaven actually look like?

It will be craving, passionately pursuing, prioritizing the quest to make our PRIMARY FOCUS IN LIFE, the loving of God and our neighbours.

It will mean ACTIVELY PARTICIPATING in the ongoing creation of a world of unity and peace; working to birth with great love, the full expression of the divine in the physical world we inhabit.

And of course it will mean failing at times, through forgetfulness or fickleness or blindness, but remaining COMMITTED to these sacred goals. 

AMEN!