There is a core linguistic dictum: “form implies meaning.”

Regarding the Lord’s Prayer, the fact that it begins with three 3rd person imperatives and then continues on with three 2nd person imperatives is important and should affect how we understand and translate the prayer. There is a difference in form, which correlates to some sort of different in meaning.

As we saw in Part 1, modern translations reflect two main understandings of the difference:

  1. the 3rd person imperatives serve as a stand-in for the optative/subjunctive nuance of expressing the desire of the person praying in the faithful hope that God will fulfill it;
  2. the difference is essentially stylistic and the first three petitions have the effective force of a prayerful command to God, like petitions 4-6.

The second of these options is on the right track. The 3rd person imperatives are like 2nd person imperatives. But it misses who the force of the imperative is supposed to fall on: the prayers!

To see this, we’ll walk through:

  • a quick tour of the nature of imperatives
  • the peculiarities of the 3rd person imperative
  • the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer

The nature of imperatives

Imperatives are the core language tool in Greek to impose your will upon another.

This is as much true for the rarer 3rd person imperative as for the common 2nd person imperative. Whether they listen or not, of course, is outside your control, but the choice to use an imperative is a choice to say to someone else, “Here is how you should act.” A more precise way to say this is that imperatives have a directive force.

There are two important components of the directive force: the speaker and the intended recipient who is to do something different. We’ll call the recipient the intended agent. Imperatives express not only the desire on the part of the speaker that something occur or be changed, but they also place a force upon the intended recipient to bring about said change.

With the 2nd person imperative, the intended agent is clear—the “you” being addressed. Sometimes an individual, sometimes a group. Either way, the “you” is the agent who is expected to change how they act in line with what the speaker is commanding.

This brief description of imperatives is important because the mechanics of the 3rd person imperative are not entirely clear. An important question to ask of the 3rd person imperatives in the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer is this: “Who is the intended agent?”

The peculiarities of 3rd person imperatives

The existence of 3rd person imperative forms in Greek brings with it certain complexities.

On the surface, the intention of these forms appears to be to command a 3rd party to action: a ‘he/she/it’ rather than a ‘you.’ That is the extent that most grammars and discussions of the imperative have to say about them. But that’s not quite right.

Judy Glaze, in a study of the 3rd person imperatives in the LXX, finds the perhaps counterintuitive result that 3rd person imperatives usually aren’t directed at a 3rd person at all. In fact, they are usually used to address the second person, “you,” or even the first person, “I/we.”

The Greek 3rd person imperative can be used to command a 3rd person but usually doesn’t.

When used as a way to command a 1st or 2nd person, Glaze sees the following distinct functions:

  1. Etiquette
  2. Intensification of a command
  3. Brings emphasis to certain sentence elements
  4. Alteration of tone

Schuyler Signor, in a study of the 3rd person imperative in the Greek NT and some related works, also concludes that the 3rd person imperative is not often used to command a 3rd person. Rather, it has an entirely different use profile:

The study demonstrated that the third person does function differently from the second person imperative other than in the expected sense of addressing a third party beyond the immediate listening/reading audience. In actuality, its capacity for this purpose is infrequently employed and easily provided for by other forms. The primary function of the third person imperative is to add emphasis for the immediate audience either with regard to who (in the audience) is responsible to carry out the injunction (what I have called “subject transfers”) or what is to be done by the audience (what I have called “object transfers”).

The Third Person Imperative in the Greek New Testament, 2

In a word, the 3rd person imperative is used to for adding some measure of emphasis.

What do the imperatives in the Lord’s Prayer mean?

When we read the Lord’s Prayer, we have to ask who is the expected agent responsible to bring about the first 3 petitions.

Schuyler gives us two main options for the 3rd person imperative in general:

  1. It emphasizes who in the audience is responsible, or
  2. It emphasizes what is to be done by the audience.

An examination of these categories suggests that in the Lord’s Prayer the 3rd imperatives emphasize what is to be done by the audience.

For comparison, think about the difference between the following sets of commands:

  1. Shine your light vs. Let your light shine
  2. Cease being angry by sunset vs. The sun must not set on your anger

The 3rd person imperative is commanding the hearer to do something. But it does so while at the same time shifting the focus to the object of the subject’s actions.

Practically speaking, Jesus uses these 3rd person imperatives to focus on:

  • The concept of God’s name as the locus for demonstrating God’s holiness
  • God’s Kingdom as the pattern for a realm of absolute devotion and service
  • God’s will as the ideal human activity in light of God’s power and mercy

These petitions function like boomerangs: the directive force lands not on God, nor on the abstract notion of “God’s name/kingdom/will,” but on the prayers themselves! Jesus gives the command to those he is teaching to pray, and they re-give it to themselves over and over again.

While this interpretation is supported by a solid study in the usage of the 3rd person imperative in New Testament Greek, it is hardly new or innovative. This is, in essence, how the Church Father St. John Chrysostom understood the force of the 3rd person imperative here:

Worthy of him who calls God Father, is the prayer to ask nothing before the glory of “His Father, but to account all things secondary to the work of praising Him. For “hallowed” is glorified. For His own glory He hath complete, and ever continuing the same, but He commands him who prays to seek that He may be glorified also by our life. Which very thing He had said before likewise, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” [Matt. 5:16]”

“St John Chrysostom: Homily 19 on St. Matthew: On the Lord’s Prayer,” translated by Rev. Sir George Prevost. The Saint Pachomius Library. Accessed 10/7/2024.

Having recovered this new/ancient understanding, we can ask how the parts of the Lord’s Prayer work together.

The two moves of the Lord’s Prayer

Once you grasp that the 3rd person imperatives are doing something different from the 2nd person imperatives, you are well-positioned to see the basic logic of the two parts of the prayer:

  • The first 3 requests say in different ways, “God, this is the way you want us to live”
  • The second 3 requests say in different ways, “God, to live the way you want us to, we need this from you”

As such, in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches not just a prayer to say and a pattern to follow. He also teaches a posture of prayer.

Prayer is fundamentally a response to God. God stands at the center of prayer. God sets the orienting priorities for prayer. Prayer is supposed to be centrally focused on God and his intentions. The opening salvo of the Lord’s Prayer is a reminder prayed over ourselves that God and his will, kingdom, and name are the key orienting points of life. We need to do these things!

Prayer as a response to God is also creaturely. Because God is who he is, because we are who we are, and because we are supposed to sanctify God’s name, bring in his kingdom, and do his will in what we do, there are things we need from God.

Things like:

  • Provision of daily needs
  • Guidance in the relational complexities of living in community with broken people as broken people
  • Spiritual guidance and protection.

Without receiving these things from God, any hope of doing the first three petitions is bunk.

The Lord’s Prayer, perhaps in good Lutheran fashion, tosses the one praying upon the need of grace as they are confronted by their inadequacies in fulfilling the very things they are praying. As a centerpiece of sorts to the Sermon on the Mount, this is a very fitting message.

Because the King who commands this prayer is the King who commands this Kingdom Ethic is the King who lives, dies, and rises again to ransom a people into the kingdom and free them up to live as God intends.

Sources and Relevant Studies

Bakker, Willem Frederik. The Greek Imperative: An Investigation into the Aspectual Differences Between the Present and Aorist Imperatives in Greek Prayer from Homer up to the Present Day. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1966.

Glaze, Judy. “The Septuagintal Use of the Third Person Imperative.” Master of Arts, Harding Graduate School of Religion, 1979.

Mathewson, David L. Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach. Essentials of Biblical Greek Grammar. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021.

Matson, Mark A. “The Our Father and 3rd Person Imperatives.” Milligan College, 2000.

Signor, Schuyler. “The Third Person Imperative in the Greek New Testament.” Master’s Thesis, Abilene Christian University, 1999.