Deliver us from evil.

Matthew 6.13.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus has us pray not to be led to temptation—properly, not put to the test, whether such tests tempt us or not. Instead, in contrast, we should pray we be delivered from evil.

Matthew 6.13 KJV

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

The original text is ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ/allá rýsë imás apó tu ponirú, “but rescue us from the evil.”

The Greek tu is what grammarians call a determiner, although I’m pretty sure your English teachers called it a definite article, ’cause that’s what English determiners usually do: This noun is a particular noun. When you refer to “the bus,” you don’t mean a bus, any ol’ generic interchangeable bus. You mean the bus, this bus, a specific bus, a definite bus. So when people translate tu ponirú, they assume the Greek determiner is a definite article: Jesus is saying, “Rescue us from the evil.” Not evil in general; not all the evil we’ll come across in life. No no no. This is a definite evil. It’s the evil.

So they figure we gotta personify it, and that’s what many recent bible translations have chosen to do.

ASV. “…but deliver us from the evil one.”

CSB, ISV, LEB, NET, NIV, WEB. “…but deliver us from the evil one.”

GNT. “…but keep us safe from the Evil One.”

ICB, NCV. “…but save us from the Evil One.”

NLT, NRSV. “…but rescue us from the evil one.”

Of course Christians figure “the evil one” would be the evilest one, i.e. Satan. So that’s kinda how we interpret the Lord’s Prayer:

Matthew 6.13 Message

“Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.”

We even extrapolate this backwards into the bit about temptation: The reason we gotta ask not to be led into temptation, is because Satan wants us led there, so it can hack away at us. From time to time it’s probably appearing before God himself, asking permission to crap all over us like it did Job. Tempting God himself to remove his hedge of protection from us, and let Satan have its evil, evil way with us. And no, none of this is true. Jesus isn’t talking about Satan.

From evil, and evil times. Not an evil one.

English determiners don’t work like Greek ones. We have three (“the,” “a,” and “an”) and we use them to determine whether an article is definite or indefinite: “The bus” is definite, “a bus” is not. Greek has dozens of determiners, and they’re not used to determine definite or indefinite; they’re used to determine parts of speech. Is this a subject, direct object, indirect object, or genitive? Is the determiner used to suggest the next words, which don’t match its part of speech, adjectives which define the word which does match its part of speech? Is the determiner suggresting how a preposition connects to the noun? Grammar-nerd stuff like that.

Because Jesus says apó tu ponirú, we’re praying “from evil.” Now if we had no determiner—no tu—and simply had apó ponirú, it could still be translated “from evil”… but now it could potentially be translated “by evil.” In other words, “Rescue us—by evil means if you have to.”

And Jesus does not want us praying that. God doesn’t do evil! 1Jn 1.5 He doesn’t co-opt evil, he doesn’t suborn evil; he forbids evil, and doesn’t make an exception for himself. All those Christians who claim God does or borrows evil things on our behalf, and uses ’em for good, do not understand how God works. He’s not an evil mastermind! He doesn’t use evil things. He undoes evil. What we’re seeing is God fixing stuff, redeeming stuff—not manipulating evil till it’s unwittingly doing something good for once.

So the Book of Common Prayer version, and the King James Version, have the Lord’s Prayer right: “Deliver us from evil.” Or as I translate it,

Matthew 6.13 KWL

“Don’t bring us into tribulation

but rescue us from the time of evil.”

Same idea. We shouldn’t only ask to be specifically rescued from Satan: There are plenty of other evils in the world, and we need to be saved from all of them.

There are a lot of Christians who naïvely think Satan is the source of all evil. It’s “the father of lies,” y’know, Jn 8.44 so Christians presume it’s the first cause of every evil thing in the cosmos. It got Adam and Eve to sin, so all sin is its fault. But this ignores the fact humans are inherently selfish, and we can sin just fine without any input from Satan. I would argue most of our sins are self-motivated. The devil doesn’t have to do anything but nudge us to do what we’re already inclined to do anyway.

So in many ways, “deliver us from evil” means we’ve gotta be rescued from ourselves—much as The Message put it. We tempt ourselves to give in to our desires. And justify ’em. And even invent all sorts of Christian-sounding labels on them, and make ’em sound like they’re godly instead of wholly selfish. When we ask God to deliver us from evil, we want the Holy Spirit to likewise show us where we’re wrong—because we are. Keep us from lying to ourselves. Keep us from falling into those old evil patterns that, as new creations in Christ, we’re supposed to quit.

Shifting the blame from ourselves to the devil, is a great way to keep committing those same old sins. After all we don’t have to change; we just need to banish the Tempter, and our inherent goodness oughta shine through, right? But that’s self-delusional. We need to resist temptation, and we need God’s help. So, pray that he deliver us from our own evil, as well all the other evil in the world.