Ordinary Prayer in the Old Testament
Psalm 119: 164 expresses the ideal of a daily spirituality of the Old Testament community: “Seven times a day I praise you because your commandments are just.” And yet, it is difficult to find many prayers from ordinary individuals in the Bible. Most are from kings (Hezekiah in Is 38) or great leaders (Abraham in Gn 15) or prophets (Jer 20). The prayer of Hannah, a small-town wife from the tribe of Ephraim, is an exception.
In 1 Samuel 1 :9-18, Hannah prays for a child, begging God to remember her sorrow and need and so grant her request. She also bargains with God, promising to dedicate back to the Lord’s service any son she may bear.
Hannah prays by forming words with her lips, but she does not speak them aloud. She must have been very animated in her hand gestures and body posture because the priest Eli thinks she is possibly drunk.Overall, Hannah’s story reveals a rich trust in the power of prayer.
Looking at prayers of leaders, we see the same humble spirit at work. Abraham’s prayer for the people of Sodom in Genesis 18:1632 reveals a deep trust that God can be favourably moved by prayer. King David prays with a very emotional sense of gratitude and humility after receiving the promise of a lasting dynasty in 2 Samuel 7:18-29. David also unashamedly begs forgiveness from God without blaming someone else (2 Sm 12: 13; 24:10).
Abraham’s prayer for the people in 1 Kings 8:22-53, the longest individual prayer in the Bible, also emphasises the humble position of the ruler before God’s greatness and constantly reiterates the request for God’s forgiveness and blessing on himself and his people.
Jeremiah’s prophetic oracles are often intensely personal prayers as well. Jeremiah 12: 1 -20 is an excellent example in which the prophet places his life and ministry completely in God’s hands. Many of the prayers of Job have the same intense pleading with God (7:11-21; 14:13-22; 30:20-26).
Prayers fall into four basic types in the Old Testament: praise of God and thanksgiving; prayers of blessing; contrition for sin; and petition. Here are examples of each respectively:
(1) Judith 16 is a prayer of exaltation that the opening verse (15: 14) calls a “song of thanksgiving that the people swelled to a hymn of praise.”
(2) Only a few verses earlier in Judith 15:9-10 the people offer a prayer of blessing for Judith, acknowledging her leadership and asking for God’s favour on her.
(3) Daniel 9:4-19 is a poignant prayer of sorrow for the people’s sins.
(4) Habakkuk 1:2-3 opens the book with a plea to God to hear and save the people from destruction.
There is a single source for all these types of prayer in abundance: the Psalms, a treasury of prayers at all levels, their beauty and intensity hardly rivaled anywhere. See, for example, Psalms 8: 5-7; 18: 1; 31 :6; 51:1-2; 90:1-2; 95: 1 -2 as a start, and then read a Psalm a day to enrich your daily prayer. -
By Father Lawrence Boadt, CSP. Father Boadt is the publisher of Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ
