Fritz von Uhde, The Mealtime Prayer, 1885. Public domain.

Deuteronomy 8:10 and 1 Timothy 4:4 to 5 · Subject · Gratitude

Grace Before Meals

Scripture joins thanks to food from the law of Moses to the letters of Paul, and Jesus gave thanks over bread at His meals.

After fourteen days of storm at sea, "Paul took bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all."

Deuteronomy 8:10 BSB

When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.

4Four Meals and Their Verbs
4Grace from the Law to the Letters
2The Blessing over Bread and Rinkart's Table Grace

Books: Deuteronomy, 1 Timothy
Hold in memory: 1 Timothy 4:4 to 5

Summary

Grace is the short prayer of thanks to God said at a meal. Scripture grounds it in the goodness of what God has made and in the duty of a creature to name the Giver. It shows thanks spoken at the tables of Israel, of Jesus and of the apostles, and the Mishnah, the code of Jewish law compiled in about AD 190 to 230, sets a blessing over bread.

Deuteronomy 8:10 tells Israel to bless the LORD after eating and being satisfied, and verses 11 to 14 warn that plenty can make the heart forget Him.
Jesus gave thanks or spoke a blessing over bread at the feeding of the five thousand, at the Last Supper and at Emmaus (John 6:11, Matthew 26:26 and Luke 24:30).
Paul teaches that every creation of God is good and that food received with thanksgiving is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4 to 5).

Thanks at the Table

The law's command to bless the LORD for food stands in Deuteronomy 8:10.

The practice of thanks at the table matters to every reader who eats each day, because the table is where a person most often receives from God without a word.

The question at the centre of the study is why Scripture joins thanks to eating. Moses, the Gospel writers and Paul each give a part of that answer, and it reaches every meal of an ordinary day. Saying grace belongs to gratitude, the thanks owed to God for who He is and for what He has done.

The study in brief

Gratitude

Gratitude in Scripture is thanks given to God, owed first because He is good and then for all that He does. Israel brought thanks to Him as an offering, the todah, and sang a refrain of thanks for His goodness in its worship. In the Gospels Jesus gives thanks before meals and at the tomb of Lazarus. The church named the Lord's Supper the Eucharist after the Greek verb for His thanks over the bread (1 Corinthians 11:24). Scripture names grumbling as the opposite of thanks.

Thanks rests on God's character before His gifts: Psalm 136 thanks Him for who He is before it lists what He has done, and each of its 26 verses ends with His loving devotion.
God commands thanks in every circumstance, the hard ones included, and calls it His will for His people in Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
In Israel thanks was brought to God as an offering, eaten before Him the same day, and His people enter His gates with thanksgiving (Leviticus 7:11 to 15).

Read the whole study16 sections, 4 verses set out

Four Meals and Their Verbs

The Gospels and Acts describe Jesus and Paul at table with the same few verbs.

At each of the four meals the thanks or blessing comes before the bread is shared.

Meal	Took	Gave thanks or blessed	Broke	Gave
The feeding of the five thousand	took the loaves and the fish	gave thanks	not recorded in John	distributed to those who were seated
The Last Supper	took bread	spoke a blessing	broke it	gave it to the disciples
The meal at Emmaus	took bread	spoke a blessing	broke it	gave it to them
Paul on the ship	took bread	gave thanks to God in front of them all	broke it	not recorded in Acts

A table of four New Testament meals, each with the verbs the Berean text gives for taking, thanking or blessing, breaking and giving, and "not recorded" where the text gives none.

Grace from the Law to the Letters

The Gospels and Acts record thanks or a blessing at four meals.

The 4 texts in canon order.

Each station opens its verse page.

Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses in which to dwell, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Deuteronomy 8:12 to 14BSB

The warning shows why the command of 8:10 is needed, for plenty is the very condition in which Israel would forget.

While He was reclining at the table with them, He took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus—and He disappeared from their sight.

Luke 24:30 to 31BSB

At Emmaus the two disciples recognized Jesus straight after He had blessed and broken the bread.

He who observes a special day does so to the Lord; he who eats does so to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Romans 14:6BSB

In a church divided over food and holy days, Paul counts both the one who eats and the one who abstains as giving thanks to God.

For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected, because it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:4 to 5BSB

Against teachers who forbade certain foods, Paul grounds the goodness of food in creation and its right use in thanksgiving and prayer.

Romans 14:6, 1 Timothy 4:4 to 5

The Blessing over Bread and Rinkart's Table Grace

Jewish law and Lutheran hymnody each set a blessing at the table outside Scripture.

Mishnah Berakhot 6:1, in the William Davidson edition on Sefaria, prescribes a blessing over bread that praises God for bringing bread from the earth.

Martin Rinkart's hymn "Nun danket alle Gott", sung in English as "Now thank we all our God", stands in his Jesu Hertz-Büchlein of 1663 under the title Tisch-Gebetlein, a short prayer at table. John Julian records the title in his Dictionary of Hymnology.

The study in brief

Now Thank We All Our God

Now Thank We All Our God is Catherine Winkworth's English, published in 1858, of a German grace at table by a Lutheran pastor of the seventeenth century. Its stanzas thank God for His wonders and for His gifts from birth onward, and ask Him to keep His people in His grace. An account in The Sunday at Home of 1888 says it was written for the peace that ended the Thirty Years' War, and the record of its printings answers it.

Martin Rinkart (1586 to 1649) was archdeacon of his home town of Eilenburg from 1617 and passed most of his working life amid the Thirty Years' War.
In the plague of 1637 he was for a time the town's only clergyman, buried about 4,480 people and lost his first wife on 8 May.
Rinkart's book of 1663 titles the hymn a grace at table, and Julian holds that it stood in the book's first edition of 1636.

Read the whole study9 sections, 4 verses set out

The Words for Grace

The New Testament uses two Greek verbs for what Jesus and Paul said over bread.

John 6:11 and Acts 27:35 use eucharisteō, to give thanks, and Strong's lexicon adds that it is used specially of saying grace at a meal. Matthew 26:26 and Luke 24:30 use eulogeō, to speak well of, which used of God means to bless or to thank. In Deuteronomy 8:10 the Hebrew verb is barak, to bless.

The two Greek verbs stand side by side in the accounts of the feeding of the crowds. Matthew 14:19 says Jesus spoke a blessing over the five loaves, and Mark 8:6 says He gave thanks over the seven.

Luther and Brother Lawrence

Two later Christian voices speak of thanks for God's gifts and of turning to God at the table.

1483 to 1546 · Martin Luther

Martin Luther's Table Talk was recorded by guests at his table and translated by Henry Bell. In it Luther says that God asks of the people He feeds "only that we do acknowledge him for our God, and thank him for his gifts". In the same collection he says, "I give more thanks to our Lord God for one tree or bush than all rich farmers and husbandmen do for their large and fruitful grounds".

1614 to 1691 · Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence wrote to a friend in trouble in the seventh letter of The Practice of the Presence of God (Revell translation, 1895). He wrote, "Lift up your heart to Him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company".

Every Meal a Gift

Grace at the table names the Giver at the moment His gift is used.

If I partake in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:30 to 31BSB

Paul joins thankful eating to the rule that whatever a believer does is done to the glory of God.

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0, with Strong's definitions.
Mishnah Berakhot 6:1, The William Davidson Talmud edition, Sefaria (CC BY-NC), cited and not reproduced.
John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: John Murray, 1892; revised 1907), article Rinkart, Martin, pp. 962 to 963.
Martin Luther, Table Talk, translated by Henry Bell (1652), Cassell's National Library edition with an introduction by Henry Morley (London: Cassell, 1886)
Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman of Lorraine), The Practice of the Presence of God (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1895 translation)

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