Matthew6chapter 6

Matthew 6:1

Verse 1 states the principle the chapter's three examples then illustrate, alms, prayer, and fasting each done to be seen of men forfeiting any reward from the Father. Righteousness done before men is not itself condemned, since 5:16 commands letting good works be seen, but the motive of display is, the same deed judged differently by why it is done. Reward is the word repeated through this section, and the commentators read it as a real principle of divine accounting rather than a figure of speech.

Matthew 6:2-4

No trumpet literally sounded in the synagogue offering box, and the bench reads it as a figure for the deliberate self-advertisement of a showy giver, though some note the ram's-horn-shaped chests, called trumpets for their shape, that stood in the temple court for contributions. Left hand not knowing what the right hand does is hyperbole for a giving so free of self-congratulation that the giver himself scarcely tallies it. The Father who sees in secret answers openly, the same phrase repeated for prayer and fasting, framing all three as transactions with God rather than performances for a crowd.

Matthew 6:5-6

Standing to pray in synagogues and street corners was ordinary Jewish practice at the fixed hours, and the fault Jesus names is not the posture or the place but praying there in order to be seen, timing devotion to catch an audience. The closet, tameion in the Greek, names an inner storeroom, the most private room a house had, and shutting the door pictures prayer stripped of any possible witness but God. The same reward formula closes the paragraph as closed the alms teaching, reward from the Father who sees in secret.

Matthew 6:7

Vain repetitions translates battalogeo, a rare word the bench reads as babbling or heaping up empty phrases, the kind of invocation the prophets of Baal practiced at Carmel, crying from morning until noon in 1 Kings 18:26. The fault named is thinking much speaking itself moves God, as though prayer were a formula to be worked rather than a request made to a Father who already knows the need. The warning does not forbid repeated prayer, since Jesus himself prays the same words three times at Gethsemane in 26:44, but repetition used as a substitute for faith.

Matthew 6:8

That the Father knows the need before it is asked does not make asking pointless, since the model prayer follows immediately after this verse. The commentators read prayer's purpose here less as informing God than as aligning the one who prays with what the Father already intends to give. Knowledge of the need is stated to steady a disciple against the very anxiety about provision the chapter goes on to address at verse 25.

Matthew 6:9

Our Father opens the prayer with the address Jesus alone uses without qualification elsewhere, and which he teaches disciples to share by adoption, intimacy held together with which art in heaven's transcendence rather than against it. Hallowed be thy name asks first that God's own name be treated as holy, in the world and in the one praying, before any request for bread or forgiveness follows. The order itself teaches the shape of right prayer, God's glory sought before personal need.

Matthew 6:10

Thy kingdom come asks for the reign already present in the King now standing among them to arrive in its full and visible form, the same tension between a kingdom begun and a kingdom coming that runs through the parables of chapter 13. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven sets heaven's unbroken obedience as the pattern prayed for on earth, not resignation but a plea for the same glad compliance angels already give. The two petitions read together, kingdom and will, name the same reality from its public and its personal sides.

Matthew 6:11

our daily bread: Daily translates epiousios, a word almost unknown outside this prayer and its parallel in Luke, so rare that Origen thought the evangelists coined it; the readings on the table are bread for the coming day, bread sufficient for existence, or bread for this very day, and no reading has settled the question decisively. Whatever epiousios means precisely, the petition asks daily provision rather than stored abundance, echoing the manna that could not be hoarded past its day in Exodus 16:19-20. The prayer keeps a disciple dependent on the Father one day at a time, the same dependence verse 34 later commands directly.

Matthew 6:12

forgive us our debts: Debts stands for sins, the Aramaic word Jesus likely used, chowba, carrying both senses at once, so owing God is pictured as a debt only grace can cancel. As we forgive our debtors sets a horizontal condition beside the vertical request, not a payment that earns forgiveness but a family likeness that must be present in one who asks it, an argument the parable of the unforgiving servant makes at length in 18:23-35. The clause anticipates the direct teaching of verses 14 and 15, which state the same principle without a parable's figure.

Matthew 6:13

lead us not into temptation: Lead us not into temptation asks to be spared testing beyond what can be borne, James 1:13 already ruling out any reading that makes God the author of the temptation to sin itself, and deliver us from evil names the tempter more precisely than an abstraction, the evil one. The doxology, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, is missing from the oldest Greek manuscripts, and most modern translations set it apart or omit it, likely a liturgical addition drawing on 1 Chronicles 29:11 that entered the text through repeated public use. Its absence from the earliest copies is a textual question, not a doctrinal one, since the truth it states is affirmed everywhere else in Scripture.

Matthew 6:14-15

forgive men their trespasses: Jesus closes the prayer by isolating its one conditional clause and stating it as direct teaching, forgiveness given and forgiveness received bound together. The warning is not that forgiveness is earned by forgiving but that an unforgiving heart shows itself not yet reached by the forgiveness it claims to have received, the same logic Paul assumes in Ephesians 4:32. The verse sets a standard disciples return to often, since the church has always found withholding forgiveness one of its most persistent failures.

Matthew 6:16-18

disfigure their faces: Fasting was assumed practice rather than commanded fresh here, and the fault addressed is again display, hypocrites disfiguring their faces, likely with ash or unwashed neglect, so a fast could not be missed by anyone watching. Anoint thine head and wash thy face commands the ordinary grooming of any other day, hiding the fast so thoroughly that only the Father who sees in secret knows it is kept. The third reward formula closes the triad begun with alms and prayer, the same principle proved on a third and different discipline.

Matthew 6:19-21

Treasures on earth face three named threats, moth, rust, and thieves, covering the era's main forms of wealth, fine cloth, metal, and stored goods, all naturally perishable or stealable. Treasure in heaven is not defined further here but is the same reward language running through the chapter, good done for God's eye rather than man's building an account no moth or thief can touch. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also states the psychology behind the command, that a disciple's affections follow his investment rather than the reverse.

Matthew 6:22-23

The single eye and the evil eye were a common Jewish idiom for generosity and stinginess rather than a statement about physical sight, a good eye giving freely and an evil eye grudging, the same idiom Jesus uses of the vineyard owner's critics in 20:15. Read this way the image continues directly from the treasure teaching just given, an undivided devotion to God filling the whole life with light the way a single eye fills the body. If the light in a person, the very capacity meant to see rightly, has itself gone dark, the darkness is total, greater than mere blindness.

Matthew 6:24

Mammon is Aramaic for wealth or property, personified here as a rival master rather than named as neutral money itself. No man can serve two masters states a structural fact about undivided allegiance, not merely poor time management, since the two masters pull toward opposite loves and opposite loyalties. The verse turns the chapter from religious hypocrisy toward material anxiety, the two temptations the commentators read as closely related, both substituting a visible security for trust in the Father.

Matthew 6:25-27

Take no thought translates merimnao, anxious care rather than reasonable planning, and the argument runs from greater to lesser, the God who gave life and body can be trusted for food and clothing, their lesser support. The fowls of the air neither sow nor reap yet are fed, an argument from the Father's care for creatures of far less worth than the disciples he addresses. One cubit added to a person's stature by worry is impossible, and the commentators read the illustration as exposing anxiety's total uselessness rather than only its wrongness.

Matthew 6:28-30

the lilies of the field: The lilies of the field, likely the wild anemones or crown daisies common on Galilee's hillsides, neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these, a comparison that ranks God's plainest handiwork above the wealthiest king's court dress recorded in 1 Kings 10:14-29. If God so clothes grass burned as fuel the next day, the argument concludes still more forcefully for disciples than for flowers. O ye of little faith is the second sounding of a rebuke that returns at 8:26, 14:31, and 16:8, always spoken to disciples already following him rather than to the crowds still deciding whether to.

Matthew 6:31-32

What shall we eat: The threefold question, what shall we eat, drink, and wear, is named as the Gentiles' own preoccupation, those who seek after all these things because they know no Father who has already numbered their needs. Disciples are set apart from that anxious pursuit not by having fewer needs but by having a Father who knows them before they are asked, the same assurance given already at verse 8. The contrast is between a life run by care for provision and a life resting on a Father's attention.

Matthew 6:33

This is the righteousness thread's fourth beat and its clearest single statement, seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness placed first, ahead of food, drink, and clothing, with the promise that these lesser things follow rather than lead. The verse states a right ordering of priority rather than a guarantee against all want, since Paul himself knew hunger in Philippians 4:12 while still seeking the kingdom first. Kingdom of God is one of the small number of places Matthew uses that phrase rather than his usual kingdom of heaven, alongside 12:28, 19:24, 21:31, and 21:43.

Matthew 6:34

Take no thought for the morrow closes the section by returning to the same anxious care named at verse 25, now aimed specifically at tomorrow's unknown troubles rather than today's visible need. The morrow shall take thought for the things of itself personifies each day as bearing its own burden, so a disciple is never asked to carry two days' worth of trouble at once. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof names present trouble honestly rather than denying it, teaching a disciple to meet one day's portion with the daily bread already prayed for at verse 11.