The Prayers in the Hebrew Bible and Other Prayers in the Ancient World

The prayers found in the Bible are not separated from time and location. While the message and principles in the Bible are timeless, the stories are couched in the culture, language, history, ab viewpoint of an ancient world—a world that is quite foreign sometimes to modern Westerners. Over the next few weeks, in between our studies of the prayers in 1 Samuel, we will examine some of thee prayers in brief.

To understand the prayers of the Old Testament, it is sometimes helpful to compare them with prayers of the neighbors of ancient Israel. Many prayers (or references to prayers) have been preserved from the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. These were large empires that existed at various times during the books we have been studying, and certainly had social, cultural, and political impacts on the people of Israel. It is true that we might be more interested in Israel’s more immediate neighbors, but there are not many ancient Canaanite or Syrian prayer material that has survived to modern times. A few early Ugaritic texts from northern Syria during the second millennia give a report of King Kirtu, grieving over the death of his family,  going to the top of a tower, lifting his hands, and offering a sacrifice to Ba’al and El (two Canaanite gods). That he is praying is implied. A specific prayer to Ba’al is also found in some texts. Some Phoenician and Aramaen inscriptions on votive objects (personal object left at a temple with writing on them, sometimes as a thanksgiving) speak of the god hearing the prayer which was offered. But to find more extensive uses of prayer in the ancient near east, we must turn to Assyria, Bablonia, and Egypt.

In the Ancient Near East, in all languages (including Hebrew), several terms existed for the various acts of praying: one “spoke” to the deities, or “prayed,” “brought,” or “cried out.” These acts were “heard” or “received” by the deity or deities. There were two frequently used words in the Akkadian for prayer and functioned as interjections: one was a general cry for help (ahulup); the second was a more specific plea for a pardon or forgiveness (sigu).[1. If you are interested in more details of this in connection with Old and New Testament prayers, see Patrick D. Miller, They Cried Unto the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). See page 7.] Not surprisingly, this is quite similar to how the Israelites wrote and talked about prayer to God. All humans had a desire to speak with the god or gods, to ask them to help, and to ask them for forgiveness. Even when we believe the god they address is a false god or goddess, we cannot deny that all of us, being created by God, have am element within us that wants to connect with him.

Just like in Hebrew prayers, we find other religions adopting postures for prayer. Like in the Bible, they often correspond to the type of prayer being offered. A shrine at Hazor depicts a man raising his arms up towards a crescent with a sun disk inside. Other statues show people standing, kneeling, falling down before the god or image of the god, or raising one hand while being led before the deity by another (maybe a priest or a lesser deity or a personal god). An apparently universal posture of beseeching a god was standing with both hands raised and the palms facing inward. A Babylonia texts reads: “Prayer, supplication, and ‘touching of the nose.’ Offer them daily, and you will get you reward.” [2. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960) 104-105, 139-140.]  This may refer to touching the nose to the ground in prostration.  The characteristic Egyptian posture was arms raised with palms facing outward.

Many of the prayer which have survived from these cultures came from liturgies, that is, worship or sacrificial services and orders of service. Many probably belonged to temple ritual or ceremonies, and were often used in association with royalty—coronating a new leader, just like we find in some of the so-called “Royal Psalms.” When one addressed a statue or an idol, it was understood that the physical idol represented the god in heaven, and that when you pray to the idol or image, you were also praying the god in heaven—he or she could hear you. As we have seen, God forbid the Israelites to make any such images of Him—perhaps to set them apart from other religions and emphasis that He is the one God, but more importantly, the Israelites themselves were to be  the image of God on earth. If you wanted to see what God was like, look at the Israelites (or, at least, one should be able to see what God is like by looking at them, much like today with the church.)

Scholars have categorized four main types of ritual activity of ancient incantation prayers.  First, acts that prepared the place suitable for the prayers—a sanctification. We find God commanding the Israelites to do similar actions for the tabernacle and the temple, as well as other situations. Second, gifts were brought to positively influence the deity before hearing the prayer. While God asked for sacrifices, it is clear (especially in the writing o the prophets, that this was not to “butter him up” so he would hear them—it was to remind humans that all things come from God. Third, rituals which had a the purpose to protect against evil powers which might be at work. God does not seem to have asked for this sort of actions—in fact, Isaiah 6 implies that God has no fear of evil powers; indeed, it is evil powers that should fear Him. Finally, there were activities which ended the entire ritual, so that the ceremony concluded properly and in order. Again, we find the same in the more formal and ritual prayers in the Old Testament.

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