Luke 11:1

Instructions on Prayer

11:1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”


tn Grk “And it happened that while.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated. Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

sn John refers to John the Baptist.

sn It was not unusual for Jewish groups to have their own prayer as a way of expressing corporate identity. Judaism had the Eighteen Benedictions and apparently John the Baptist had a prayer for his disciples as well.