"Give us this day our daily bread." It is the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer and the first one that names a material need.
Three centuries of theological argument, one untranslatable Greek word, and one of the most pointed economic statements Jesus ever made sit inside this nine-word sentence.
This study unpacks the Greek of Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3, the Old Testament background in the manna economy of Exodus 16, the Patristic debates over epiousion , the relationship between this petition and the Sermon on the Mount's anti-anxiety teaching (Matt 6:25-34), and the working application to budgeting, saving, and the Christian's posture toward provision.
Pray the petition; build the structure "Daily bread" is a prayer for sufficiency, not abundance.
The Christian who prays it and refuses to plan it has misunderstood both halves.
Translate the prayer into a working monthly plan with our Budget Calculator , then protect the household with our Emergency Fund Calculator .
The text — Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 Matthew (in Jesus' teaching during the Sermon on the Mount): " Ton arton hēmōn ton epiousion dos hēmin sēmeron " — "Give us this day our daily bread." Luke (after a disciple's request "Lord, teach us to pray"): " Ton arton hēmōn ton epiousion didou hēmin to kath' hēmeran " — "Give us each day our daily bread." Note the tense shift: Matthew has dos (aorist — a single decisive act, "give today"), Luke has didou (present continuous — "keep giving, each day").
Both versions preserve the rare and disputed adjective epiousion .
Epiousion — the word that appears nowhere else The Greek word translated "daily" is epiousion .
It appears in only one place in the entire surviving body of Greek literature outside the New Testament — and even that single occurrence (a fragmentary 5th-century papyrus account book) is contested.
Origen (3rd century) wrote that he had searched all of Greek philosophy and ordinary speech and could find no parallel; he concluded the evangelists had coined the word to translate something Jesus said in Aramaic that no existing Greek word adequately captured.
Three primary readings have competed for two millennia: "Necessary for existence" — from epi + ousia (substance, being).
Bread sufficient for life.
Patristic figures including Cyril of Jerusalem read it this way; the Latin Vulgate at Luke 11:3 renders it panem nostrum cotidianum ("our daily bread") but at Matthew 6:11 Jerome chose the striking panem nostrum supersubstantialem ("our supersubstantial bread") — a deliberately mystical translation that opened a long Eucharistic tradition. "For the coming day" — from epi + ienai (to come).
The bread of tomorrow, asked for today.
Most modern lexicographers (BDAG, EDNT) prefer this reading on grammatical grounds.
If the prayer is said in the morning, it asks for today's bread; if at night, for tomorrow's.
Either way, the horizon is short — one day, not one quarter.
Eschatological — "the bread of the coming Kingdom" — read in the light of Luke 14:15 ("blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God") and Revelation 19:9 (the marriage supper of the Lamb).
Daily bread becomes, in this reading, a foretaste of the messianic banquet — God's promised future, breaking into the present table.
The pastoral conclusion is that all three readings are doing work the prayer needs.
Epiousion bread is bread for survival, bread for the immediate next interval, and bread that points to the Kingdom feast.
The single coined word holds the whole.
The manna economy — Exodus 16 The clearest commentary on Matthew 6:11 is Exodus 16, where God instructs Israel in the wilderness to gather manna "each day's portion every day" (16:4) — and warns that any attempt to hoard for tomorrow will result in worms and stench by morning (16:20).
Two exceptions: on the sixth day they gather a double portion, and the second portion miraculously keeps for the Sabbath (16:22-26).
The system is a one-week loop of dependence with rest built in.
The Hebrew principle behind the manna is the same principle behind the prayer: God provides sufficiency on a short horizon, with explicit instruction not to convert sufficiency into hoarded surplus.
Exodus 16:18 — "whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack." Paul quotes this verse directly in 2 Corinthians 8:15 as the theology behind generous giving.
The manna economy is the economy of "daily bread." This does not abolish saving.
Genesis 41 (Joseph and the seven years of plenty), Proverbs 6:6-8 (the ant stores in summer), Proverbs 21:20 ("precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling"), and 1 Timothy 5:8 (providing for one's household) establish that prudent provision is a virtue.
What the petition forbids is the anxious accumulation that the next paragraph of the Sermon (Matt 6:19-34) explicitly diagnoses — bigger barns, treasures on earth, the heart following the storehouse. "Bread" — wider than wheat The Greek artos ("bread") in first-century Mediterranean usage was both a literal food and a synecdoche for the day's basic needs.
To ask for bread is to ask for the entire structure of survival: food, water, shelter, the wage that buys all three.
The Heidelberg Catechism (Q 125, 1563) captures this well: "By this petition we pray that our Heavenly Father, who supplies all our bodily needs, would in His goodness provide them; that we may know You are the only fountain of all good." Luther's Small Catechism (1529) makes the list even more explicit: "Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright workers, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like." The Reformers knew bread is the whole household economy. "Us" and "our" — never an individual petition " Give us this day our daily bread." There is no singular form of this petition.
Every personal pronoun in the Lord's Prayer is plural.
The Christian who prays "daily bread" is praying for the table of every other believer at the same time — and is implicitly committing to be part of God's answer to that prayer for those who are not yet at the table.
Acts 2:44-45 and 4:32-35 are the original communities that took the plural seriously: "there was not a needy person among them." James 2:15-16 is the explicit warning: "if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" The plural also reframes anxiety.
Anxiety about provision is almost always about my bread, hoarded against an uncertain future.
The plural prayer cannot be hoarded; it can only be shared.
Generosity is not a separate Christian virtue tacked onto provision — it is built into the grammar of the petition itself.
The context — Matthew 6:25-34 The Sermon on the Mount makes the Lord's Prayer the hinge of an extended teaching on money, anxiety, and provision.
Immediately before the prayer (6:1-18), Jesus addresses three religious disciplines — giving, prayer, fasting — and the temptation to perform them for human applause.
Immediately after the prayer (6:19-34), He addresses two financial disciplines — treasure-storing and worry — and the temptation to organize life around accumulation.
Matthew 6:25-34 is the explicit commentary on the bread petition. "Therefore do not be anxious, saying 'what shall we eat?' or 'what shall we drink?' or 'what shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." The Greek arkēton tē hēmera hē kakia autēs — "sufficient for the day is its own trouble" — uses the same root ( arkētos , sufficient) that Paul uses in 1 Timothy 6:8 ("if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content").
Sufficiency, not surplus, is the New Testament's stable economic vocabulary.
Eucharistic reading — Jerome's supersubstantial Jerome's choice to translate epiousion as supersubstantialem at Matthew 6:11 opened a long tradition that read the petition primarily as a request for the Eucharist — the bread of communion as the bread of life (John 6:35, 51).
Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Aquinas, and many medieval commentators followed this line.
The Reformation pulled the reading back toward literal daily provision (Calvin: "by daily bread is meant every kind of food"), but the Eucharistic resonance was never wholly lost; Christ Himself is the bread come down from heaven (John 6:32-35), and the table of the Lord is the foretaste of the marriage supper at which daily bread will give way to Kingdom feast.
The mature pastoral reading honors both.
We ask God for groceries today; we are also asking, in the same breath, for the bread that endures to eternal life — Christ Himself, given for us.
Six practical implications Pray for sufficiency, not abundance.
Proverbs 30:8-9 — "give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say 'who is the LORD?' or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God." Agur's prayer is the only prayer in the Old Testament that asks for an economic midpoint.
It is the prose version of "daily bread." Plan on a short horizon.
The petition assumes the horizon is one day.
The biblical case for long horizons is real (Genesis 41, Proverbs 6, the emergency fund) but it is always pastoral, not anxious.
Build margin without building bigger barns.
Receive food as God's gift.
Every meal is an answered prayer.
Grace at the table is not a polite tradition — it is the moment that names the bread as given , not earned.
Share the bread.
The "us" of the prayer commits the praying Christian to be part of the answer for those without bread.
Build a generosity line item; deliver food locally; fund the church and the food pantry.
Refuse anxious work.
Working diligently (Col 3:23) is one thing; working anxiously, sleeplessly, idolatrously is another.
Psalm 127:2 — "it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep." Trust the giver in the lean week.
Manna sometimes shows up just at sundown.
Philippians 4:19 — "my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" — is not a prosperity-gospel mantra; it is the underwriting of the bread petition.
Continue your study The bread petition is one piece of a larger biblical theology of provision.
Continue with our God will provide study, our trusting God , our contentment in the Bible , our good steward study , and the full Scripture hub .
Translate the prayer into structure with our Budget Calculator , Emergency Fund Calculator , and Tithe Calculator .
All Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.