Commands that Don't Command

You might recognize the following lines. They are from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:9-6:10:

NIV: This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
NIV: your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Would you be surprised to learn that the verbs “hallowed,” “come,” and “done,” are all commands? They are in the form of the Greek imperative, the form used for commands. Who or what are these versus commanding? Jesus’s listeners? His father? No. He commanded, not people, but things: “the name,” “the kingdom, and “the will of his Father.” But what is really odd is, though Jesus commands these things, he isn’t speaking to them. He is speaking to his Father and to us, telling us how to pray to the Father. Is Jesus instructing us to command the name, the kingdom, and the will of his Father? He may have had that authority, but we certainly do not.

In English, commands are normally addressed to someone or something. The English command often drops the second-person subject, starts with the verb, and ends with an exclamation point. For example, in Mark 4:39, Jesus commands the winds and the waves, saying:

Listeners Heard: Keep silent! You have been muzzled!

Both statements in this verse are addressed to “you,” the second-person. The “you” is assumed with “keep,” but it is expressed with “muzzled” because of the past perfect passive verb, “you have been.”

In English, all imperative commands are in the second-person. Those commands are addressed to whoever is being spoken to. In Greek, however, Jesus used a verb form we don’t have in English, “third-person commands.” These are statements made to someone that are “commanding” some third-person or object. But what does it mean when we command people or things while speaking to someone else?

Let Him

How are third-person commands in Greek usually translated. The translators introduce them with the phrase “let him.” In Biblical translations, Jesus is translated as saying “let him” in over fifty different verses. This phrase comes before the translation of a third-person command. Jesus uses “let him” in the common phrase, “let him hear” nine times . A simple example is Matthew 11:15:

NIV: Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Like most of Jesus’s catchphrases, this idea has its humorous edge. This feeling is lost in translation, but, in the Greek, it is like saying that hearing is forced upon us, as a punishment or a reward, because we have ears.

In English, the helping verb “let,” has the sense of allowing an action: approving it, authorizing it, or enabling it. It is a second-person command, asking permission from the one to whom we are speaking. There is no Greek verb with a similar meaning in any of these “let him” verses. In these verses, Jesus is not asking for permission.

In English, these “let him” phrases are added to introduce a third-person command. Adding “let him” makes these into a second-person command asking for permission. In the “let him hear,” “him’ is the subject who is being commanded, “hear!” It is a second-person command given about giving a command to a third-party. We may or may not have the authority to command the person to whom we are talking. This person may or may not have the authority to command the third-person. The third-person can be a person (“him”) or even a thing, as we saw in the verses from the Lord’s Prayer.

If this sounds convoluted, it is. This makes it a poor translation. It doesn’t seem to make sense in English. Why address a command to someone who cannot execute it?

These phrases are usually addressed to an audience, so we might assume these people have the ability to allow or forbid the actions involved, for example, hearing. But that is not what Jesus was saying though we can be misled into thinking so.

Good Translation