Matthew 6:10

Ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου : second petition. The prayer of all Jews. Even the Rabbis said, that is no prayer in which no mention of the kingdom is made. All depends on how the kingdom is conceived, on what we want to come. The kingdom is as the King. It is the kingdom of the universal, benignant Father who knows the wants of His children and cares for their interests, lower and higher, that Jesus desires to come. It will come with the spread of the worship of the One true Divine Name; the paternal God ruling in grace over believing, grateful men. Thus viewed, God's kingdom comes, is not always here, as in the reign of natural law or in the moral order of the world. γενηθήτω τ. θ. σ.: third petition. Kamphausen, bent on maintaining the superior originality of Luke's form in which this petition is wanting, regards it as a mere pendant to the second, unfolding its meaning. And it is true in a sense that any one of the three first petitions implies the rest. Yet the third has its distinct place. The kingdom, as Jesus preached it, was a kingdom of grace. The second petition, therefore, is a prayer that God's gracious will may be done. The third, on the other hand, is a prayer that God's commanding will may be done; that the right as against the wrong may everywhere prevail. ὡς ἐν οὐρ. καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς. This addendum, not without application to all three petitions, is specially applicable to this one. Translated into modern dialect, it means that the divine will may be perfectly, ideally done on this earth: as in heaven, so also, etc. The reference is probably to the angels, described in Psalms 103, as doing God's commandments. In the O. T. the angels are the agents of God's will in nature as well as in Providence. The defining clause might, therefore, be taken as meaning: may God's will be done in the moral sphere as in the natural; exactly, always, everywhere.

The foregoing petitions are regarded by Grotius, and after him Achelis, as pia desideria, εὐχαί, rather than petitions proper αἰτήματα, like the following three. The distinction is not gratuitous, but it is an exegetical refinement which may be disregarded. More important is it to note that the first group refers to the great public interests of God and His kingdom, placed first here as in Matthew 6:33, the second to personal needs. There is a corresponding difference in the mode of expression, the verbs being in the third person in Group I., objective, impersonal; in the second in Group II., subjective, personal.