“Be careful not to do your good deeds in front of people, just to be seen by them. If you do, you have no reward from your Father in the heavens.
2 So when you give to the poor, don’t sound a trumpet in front of you the way the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that people will praise them. Amen, I tell you: they have their reward already.[1] 3 But when you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving stays secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will repay you.
5 And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, so that people will see them. Amen, I tell you: they have their reward already. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in the secret place. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will repay you.
7 And when you pray, don’t babble on and on the way the Gentiles do. They think that by using lots of words they’ll be heard.[2] 8 Don’t be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you even ask him.
9 So this is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in the heavens, may your name be treated as holy. 10 May your kingdom come. May your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today the bread we need for this day.[3] 12 And forgive us our debts, just as we have forgiven those who owe us. 13 And don’t bring us into testing, but rescue us from the evil one.’
14 Because if you forgive other people their wrongs, your heavenly Father will forgive you too. 15 But if you don’t forgive other people, your Father won’t forgive your wrongs either.
16 And when you fast, don’t put on a gloomy face like the hypocrites. They make their faces look terrible so that everyone will see they’re fasting. Amen, I tell you: they have their reward already. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,[4] 18 so that no one can tell you’re fasting — only your Father, who is in the secret place. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will repay you.
19 Don’t pile up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 Pile up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moths nor rust destroy, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. 21 Because wherever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be.
22 The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light inside you is actually darkness — how deep that darkness is.
24 No one can serve two masters. Either you’ll hate the one and love the other, or you’ll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.[5]
25 So I’m telling you: don’t worry about your life — what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink — or about your body and what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the sky. They don’t plant or harvest or store up in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? 27 And which of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your life?[6]
28 And why worry about clothing? Look at how the wildflowers grow. They don’t work or spin thread. 29 But I’m telling you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If God clothes the grass of the field like that — grass that’s here today and thrown into the oven tomorrow — won’t he clothe you much more, you of little trust?
31 So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 Those are the things the Gentiles chase after. Your heavenly Father knows you need all of them.[7] 33 Instead, seek first the kingdom and what he requires, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Notes
Note 1. No practice of literally sounding a horn while giving alms is attested in Jewish sources of the period. ↩
Note 2. The Greek verb here, battalogeō, is rare — it suggests blubbering, chattering, or stringing together empty words. ↩
Note 3. The word behind this line, epiousion, is so rare it barely appears anywhere else in Greek, so no one is certain what it means. Translators have rendered it “daily,” “for the coming day,” or “needed for existence”; Jerome coined the Latin “supersubstantial” for it. Our rendering follows the “daily” sense. ↩
Note 4. Anointing the head with oil and washing were ordinary parts of daily grooming; letting them go was one of the visible signs of mourning or fasting. ↩
Note 5. The word translated “Money” is mammon, an Aramaic term for wealth or riches. Some later traditions came to speak of Mammon as if it were a false god. ↩
Note 6. The Greek uses a measure of length, not time: literally “add one cubit (about eighteen inches) to his span.” The word for span can mean either height or length of life. ↩
Note 7. The Greek is ta ethnē, “the nations” — one word, used for everyone outside Israel. Where it means peoples or countries we render it “nations”; where it means non-Jews as a group we say “Gentiles.” It is the same word in both places. ↩