Indeed, words of praise and honor such as the doxology found at the end of the Lord’s prayer were comfortably familiar in Israelite temple ritual and liturgy. An exclamation of praise similar to Matthew 6:13 is set in a temple context as David glorified the Lord at the time when the people made generous offering to support the building of the Temple: “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all” (1 Chronicles 29:11). Likewise, another doxology, this time in the context of the Holy of Holies, is found in the words of the seraphim who speak to each other in Isaiah’s vision of the temple throne, declaring, “The whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). From the Psalms, further doxologies, each with strong connections to the kingdom, power and glory included in the doxology at the end of the traditional version of the Lord’s Prayer, are known to have been sung with reverence and jubilation in the Temple. For example, “I will declare thy greatness, . . . and shall sing aloud of thy righteousness: . . . All thy saints shall bless thee! They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and tell of thy power, to make known to the sons of men thy mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of thy kingdom” (Psalms 145:6, 10-12, emphasis added).

Thus the longer ending of the Lord’s Prayer, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, amen,” would probably have been recognized by Jesus’ listeners as a traditional sign of the great sanctity and solemnity connected with the Temple, and its hue and tone would have easily evoked emotions and experiences usually reserved for the holiest of temple rituals on the Day of Atonement. Thus, as Betz has pointed out, the words of praise used at the end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 may even have signaled a ceremonical “acclamation,” indicating that “perhaps the original function of the ‘doxology’ in the Lord’s Prayer was that of a response by the worshiping congregation.”

The ritualistic tenor of the Sermon on the Mount is borne out by the long-standing use of the Lord’s Prayer in religious services. Form the earlier Christian times, the Lord’s Prayer was “basically a prayer used by a group,” and several early Christian texts document the use of sacred group prayers, with the participants standing in a circle around Jesus at the center. The Lord’s Prayer was undoubtedly intended as a pattern or model for group prayers. Jesus probably used words such as these as he prayed on several occasions; and it would appear that he taught his followers to pray in this way, modifying the words of the prayer somewhat from time to time, as is reflected in the fact that the earliest texts of the Lord’s Prayer are not all quite the same (compare for example, Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4; Didache 8:2). The early church father Origen understood the Lord’s Prayer to be only a model or outline, and the rabbis similarly expressed “strong prohibitions against reciting a fixed prayer,” recommending that in saying a set personal prayer one should vary it a little each tie.