Crafted, Not Fake

In Daniel’s prayer (Dan. 9:4–19), he petitions:

O Lord,
according to all your righteous acts,
let your anger and your wrath turn away
from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill,
because for our sins,
and for the iniquities of our fathers,
Jerusalem and your people have become a byword
among all who are around us.
Now therefore, O our God,
listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy,
and for your own sake, O Lord,
make your face to shine upon your sanctuary,
which is desolate.

The following are his last words after that (9:18–19):

O my God, incline your ear and hear.
Open your eyes and see our desolations,
and the city that is called by your name.
For we do not present our pleas before you
because of our righteousness,
but because of your great mercy.
O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive.
O Lord, pay attention and act.
Delay not, for your own sake, O my God,
because your city and your people are called by your name.

What do we see here?

The first thing that we can notice is the emotional urgency in Daniel’s pleas: he emphatically repeats what he’s said, not meaninglessly but, after a more detailed petition with more explicit explanation based on the situation, with more force and with a stronger appeal, not merely to the situation itself but to God’s own character. After this he crests into even more fervent cries for God to do something.

The second thing we can see is that not only is this prayer not casual-sounding (I dare you to act this out convincingly without sounding very into it), but its fervency, its earnestness, isn’t lessened by the actually rather formal language. In plainer terms, it’s not really in street language but in a “higher” speech, if you will.

But why is it not destroyed by the formal language? Why does it not sound wooden and listless? Despite the higher formality, the prayer is no less authentic. Despite its lack of whining, it sounds real. This is because, more formal as it is, it’s not flowery by any measure: it’s plain and reverently formal.

One thing this shows us, then, is that you can have very carefully reverent but very earnest and authentic prayer, just as you can have sloppy, lackadaisical prayer. The prayer as a whole is actually rhetorically a great piece of work: it’s very premeditated in its words as well as just the general idea, and there’s no bubble-gum filler. Of course not all our prayers will be literary classics, but the care we give to what we say honestly and frankly to God should reflect how much we really mean it.