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Matthew 6:9-13 vs. “The Lord's Prayer”

JJ Heller · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageMatthew 6:9-13 chapter ↗ 2 more proofs on Matthew 6 →
Translation shownKJV (public domain) · fixed (the finding depends on this wording)
Presents itself asquotation
Categoryadditions / omissions
AlbumI Dream of You: HYMNS · 2024
Words addressed tothe Father
Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful
✗Translation named
✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The words are the prayer and only the prayer, with no verses of the songwriter's own attached and nothing inserted between the petitions
  • The King James wording is kept intact, so what gets memorised is a translation a listener can look up and check line by line
  • The official video description prints the text as sung and credits Albert Hay Malotte, which makes the recording unusually easy to verify against
  • The closing ascription is not invented by anyone: the King James carries it at 6:13, and its language runs close to David's prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:11

⚠ Cautions

  • No translation is named on the recording or in its description, so the King James has to be recognised rather than verified
  • The closing ascription is absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts and from the main text of most modern translations. A listener comparing the song to an ESV or NIV will find the last line missing, and should read the footnote before assuming the song added it
  • The opening clause of verse 9, which frames the prayer as a pattern rather than a fixed formula, is not sung. That is the ordinary convention, but it is the sentence Jesus used to say what the prayer is for
  • The setting repeats the closing ascription for musical shape. That changes nothing in the text, but it does give the last line more weight in the ear than it has on the page

Verse Proof

Matthew 6:9-13

The text in KJV (public domain)

“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5 to 7, with his disciples in front of him and crowds listening. The prayer arrives in the middle of a section on how not to pray: not to be seen by people (6:5-6), and not by piling up words, "use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do" (6:7). He gives the prayer as a pattern rather than a formula, which is what "after this manner therefore pray ye" means in verse 9.

What the song says, described not quoted

This is Albert Hay Malotte's 1935 concert setting, sung by JJ Heller with a light arrangement and no verses of her own. The words are the prayer and nothing else: the address to the Father, the three petitions about God's name and kingdom and will, the three about bread and forgiveness and temptation, and then the closing ascription of the kingdom, the power and the glory, which the setting lifts and repeats before the Amen. The wording is the King James throughout, with one word modernised. Where the King James has God's will done "in earth," the sung line uses the ordinary modern preposition instead. Nothing is added, and no line of the prayer is dropped. The video's official description credits the composer by name and prints the text as sung.

Two things moved between the page and the recording, and both are small. The first is the opening clause. Verse 9 begins "after this manner therefore pray ye," which is Jesus framing what follows as a pattern. The setting starts at "Our Father," as every sung and spoken version does. Nothing is misrepresented by that, but the framing sentence is the one that tells you the prayer is a model. The second is the closing ascription about the kingdom, the power and the glory. It is there in the King James at Matthew 6:13, so the song is not adding anything to the text it is singing. It is not in the earliest Greek manuscripts. Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Bezae end the prayer at "deliver us from evil," and Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian show no knowledge of the longer ending. The great majority of later Greek copies do have it, which is why the King James, built on that later tradition, carries it. Modern translations handle the split in the open: the NIV, ESV and CSB leave it out of the main text, the NASB brackets it, and the Berean Standard Bible ends at "deliver us from the evil one" and puts the ascription in a footnote. The classic commentators, Ellicott and Meyer and the Cambridge and Pulpit commentaries among them, read it as a liturgical ending that came into the copies from the way churches prayed. Neither the recording nor its official description names a translation. It names the composer.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The song sings Matthew 6:9-13 in King James wording with nothing added and nothing dropped. That includes the closing ascription that the King James carries at verse 13 and that most modern translations omit or footnote. It never names the translation it is singing.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The song did not add the last line. The manuscripts disagree about it, and your Bible's footnote says so.

Why it matters

Someone singing this with a modern Bible open will reach the last line and not find it. The natural conclusion is that the song added something, and that conclusion is wrong. What the singer has run into is a place where the Greek copies themselves disagree, and where every honest modern translation prints a note saying so.

That is worth knowing for its own sake, because it is the single most common encounter an ordinary reader has with a manuscript question. It is also worth knowing because it cuts the other way from most findings on this site. Here the difference is not the songwriter's doing at all. It is older than the song, older than the King James, and it is documented in the footnotes of the Bible already on the shelf.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is the prayer itself, in the wording most English speakers already half know. That is close to the best case for a sung text, because the thing being drilled in is a passage rather than a description of a passage.

The centre of attention is God throughout, which is why the tag is God rather than mixed. The prayer is addressed to the Father from the first word, and its first three petitions are about God's name, God's reign and God's will before any of the singer's needs are raised. Even the requests for bread and forgiveness are put in the plural, which keeps the song from narrowing to one person's day.

There is a small irony worth holding lightly. Verse 7, four verses earlier, warns against praying by piling up words. A sung setting repeats by design, and this one repeats the last line. The warning in verse 7 is about thinking that volume of words earns a hearing, not about saying the same true thing twice. Sung as prayer rather than as performance, repetition here is doing what Colossians 3:16 describes: letting the word settle in.

Helpful comparison

The clearest demonstration of the point is on this page. This entry's passage is pinned to the King James, because the finding depends on the exact wording. If it were not pinned, the site's own translation toggle would prove the case by itself: the World English Bible ends Matthew 6:13 with the kingdom, the power and the glory, and the Berean Standard Bible ends it at "deliver us from the evil one." Two public-domain-or-free translations, one passage, two different last lines.

The earliest form of the ascription outside the Gospels is older than any of them. The Didache, an early Christian manual, gives the prayer with a closing ascription of the power and the glory, but without "the kingdom." The wording that reached the King James is fuller than that.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

Think we got something wrong? Tell us what and where, and we will check it against the text. Real errors get fixed here, dated, in public. Every correction on the site →

Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

~ FAITHFUL “Jesus, Strong and Kind” CityAlight feat. Colin Buchanan Matthew 11:28 Sing it, including with children. It says what Jesus said without pretending to be quoting him, and the invitation it reports is really his. It just never tells you where to look it up.

✓ The song never puts a sentence in Jesus' mouth. Every attribution is reported in the third person, so nothing is offered as a quotation that would then have to be checked against a translation

⚠ No reference and no translation anywhere: not on the recording, not on the official chord chart, and not on CityAlight's own page for the song. Four reports of what Jesus said, and no address for any of them

 ~ FAITHFUL “Seek Ye First” Karen Lafferty Matthew 6:31-33 Sing it. Stanza one is Matthew 6:33 almost exactly, in King James wording. Just know that the later stanzas were added by other people from other chapters, and no translation is ever named.

✓ Stanza one follows Matthew 6:33 in the King James wording, with nothing altered or reordered

⚠ No translation is named, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked

 ✓ VERIFIED “Mark 10” Streetlights Mark 10:23-27 Play it freely. This is Mark 10 itself, read word for word in a named translation. The line about all things being possible arrives as the answer to a question about being saved.

✓ The whole chapter, in order, so verse 27 arrives after the rich man’s scene and after the disciples ask who can be saved, instead of standing on its own

⚠ “Word-for-word” here describes the reading, not the translation theory. Streetlights uses it for what is read. Tyndale uses the same phrase for a different thing

More songs like this

~ FAITHFUL “Jesus, Strong and Kind” CityAlight feat. Colin Buchanan Matthew 11:28 Sing it, including with children. It says what Jesus said without pretending to be quoting him, and the invitation it reports is really his. It just never tells you where to look it up.

✓ The song never puts a sentence in Jesus' mouth. Every attribution is reported in the third person, so nothing is offered as a quotation that would then have to be checked against a translation

⚠ No reference and no translation anywhere: not on the recording, not on the official chord chart, and not on CityAlight's own page for the song. Four reports of what Jesus said, and no address for any of them

 ~ FAITHFUL “Seek Ye First” Karen Lafferty Matthew 6:31-33 Sing it. Stanza one is Matthew 6:33 almost exactly, in King James wording. Just know that the later stanzas were added by other people from other chapters, and no translation is ever named.

✓ Stanza one follows Matthew 6:33 in the King James wording, with nothing altered or reordered

⚠ No translation is named, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked

 ✎ DEPARTS “Take Captive Every Thought (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 You can sing it. It is 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 in the NIV's words. But the label says ESV. Check it against an NIV, and know one printed word is not the NIV's either.

✓ Verses 3, 4 and 5 all arrive, in order, in the NIV's wording. No line is added, and none is explained or expanded.

⚠ The label names the ESV in four places. The words are the NIV's. Check the song against an NIV, not against the version the label sends you to.

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