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Some nights the worry isn’t about today. Today is handled. It’s next month. The rent, the school fees, the job that might not last, the number in your account that has to stretch further than it wants to. You lie there doing sums that never quite come out right.
And then maybe, out of habit, you pray the prayer you’ve known since you were small: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It can feel almost too small for the size of the worry. Bread? Today? What about everything after today?
If you’ve ever searched for the give us this day our daily bread meaning, here is something most people never hear. The word Jesus used for “daily” is one of the strangest words in the whole Bible. Nobody is fully sure what it means. And every serious guess about it points the same direction, straight at the worry keeping you up.
A Word That Shows Up Almost Nowhere Else
The line appears twice in the Gospels:
“Give us this day our daily bread.” — Matthew 6:11
“Give us day by day our daily bread.” — Luke 11:3
In Greek, the word behind “daily” is epiousios. Greek already had ordinary words for “daily.” Jesus’s prayer, as the Gospel writers recorded it, doesn’t use them. It uses this one.
Outside the Lord’s Prayer, the word is almost missing from ancient writing. It turns up in Matthew, in Luke, and in an early Christian teaching manual called the Didache, which is quoting the very same prayer. That’s about it.
People noticed this very early. Origen, a Greek-speaking Christian scholar in the 200s, wrote in his book on prayer (On Prayer, chapter 27) that the word was not used by any Greek writer, by the philosophers, or in everyday speech. He thought the Gospel writers seemed to have formed it themselves. Remember, Origen spoke Greek as his own language. If he had never heard it, that tells you something.
The Shopping List That Turned Out to Say “Oil”
For about a hundred years, there was one exception people could point to.
In the late 1800s, a scholar named A. H. Sayce copied out an old Egyptian papyrus, an ordinary household list of groceries. Next to some of the items, he read a word that looked like epiousi…. At last, it seemed, here was the mystery word in everyday use: food that was “for the day,” or “needed.” For decades, books on the Lord’s Prayer quoted it.
Then the papyrus went missing. Nobody could check it.
In 1998 it was found again, in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Two scholars, M. Nijman and K. A. Worp, looked at it closely and published what they found in the journal Novum Testamentum in 1999. The word on the list was not epiousios at all. It was elaiou. It means “oil.” And the list turned out to be centuries older than Sayce had thought.
So the one “outside” example was a misreading of a grocery list. As far as anyone can show today, the word lives inside this one prayer and almost nowhere else. The best-known line about bread ever prayed uses a word the rest of the ancient world barely touched.
Three Guesses at What “Daily” Means
Since there’s almost nothing to compare it with, scholars have to work from how the word is built. Over the centuries, the guesses have landed in three main places.
1. “Bread we need to live”
Split one way, the word joins epi (for, upon) with ousia (being, existence). That gives something like “bread for our being” or “the bread we need to exist.” Origen leaned this way. It’s the bread that keeps you alive. Not a feast. Not a surplus. Enough.
2. “Bread for the coming day”
Split another way, the word comes from a verb for “coming” or “going.” A close cousin of it appears in Acts 7:26, where the Greek for “the next day” is built from the same root. Read like this, the prayer asks for “tomorrow’s bread,” or “bread for the day that’s coming.”
Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin around the year 400, left a fascinating note here. He wrote that an early Gospel used by Jewish Christians, now lost, had the Aramaic word mahar in this spot, which means “tomorrow.”
3. “Bread beyond bread”
Jerome himself couldn’t settle it. In Matthew he translated the word as supersubstantialem, “super-substantial,” bread that is more than ordinary bread. But in Luke, he translated the very same Greek word as quotidianum, which simply means “daily.” Same word, same prayer, two different answers from the same translator. Many Christians since have heard in it a pointer to Jesus himself, who said:
“I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” — John 6:35
Honest answer? Nobody knows for certain which of these Jesus meant. Anyone who tells you they’re sure is claiming more than the evidence allows.
Every Option Refuses the Stockpile
Here’s what stopped me when I laid the three side by side. They disagree on the details. But not one of them lets you ask for next month.
- “Bread we need to live” asks for enough. Not extra.
- “Bread for the coming day” reaches forward exactly one day. Not a season.
- “Bread beyond bread” points past the pantry altogether.
And both Gospel versions pin the timing down hard. Matthew says “this day.” Luke says “day by day.” Whatever the mystery word means, it’s boxed in by today on every side. Israel learned the same shape in the desert, when manna kept up to “every man according to his eating” and no more (Exodus 16:18). We looked at how that plays out on anxious nights in Sunday night anxiety: you can’t gather Monday tonight.
The Detail Three Verses Earlier
There’s one more thing, and it’s the part I think matters most if money is what’s keeping you awake.
Just before Jesus teaches this prayer, he says why we don’t need to pile up words when we pray:
“Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” — Matthew 6:8
Now put that next to the mystery word. The one line in the prayer about your most basic need uses a word we can’t fully pin down. And the prayer still works. It has worked for two thousand years, for people who never once knew what epiousios meant.
Maybe that’s the point. You don’t have to define your need perfectly to ask for it. Some nights you don’t even know what you need. More hours at work? A different job? Courage to make a phone call? A friend who notices? The prayer doesn’t ask you to fill in the form. It asks you to ask for today’s portion, and to trust that God already knows what that portion should be.
And notice the small words: “give us,” “our bread.” Nobody prays this prayer alone. You’re asking for your neighbour’s bread in the same breath as your own.
Asking God for bread isn’t small or selfish, by the way. Jesus put it right in the middle of the prayer. The wise man Agur did something similar in Proverbs, and we unpacked his prayer in is it a sin to ask God for money? If you’d like to keep digging into Jesus’s words like these, our free What Jesus Teaches AI assistant (it opens in ChatGPT) is a good place to ask follow-up questions.
You don’t have to name every need. You only have to ask for today.
Actions to Take Today
- Shrink the sum. Take the money worry keeping you up and ask one question: what does today actually need? Write only that on a scrap of paper. Leave next month off the page.
- Pray the line slowly, once. Say “Give us this day our daily bread” out loud, and pause on “this day.” Let it be as small as it sounds.
- Share one portion. Because the prayer says “us,” do one small thing today for someone else’s bread: a meal, a message offering help, a lift to work. Something free counts.
Journaling Prompts
- When you worry about provision, how far into the future does your mind usually run? A week? A year? What happens in your body when it gets there?
- Which of the three meanings of epiousios do you most need to hear right now: “enough,” “tomorrow’s,” or “more than bread”? Why that one?
- What need do you find hard to put into words, even to God?
A Prayer for Today’s Bread
God, I’ve been trying to carry next month in my head tonight, and it’s too heavy. I don’t even know exactly what I need, but you know it already, before I ask. So I’m asking for today’s bread, just today’s, and for whoever else is lying awake about the same thing. Help me trust that tomorrow’s portion will be there tomorrow. Amen.
Discussion Question
Why do you think the Gospel writers used such a rare word here, instead of the ordinary Greek word for “daily”? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear how you read it.
Share This
- “The Greek word for ‘daily’ in the Lord’s Prayer shows up almost nowhere else in ancient writing. Every guess at its meaning says the same thing: ask for enough, for today.”
- “For a century, one grocery list was the only other place scholars thought the word for ‘daily bread’ appeared. When the papyrus was found again, the word turned out to be ‘oil.’ Some mysteries are meant to stay inside a prayer.”
- “You don’t have to name every need. You only have to ask for today.”
Questions People Ask About Daily Bread
What does “give us this day our daily bread” mean?
“Give us this day our daily bread” is a line from the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:11 (Luke 11:3 reads “Give us day by day our daily bread”). It asks God for the food and provision needed for the present day, rather than for a large supply in advance. The Greek word translated “daily,” epiousios, is rare, and scholars read it as “the bread we need to live,” “bread for the coming day,” or “bread beyond ordinary bread.” All three readings keep the request small and close at hand.
What is the Greek word for “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer?
The Greek word translated “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer is epiousios. Outside Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 it appears almost nowhere in surviving ancient writing, apart from the Didache, an early Christian text that quotes the same prayer. The third-century scholar Origen wrote in On Prayer that no Greek writer used the word and that the Gospel writers seemed to have formed it.
Was epiousios ever found outside the Bible?
One possible example was reported in the late 1800s, when A. H. Sayce read the word on an Egyptian papyrus grocery list. The papyrus was later lost, then rediscovered at Yale University’s Beinecke Library in 1998. When M. Nijman and K. A. Worp re-examined it in 1999, they found the word was elaiou, meaning “oil,” not epiousios.
Why did Jerome translate “daily bread” two different ways?
In the Latin Vulgate, Jerome translated epiousios as supersubstantialem (“super-substantial”) in Matthew 6:11 and as quotidianum (“daily”) in Luke 11:3, even though the Greek word is the same in both verses. The two choices reflect genuine uncertainty about the word’s meaning. Jerome also noted that a lost early Gospel used by Jewish Christians had the Aramaic word mahar, meaning “tomorrow,” in this line.
Is it okay to pray for money or practical needs?
Yes. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus included a request for bread, one of the most practical needs there is. Matthew 6:8 also says, “your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” The prayer invites people to ask for what they need today, even when they cannot describe that need exactly.
