From:
Patrick D. Miller, “Prayer and Divine Action,” in Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology: Collected Essays, vol. 267, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)
–The two primary technical terms for prayer are tepillâ and teḥinnâ. In their particular meanings they provide a significant clue to what goes on in prayer. The former, tepillâ, comes from a verb meaning to estimate or assess and, in the form it takes to express the act of praying, to seek an assessment, that is, to lay out a case or make a case for God’s assessment. The latter term, teḥinnâ, comes from a verbal form that has to do with asking or seeking for oneself grace, mercy, or favor. Together, these terms identify the bases of prayer: the laying out of a case for God’s assessment in order to evoke mercy and favor. The deity is thus understood to be open to the situation as presented and leaning toward a gracious response, and prayer is defined in its terminology as the enterprise that seeks to persuade the deity toward such gracious reaction to the plight that has been presented (Miller, pg.449)
-Thus prayer is consistent with God’s will and purpose for the world—large and small—as it seeks something that is wholly consistent with the divine nature. (Miller pg 452)
-There is a common tendency to see all prayer as somehow ‘interfering’ or ‘intervening’ in God’s purposive activity. That is not quite the picture that comes from the Scriptures. In that context, one presumes that the case presented by the petitioner who is in trouble, oppressed, sick, or suffering in some fashion will have its effect on the deity because God is ‘bent’ in that direction. Where the change of mind takes place is in relation to the purpose of God to punish or judge those who have sinned, broken covenant, and the like and in response to the prophetic intercession. In other words, the one ‘violation’ of the divine intention that can be identified, and indeed with some frequency, is in regard to judgment. (Miller Pg 456)
Waiting for answers produces trust
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint (Isa. 40:31). The waiting is an expectancy, a hoping, not simply a passive waiting around. It is an attitude that truly does expect to experience God’s delivering help, but the expectancy itself effects a movement of transformation, signaled here in the language of ‘renewing’ strength (Miller pg 460).
Prayer is Personal
–This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. … The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous [or ‘innocent’], and his ears are open to their cry. … When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles (Ps. 34:6, 15, 17).(Miller pg.448).
-There are many prayers of whose outcome there is no record—most of the Psalms, for example. Whether these prayers were prayed once or often, one cannot tell if they were always perceived or felt as answered. (Miller pg. 456-457).
Prayer: A cry from the oppressed provokes God
–1. The active involvement of God in the human situation is evoked by cries to God, by prayers for help. Christian theology has given much emphasis to the prominence of sin and disobedience at the beginning of the biblical story. Less attention is paid to the fact that the story of God’s involvement in human affairs begins also in pain and oppression. For the first human word that is addressed to God in that whole story, that is, without prior address by the deity, is an inarticulate cry of the innocent victim of a brother’s murderous rage: ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground’ (Gen. 4:10). That cry going up to God suggests what the rest of the biblical story confirms, to wit, that the divine-human relation is rooted in the experience of human pain. The conversation with God is characteristically initiated from the human end as a cry for help on the part of the oppressed or the sufferer. God is drawn into the fray by the prayers of those in trouble (Miller pg. 446-447).
-The dominant language of prayer in the form of a cry for help that arises out of the pain of suffering and oppression, however responded to in the story, carries with it an implicit claim that there is a moral ground to the universe.
-Nor must one forget that the questioning that goes on, as Job so clearly indicates, is a two-way street. When Abel’s blood cries out from the ground, God asks a question of Cain: ‘Where is your brother, Abel?’ Human oppression raises not only human questions. It evokes divine questions that are as paradigmatic as those of the prayers for help. All of the questions—whether those of the psalmist, Jeremiah, Hannah, Job, an oppressed Israel, or Abel’s inarticulate cry—are questions that ask for a moral accountability to the universe.
-The very mythopoeic Psalm 82… testify unequivocally that the reality of God is tied to moral accountability and assert that the sovereignty of God is power in behalf of justice and compassion. All the questions and challenges of the individual and community laments in the Bible arise out of this conviction (Miller pg.464).
Jewish prayers of petition
– The prayers here cataloged divide into two major parts. The first (A+B) explicates the grounds for the prayer. God, who is great and mighty and is to be blessed because of that, is creator and sovereign over the whole creation. He has knowledge of all things, including (in some prayers) the present circumstances. God’s works include not only creation but also saving activity in circumstances similar to the present. The second part (C+D) is based on the first. The petitioner calls God’s attention to the present situation and asks that he act in keeping with his nature and his past record.1
1 George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, ed. Klaus Baltzer, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 203–205.
A=address/title of God (Almighty, YHWH
B= all seeing, terms of endearment toward God, acknowledging his omnipotense, omnipresence,…
C= “And now,behold…” Calling attention to the present position. Introduction to goal petition
D=calling on God to act: actual petition. Closing extortion.
So A/B= address and calling to God
C/D= petition/action