The Our Father in Aramaic
The Our Father is the prayer Christians know in every language. Children learn it first. The dying speak it last. Between those two moments sit a lifetime of Sunday Masses, bedsides, kitchens, and cars, where the same seven petitions rise in Latin, Greek, English, Arabic, French, Portuguese, and a hundred other tongues.
What Aramaic gives us is something the translations cannot: the living echo of the language Jesus actually spoke. When Matthew records that Jesus taught his disciples "pray then like this" (Matthew 6:9), he is writing in Greek, but the words behind the words were Aramaic. The Peshitta, the ancient Syriac Bible, preserves them in the closest liturgical form we have.
The Our Father in Syriac Aramaic
Below is the Peshitta text of Matthew 6:9-13, the Our Father as the Syriac Christian tradition has prayed it for nearly two thousand years. Three forms are given: the Syriac script, a Latin-letter transliteration so you can read it aloud, and the traditional English translation.
ܐܒܘܢ ܕܒܫܡܝܐ
ܢܬܩܕܫ ܫܡܟ
ܬܐܬܐ ܡܠܟܘܬܟ
ܢܗܘܐ ܨܒܝܢܟ
ܐܝܟܢܐ ܕܒܫܡܝܐ ܐܦ ܒܐܪܥܐ
ܗܒ ܠܢ ܠܚܡܐ ܕܣܘܢܩܢܢ ܝܘܡܢܐ
ܘܫܒܘܩ ܠܢ ܚܘܒܝܢ ܘܚܛܗܝܢ
ܐܝܟܢܐ ܕܐܦ ܚܢܢ ܫܒܩܢ ܠܚܝܒܝܢ
ܘܠܐ ܬܥܠܢ ܠܢܣܝܘܢܐ
ܐܠܐ ܦܨܢ ܡܢ ܒܝܫܐ
ܡܛܠ ܕܕܝܠܟ ܗܝ ܡܠܟܘܬܐ
ܘܚܝܠܐ ܘܬܫܒܘܚܬܐ
ܠܥܠܡ ܥܠܡܝܢ܂ ܐܡܝܢ܂
Abwoon d'bashmaya
Nethqadash shmakh
Teytey malkuthakh
Nehwey tzevyanach
Aykana d'bashmaya aph b'arha
Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana
Washboqlan khaubayn wakhtahayn
Aykana daph khnan shbaqan l'khayyabayn
Wela tahlan l'nesyuna
Ela patzan min bisha
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta
L'ahlam almin. Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.
A Note on the Language
Jesus spoke Aramaic. Specifically, he spoke a Galilean dialect of Western Aramaic, the everyday tongue of first-century Palestine. When he taught the Our Father, he taught it in that dialect, on a hillside in Galilee, to disciples who heard it exactly as he said it.
The Peshitta text is not a recording of that moment. The Gospels were written in Greek and translated into Syriac, probably by the early fifth century for the New Testament. Syriac is itself a dialect of Aramaic — Classical Syriac, the literary and liturgical form that developed in the city of Edessa (modern Sanliurfa in Turkey) from the first centuries of Christianity.
When we pray the Our Father in Syriac today, we are praying in a dialectal descendant of the language Jesus spoke. Not his exact Galilean vernacular, but the closest living liturgical form, shaped by the same grammar, the same word roots, the same rhythms a first-century Galilean would recognize. For a fuller account of the relationship, see what language did Jesus speak.
Line by Line
What follows is a brief commentary on each petition: the Syriac, a short gloss, and one note on what the Aramaic adds to the familiar English.
Abwoon d'bashmaya — "Our Father, who art in heaven"
Abwoon (or Aboun in Western Syriac pronunciation) is the same root as Abba, the intimate word Jesus used in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). It is familial, not formal — closer to "Papa" than to a distant sovereign. D'bashmaya means "who is in the heavens." The heavens here are plural in Syriac, as in Hebrew: not a single location but the whole transcendent realm.
Nethqadash shmakh — "Hallowed be thy name"
Nethqadash is a passive form of the root Q-D-Sh, "to be holy, to be set apart." The petition is not that we make God's name holy — it already is — but that it be treated as holy, recognized as holy, in us and in the world. The same root gives us the Hebrew Qadosh and the Maronite cry Qadishat Aloho, "Holy God."
Teytey malkuthakh — "Thy kingdom come"
Teytey is a verb of coming; malkuthakh is "your kingdom" or "your reign." The Syriac has the same double sense as the Greek: the kingdom is a coming reality to be awaited, and an inbreaking reality to be welcomed now. Both movements are held in one word.
Nehwey tzevyanach aykana d'bashmaya aph b'arha — "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"
Tzevyanach (or sebyanach) is "your will" in the sense of desire, delight, and good pleasure — not mere legal decree. Aykana d'bashmaya aph b'arha: "as in heaven, so also on earth." The petition asks that the earth echo the harmony of heaven.
Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana — "Give us this day our daily bread"
This is the line where Aramaic is especially rich. Lachma is bread. D'sunqanan means "of our need" — the bread we need, what is necessary for us. Yaomana means "for the day." The Syriac reads naturally as "the bread of our need, for today," a fuller phrase than either the Greek epiousion (much-debated, often translated "daily" or "supersubstantial") or the English "daily bread." The petition asks for what is needed, for today, from the Father who knows what is needed.
Washboqlan khaubayn wakhtahayn, aykana daph khnan shbaqan l'khayyabayn — "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us"
The Syriac uses two words here: khaubayn ("our debts") and khtahayn ("our sins"). Matthew's Greek uses the debt language; Luke's uses the sin language. The Peshitta preserves both — the moral weight of sin and the relational weight of debt, what is owed and not yet returned. Shbaqan, "we have forgiven," is perfect tense: the forgiving comes first, or at least alongside, the asking.
Wela tahlan l'nesyuna, ela patzan min bisha — "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil"
Nesyuna means "trial" or "testing" as much as "temptation" in the narrow modern sense. Patzan is "rescue" or "deliver," a strong verb of pulling out of danger. Bisha means "evil" or "the evil one" — Syriac, like Greek, keeps the ambiguity. The prayer asks not to be tested beyond strength, and to be pulled safely out of evil's grip.
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta, l'ahlam almin. Amen. — "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen."
The doxology is not in every Greek manuscript of Matthew, but the Peshitta preserves it, and the Syriac liturgical tradition has always prayed it as part of the Our Father. L'ahlam almin means "unto ages of ages," a Semitic superlative: the fullest possible "forever." Amen is itself an Aramaic and Hebrew word — "truly, so be it" — which has passed unchanged into every Christian language.
How the Maronite Church Prays It
In the Maronite Qurbono, the Our Father is prayed at the appointed moment after the Consecration, before Communion. It is the prayer in which the congregation, having just witnessed the mystery of the Eucharist, turns to the Father in the words his Son taught.
In most Maronite parishes, the Our Father is sung in Syriac even when the rest of the liturgy is in Arabic, English, French, or Portuguese. The melody is ancient — a chant passed down by oral tradition, recognizable to Maronites from Bkerke to Sydney, São Paulo to Paris to Punchbowl. The text is the same text above: Abwoon d'bashmaya, sung slowly, usually by the whole congregation, often with a final Amen that lingers.
The Syriac Our Father is also prayed in the daily office of the Maronite Church (the Shimto), in funerals, at weddings, and at monastic vespers. In the monasteries of the Qadisha Valley where Saint Charbel lived, it has been prayed every day without interruption for more than a thousand years.
A Caution About Popular Mistranslations
A search for "Our Father in Aramaic" online will quickly turn up versions that begin "O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos…" These come from the 1990 book Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz, which offers what the author calls a contemplative, mystical rendering of the Aramaic.
Douglas-Klotz's versions are not translations of the Peshitta in the ordinary sense. They are meditative expansions that extract multiple possible meanings from each Aramaic root and combine them into a poetic whole. The author himself acknowledges that his transcriptions are not formal scholarly work. Scholars of Syriac have noted that these readings do not reflect how any Syriac Christian community — Maronite, Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Assyrian, or Chaldean — has ever prayed the Our Father.
If you want the prayer as Jesus's tradition has handed it down, use the Peshitta text above. It is the text the Maronite Church has prayed for seventeen centuries, in the language closest to the one Jesus spoke.
Praying It Yourself
The best way to learn the Our Father in Aramaic is slowly, and aloud. Read the transliteration line by line. Do not worry about a perfect accent. The Syriac sounds will feel foreign at first and familiar within a week of daily practice.
Listening helps more than reading. Recordings of the Maronite Our Father in Syriac are freely available, and attending a Maronite Qurbono is the most natural way to hear it prayed in its liturgical context. Many Syriac Catholic and Syriac Orthodox parishes sing it too, with minor dialectal differences in pronunciation.
The Charbel app includes guided prayer in Syriac Aramaic alongside English, Arabic, French, and Portuguese, so you can pray the Our Father in the language of Jesus as part of your daily rhythm — not as a curiosity, but as the prayer it has always been.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Our Father in Aramaic?
The Our Father in Aramaic is the Lord's Prayer as preserved in the Peshitta, the standard Syriac Bible (Matthew 6:9-13). It opens Abwoon d'bashmaya, "Our Father, who art in heaven." Syriac is a literary and liturgical dialect of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Maronite, Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christians still pray the Our Father in Syriac in their liturgies today.
Did Jesus actually pray the Our Father in Aramaic?
Yes. Jesus spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic as his everyday language. When he taught the disciples the Our Father (Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4), he would have taught it in Aramaic. The Peshitta preserves the prayer in Classical Syriac, a slightly later and more formal dialect of Aramaic from Edessa. The Syriac text is the closest living liturgical form of the prayer as Jesus prayed it, not a direct transcription of his Galilean words.
Is Aramaic the same as Syriac?
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, not a separate language. Aramaic was a family of closely related dialects spoken across the ancient Near East for more than two thousand years. Jesus spoke Galilean Aramaic, a Western dialect. Syriac developed in Edessa as an Eastern literary and liturgical language from the first centuries of Christianity. The relationship is like medieval Latin to classical Latin: the same language, a later register.
Why do Maronites pray the Our Father in Syriac?
The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic Church of the Antiochene Syriac tradition. Its liturgy was celebrated entirely in Syriac for centuries before Arabic influence. Today the Our Father is often sung in Syriac after the Consecration, even in parishes that otherwise pray in Arabic, English, French, or Portuguese. This preserves a direct liturgical link to the language of Jesus and the early Antiochene church.
How do you pronounce "Abwoon d'bashmaya"?
Roughly "AB-woon deh-bash-MA-ya" in Eastern Syriac pronunciation, or "AB-oon deh-bash-MA-yo" in the Western Syriac pronunciation used by Maronites (where the final vowel tends toward "o"). The "w" in Abwoon is a soft consonant, almost like "Aboon" with a faint "w". The best way to learn the rhythm is to listen to a recording of the prayer sung in a Maronite or Syriac liturgy.
See also: What language did Jesus speak. The Maronite Divine Liturgy (Qurbono). The Maronite tradition. The Maronite Rosary. Prayer for anxiety. The Maronite liturgical calendar. Saint Maron. Saint Charbel.