After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Matthew 6:9 (KJV)
The second petition begins before the kingdom and the will. The name comes first.
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Hallowed Be Your Name
The second line of the prayer asks God to make his name holy. Ezekiel saw the name dragged through the dirt. Today we ask what it means to keep it clean.
Matthew 6:9; Ezekiel 36:20–23
Title
What It Means to Ask That His Name Be Holy
The second request in the prayer is not about us getting anything. It is about a name. Hallowed be your name. The Greek is ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου (hagiasthētō to onoma sou), ‘let your name be made holy.’
Holiness in the Bible begins with God. Before any object, place, or person can be holy, the holiness must come from him, and then it is shared with what he touches. So when we pray for his name to be hallowed, we are asking that the thing which is already holy be treated as holy by the world around it.
That is harder than it sounds. A name can be honored or it can be dragged through the dirt. Today’s reading looks at what happened to God’s name when his people were carried away from their land, and at the promise that he would act to set it right.
REFLECT
When you hear the phrase “the name of God,” what do you notice first: reverence, habit, or something you have been hurt by?
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
A Two-Minute Prayer
Holy Father, your name is already holy. Make it holy in my speech and in my life today, and where I have treated it casually, forgive me and set my words right. Amen.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the Lord, and are gone forth out of his land. But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.
Ezekiel 36:20-22 (KJV)
The nations saw a people leave their land and drew a conclusion about the God who had given it.
A Name Being Dragged Through the Dirt
Ezekiel was speaking to people who had lost their country. The nation of Israel had been taken into exile, and the prophet had to explain why. The reason he gives is not only that the people sinned. It is that the nations watched them go and said something about their God. ‘These are the people of the Lord, and are gone forth out of his land.’
The sentence sounds like a sneer, and it was one. The nations were saying that the God of Israel was a weak god who could not hold on to his people. A name had been damaged in public, and the damage was done by the people who carried it.
God’s answer is not a defense of his reputation in the abstract. He says he will act for his holy name’s sake. He is not saying that his name matters more than his people. He is saying that his people are the place where his name is known, and he will not let the world write a false story about him.
The third commandment says the same thing in plainer words: ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain’ (Exodus 20:7, KJV). Ezekiel’s world and Moses’ world share the concern. A name used lightly has been put to a use it was never meant for, and the God who owns the name takes that seriously.
Holy, Because He Is Holy
Two Old Testament verses fit together here. In Leviticus 22:32 God says, ‘Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the Lord which hallow you.’ The people are told not to profane the name. God says he will be hallowed. Holiness is his, and he gives it to the people who belong to him.
Ezekiel brings the same pattern into exile. The people profaned the name by their conduct, and God will vindicate it by acting. When he gathers the people back, he says, ‘I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen.’ The verb is about making holy, and the subject is God. The people do not restore the name on their own.
Now return to the prayer. Matthew 6:9 says ἁγιασθήτω (hagiasthētō), the same verb family. The grammar points the same way. The petition is addressed to God, and the thing requested is that his name be treated as holy. We are not asked to make God holy. We are asked to pray that he makes his name holy in the world, and to live so that the request is not empty.
This changes the tone of the second petition. It is not an anxious request for help. It is a request for God’s honor, which is the very thing we were made to protect and which we have often gotten wrong.
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
Exodus 3:14–15 (KJV) (KJV)
At the bush the name is spoken out loud for the first time in the story, and it is given for ever.
Holy Ground Is Ground Someone Else Claimed
At the burning bush the Lord tells Moses to take off his shoes. ‘The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.’ Nothing about the soil has changed. The ground is holy because the one who appeared there has claimed it. Holiness here is a relationship, and the ground is set apart by the presence of the one who is holy. The same logic governs the name in the prayer. A name is holy when it is treated as belonging to someone who is set apart. The shoes come off because the ground is no longer ordinary. The name is hallowed when the people who speak it stop treating it as ordinary.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Exodus 3:5 and 3:14–15, KJV, read in the Old Testament account of the call of Moses at Horeb. No later tradition is needed to read the verse; the text states the claim itself.
Where a Holy Name Sits in the Story
ANCIENT TRUTH
Israel’s name was tied to its land and its covenant. When the people were carried away, the nations drew conclusions about the God whose people they had been. The prophet’s task was to say that the damage was real, that it was owed to the people’s conduct, and that God would act anyway.
This is the KINGDOM stretch of God’s story, where the holy name is being made known to the nations through a people who are not yet what they should be.
MODERN APPLICATION
Most of us carry some name in our keeping. It might be a family name, a church name, the name of a company we work for, or simply our own. The question the second petition asks is whether the way we speak and act makes that name easier to trust or harder.
NEW TESTAMENT ECHO
In John 17:6 Jesus says, ‘I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.’ The name is made known in the Son, and the disciples are the ones it is given to.
The Name Was Made Known in a Person
Israel had a name for God before the exile, and it was not a secret. Moses asked for it at the bush, and God answered with a short sentence: ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ Then he added the plain name that would be remembered for every generation. The name was given to be known, not hidden.
The prayer asks that this name be hallowed. Hallowing a name is different from keeping it out of sight. When people see a name treated as holy, they learn what it is. When they see it treated as a joke or a tool, they learn something else. The second petition is therefore a request for public witness. It asks that God’s character be visible in what his people do.
John’s Gospel makes the link to Jesus. In his prayer before the cross, Jesus says he has manifested the name to the men his Father gave him. The name is not an abstract idea that Jesus happens to mention. It is made known in him, in his words and works, and in the people who receive it. The one who taught the disciples to say ‘hallowed be thy name’ is himself the place where the name was made plain.
This is why the petition is not a vague wish. It is a prayer that the name be known as it is known in Christ, and that the people who carry his name live in a way that does not drag it through the dirt. Ezekiel’s people failed at this, and the prophet promised that God would not let the failure have the last word. The prayer asks God to keep that promise in the lives of the people who say it.
There is a practical test in this. When you speak of God, do your words make his character clearer or murkier? When you act in his name, does the act match the name? The petition does not give a checklist. It sets a standard and asks God to meet it in us.
Samuel: A Composite Case
This is an illustrative case built to show how a name gets damaged and what a prayer for it can do. It is not a report about one person. A man we will call Samuel served on the board of a small charity. Over one winter the charity’s name was used on a letter that promised things it could not deliver, and the letter went out with Samuel’s name at the bottom as the person responsible. He had not written it. He had not seen it before it was mailed.
The damage was real. People who had trusted the charity stopped giving. Some of them spoke about it in ways that did not sound kind. Samuel felt the name he carried was being dragged through the mud, and he did not know how to answer.
He began praying the second petition each morning, slowly. He did not pray for his reputation alone. He prayed that the name of God would be hallowed in the way the charity spoke and acted from then on, and that whatever was true would be made clear. The letter was eventually traced to a volunteer who had acted without permission, and the board made the correction in public. Samuel did not think the prayer had caused the correction. He did think it changed what he was looking for. He was no longer only defending a name. He was asking that a holy name be served honestly.
The verb is about making holy, and the one who makes holy is God. Our part is to stop profaning the name while we ask him to keep it.
What Profaning Looks Like on an Ordinary Day
Most of us do not profane God’s name in dramatic ways. We do it in small habits. We say his name as a filler word when something surprises us. We use his name to close an argument we have not won. We describe our own opinions as if they had come straight from him, and when they turn out to be wrong, the name is left in the mess.
These habits matter because they shape what people hear when they hear the name. A child who only hears God’s name in exclamations may think it is a word for shock. A friend who hears a sentence start with ‘God told me’ may stop listening carefully to the next sentence. The prayer does not ask us to avoid speaking of God. It asks that our speaking reflect the holiness we are asking for.
Hallowing, in this sense, is ordinary work. It looks like saying ‘I do not know’ when we do not know, and not dressing up a guess as revelation. It looks like keeping a promise made in God’s name, even when it is inconvenient. It looks like telling the truth about our own failures when we have spoken for God and gotten it wrong.
The second petition does not make the believer a guardian of an image. It makes the believer a witness to a character. The name is holy because God is holy. Our task is to stop making it look otherwise, and to trust him to make it holy in the places we cannot reach.
This is a good place to slow down. Choose one habit this week that touches God’s name in speech, and notice when it happens. Do not try to fix everything at once. Notice, pray, and let the petition do its slow work on the habit.
Jesus speaks to the same habit in Matthew 5. He tells his listeners not to swear by heaven, by the earth, or by Jerusalem, because each of them belongs to God. The reason is the same as the name commandment: when we bring God’s name or his creation into our promises, we make his honor a tool for our persuasion. ‘But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay’ (Matthew 5:37, KJV). A plain yes and no, kept faithfully, does more to hallow the name than an oath that is later broken.
REFLECT
Which habit of speech would most change how people hear God’s name if you let go of it this week?
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
- When have you seen a name you trusted treated carelessly, and what did it cost the people who trusted it?
- Where does your own life make God’s character easier to see, and where does it make it harder?
A Practice for Today
Write one line for each of three ordinary moments today: a time you spoke of God, a time you acted in his name, and a time you wished you had not. Do not explain them. Just write.
1
Speech
Where did God’s name come up in your words today?
2
Action
Where did your choices carry his name into a room?
3
Repair
What would it look like to ask him to make that name holy there?
Start With the Name You Use
Before the day closes, one simple thing. The second petition is the first place in the prayer where we ask God to act on something outside our own lives. The name is his, the holiness is his, and the work of making it holy is his. This means we are not responsible for the whole job.
It also means our part is smaller and more specific than we might have hoped. We are asked to stop treating the name carelessly, to speak of God with care, and to act in ways that do not contradict what we say. Those are not dramatic tasks. They are repeated ones.
Tomorrow the prayer moves to the kingdom and the will. The name was the first thing God’s people were asked to protect, and the kingdom is the next thing they are asked to hope for. Let today’s petition be the honest start of that longer prayer.
Notice that the prayer does not ask you to finish the name before going on. It asks you to keep the name holy one conversation at a time, and to trust that the rest of the prayer is also God’s to carry.
Prayer
Holy Father, your name is holy whether or not I honor it. Forgive me for the careless ways I have spoken of you, and for the times I have acted as if your name were mine to spend. Make your name holy among the people who watch me. Keep my words honest and my life plain, and let the people who trust you see what you are really like. Amen.
BREATH PRAYER
Hallowed be your name — in my speech, in my hands
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
Today's Commitment
I will catch one careless use of God’s name this week, and I will replace it with a sentence that is true and kind.
LEAVING AT THE CROSS
- The habit of using God’s name as a filler
- The reflex of defending my own reputation with his
- The assumption that holiness is my job alone
RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS
- A name that was made known in the Son
- A God who acts for his own name’s sake
- A standard I can pray toward without pretending I have met it
One Question
In Ezekiel 36:22, for whose sake does the Lord say he will act?
Hallowing is not a feeling we produce. It is a name we stop dragging through the dirt while we wait for God to do what only he can do.
Sources & Further Study
Greek of Matthew 6:9
ἁγιασθήτω (hagiasthētō) is verified as an aorist imperative, third person singular, at the Matthew 6 interlinear on Bible Hub (biblehub.com/interlinear), Strong’s G37. The word ὄνομα (onoma) is verified there as G3686.
RELATED SCRIPTURES
Leviticus 22:32 (KJV)
Do not profane my holy name; I will be hallowed among the children of Israel.
Exodus 3:5 (KJV)
The ground is holy because of the one who appears on it.
John 17:6 (KJV)
The name made known to the disciples in the Son.
REFLECT
What is one place this week where you can let God’s name be treated as holy by the way you speak?
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
Finished reading? Mark this day read.
BEFORE YOU GO
Anything you want to keep from today?
Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.
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