GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Matthew 6:5-6 explicitly forbids public prayer: do not be like the hypocrites who pray in synagogues and street corners to be seen — go into your inner room (*tameion*) and shut the door. John 11:41-42 has Jesus pray publicly at the tomb of Lazarus and explicitly say he did so 'because of the crowd standing around.' 1 Timothy 2:8 commands men to pray 'in every place' (*en panti topō*) lifting holy hands.
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Cited passages
“When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most certainly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
Cited passages
So they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank you that you listened to me. I know that you always listen to me, but because of the multitude standing around I said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
I desire therefore that the men in every place pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and doubting.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is the prayer-specific form of the same in-house Matthew problem visible in entry 407, here extended across John and the Pastorals, and the apologetic motivational distinction runs up against the same limit: Matthew 6:6 commends not merely well-motivated prayer but invisible prayer.
Matthew 6:5-6 is the strict text. The hypocrites are condemned because *philousin en tais synagōgais kai en tais gōniais tōn plateiōn hestōtes proseuchesthai, hopōs phanōsin tois anthrōpois* — 'they love to pray standing in synagogues and on street corners so as to be visible to people.' The prescribed alternative is concrete: *eiselthe eis to tameion sou kai kleisas tēn thyran sou proseuxai tō patri sou tō en tō kryptō* — 'go into your inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret.' The *tameion* is the storeroom or innermost chamber of a Palestinian house, frequently the only room with a door that could be barred (Betz and Luz note that the detail signals deliberate concealment). The recommended behavior is privacy, not merely purity of motive.
John 11:41-42 cuts directly against this: Jesus prays aloud at Lazarus's tomb before a crowd and states the reason — *dia ton ochlon ton periestōta eipon, hina pisteusōsin hoti sy me apesteilas* — 'because of the crowd standing around I said it, so that they may believe you sent me.' Brown observes that this is an unusually self-conscious 'audience-directed' prayer, characteristic of the Fourth Gospel's revelatory style, in which Jesus' words function as signs for onlookers. The visibility is not incidental; it is the stated purpose — formally the very *hopōs phanōsin tois anthrōpois* Matthew 6:5 censures, redeemed in John only by its evangelistic end. 1 Timothy 2:8 then directs *proseuchesthai tous andras en panti topō* — 'that men pray in every place,' lifting holy hands, a posture that is public and demonstrative; Mounce reads it as legislating the public liturgical assembly. Acts reinforces the pattern with assembled prayer throughout (1:14, 24; 3:1; 4:24-31; 20:36; 21:5).
The apologetic harmonization — Carson, France, Mounce — is the motivational distinction: Matthew condemns ostentation aimed at human admiration, not corporate or genuinely public prayer offered for proper ends. There is real force here, and it likely captures the redactor's intent within 6:5 itself, where the censure clause is *hopōs phanōsin*. The Lord's Prayer that immediately follows (6:9-13) is plainly cast for communal use ('our Father,' plural pronouns throughout), which shows Matthew did not intend to abolish shared prayer altogether.
The difficulty, as in entry 407, is the positive instruction in 6:6. Matthew does not say 'pray publicly with a pure heart'; he says go into the inner room and shut the door. The remedy he prescribes is spatial seclusion, not merely interior re-orientation. A defender must treat 6:6 as hyperbole — and it may well be — but then John 11:42's openly purpose-driven public prayer and 1 Timothy 2:8's 'in every place' sit at the opposite pole from the hyperbole's literal sense.
The critical reading (Davies-Allison, Luz, Betz) places 6:5-6 inside the hidden-piety triad of 6:1-18 (almsgiving, prayer, fasting), a unit drawn from a Jewish-piety tradition prizing covert religious acts. Matthew inherited it and set it beside the communal Lord's Prayer and his community's evidently corporate worship without fully smoothing the join. John and the Pastorals reflect later communities for whom public, demonstrative prayer was simply normal.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonized. The motivational distinction reconciles most of the canon's public prayers, but Matthew 6:6's directive to pray in a shut inner room is most naturally a counsel toward private rather than public prayer, leaving a residual tension with John 11:41-42 and 1 Timothy 2:8.
Sources for this reading