Importunity in prayer commanded
And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
Cited passages
He said to them, “Which of you, if you go to a friend at midnight, and tell him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him,’ and he from within will answer and say, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give it to you’? I tell you, although he will not rise and give it to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as many as he needs. “I tell you, keep asking, and it will be given you. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he won’t give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he asks for an egg, he won’t give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray, and not give up, saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God, and didn’t respect man. A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ He wouldn’t for a while, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God, nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’ ” The Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says. Won’t God avenge his chosen ones who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
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: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
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.
The contradiction concerns importunity — persistent, repeated petitioning in prayer — and the two Synoptics that handle it most directly answer in opposite directions. In Matthew 6:7-8, within the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructs disciples not to "use vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking," grounding the prohibition in the Father's prior knowledge: "your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." The Greek verb *battalogeō* (or *battologeō*) is rare and onomatopoeic, evoking meaningless babbling or stammering repetition; the parallel phrase *polylogia*, "much speaking," reinforces that what is condemned is quantity and reiteration. The Lord's Prayer that immediately follows (Matthew 6:9-13) models the alternative: brief, ordered, economical petition.
Luke, by contrast, twice attaches parables to prayer whose explicit lesson is to keep asking. The friend at midnight (Luke 11:5-8) culminates in a man who rises and gives "because of his importunity" — the Greek *anaideia*, "shamelessness" or persistent boldness — not because of friendship. In the Lukan sequence this is immediately generalized: "ask... seek... knock" (Luke 11:9-10), with present-tense imperatives that connote continued action. The persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) is even more pointed: Luke prefaces it editorially with the moral "that men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (18:1), and the widow prevails precisely by wearing down an unjust judge through relentless petition (the judge fears she will, literally, give him a black eye, *hypōpiazē*, 18:5). Both Lukan parables argue a fortiori — if a grudging friend and an unjust judge yield to persistence, how much more will God — but the rhetorical engine of both is that persistence works.
The usual harmonization, advanced by Craig Blomberg and D. A. Carson, distinguishes the objects of the two teachings: Matthew condemns only mindless, mechanical pagan repetition (the magical piling-up of words to compel a deity), whereas Luke commends sincere, faith-filled persistence. There is real exegetical substance here. Matthew's target is explicitly the *ethnikoi* and their theory that volume secures a hearing — a critique of prayer-as-incantation, not of asking more than once. And the Lukan parables are about perseverance in trust, not about coercing God through verbiage. So the two are not strict logical contradictories: one can both pray persistently and avoid empty babble.
Yet the harmonization smooths over a genuine difference in posture. Matthew's rationale — God already knows your needs before you ask — pushes against the very mechanism the Lukan parables exploit. If the Father knows in advance, the function of repeated asking becomes unclear, and Matthew's emphasis falls squarely on brevity and restraint. Luke's emphasis falls on tenacity and the refusal to give up. The friend at midnight in particular makes the granting depend on *anaideia*, persistence itself, which is awkward to reconcile with "your Father knoweth before ye ask." The two evangelists are deploying overlapping Jesus tradition (the ask-seek-knock logion is shared Q material, Matthew 7:7-11 // Luke 11:9-13) toward different pastoral ends — Matthew toward a critique of ostentatious, mechanical prayer, Luke toward an encouragement to persevere amid delayed answers and apparent divine silence (a concern visible in Luke 18:7-8's eschatological framing about the Son of Man finding faith).
So the verbal contradiction softens under the pagan-repetition reading, but a real difference of theology and emphasis remains: Matthew relativizes the value of repeated asking by appeal to divine foreknowledge, while Luke makes persistence the very thing God rewards.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable on the surface (Matthew targets mechanical babble, not persistence), but a genuine tension of emphasis persists between Matthew's brevity-and-foreknowledge logic and Luke's reward-for-importunity logic.
Sources for this reading