Prayers in the Bible: 11 people who prayed and what they asked

The prayers written down in the Bible are almost never elegant. They are short, blunt, occasionally rude, and usually spoken in a bad moment. Reading them in a row is the fastest cure for the idea that prayer requires a particular register. Here are eleven, in the order they appear, with the literal text.

1. Abraham argues over a city

God tells Abraham that Sodom is about to be destroyed. Abraham does not accept it.

Abraham came near, and said, “Will you consume the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous within the city? ... Shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:23-25, read the chapter)

He then bargains the number down from fifty to ten. The prayer is a negotiation, and the text records it without embarrassment. Prayer, in Genesis, is allowed to push back.

2. Moses offers to be erased

After the golden calf, Moses goes back up the mountain.

Moses returned to Yahweh, and said, “Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made themselves gods of gold. Yet now, if you will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out of your book which you have written.” (Exodus 32:31-32)

This is intercession at its most extreme: he offers to take the punishment himself rather than see the people destroyed. Note that he does not minimise what they did.

3. Hannah asks for a child, then gives him back

Hannah prays in the temple so quietly that the priest assumes she is drunk. Years later she brings the child she asked for:

I prayed for this child, and Yahweh has given me my petition which I asked of him. Therefore I have also given him to Yahweh. (1 Samuel 1:27-28)

Her prayer is the standard example of two things: prayer without audible words, and a request whose answer is handed back.

4. Solomon asks for judgement, not for wealth

Offered anything, the new king asks for one specific capacity.

Give your servant therefore an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to judge this great people of yours?” (1 Kings 3:9)

The request is job-specific. He is a young king who has to decide cases, and he asks for what the job requires.

5. Hezekiah turns to the wall

Told by a prophet that he will not recover, the king does not argue theology.

Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed to Yahweh, saying, “Remember now, Yahweh, I beg you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. (2 Kings 20:2-3)

It is a prayer with no polish: a plea, a claim on his own record, and crying.

6. Jehoshaphat admits he has no idea

Facing an army, the king of Judah prays in front of the whole assembly and ends like this:

Our God, will you not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that comes against us. We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)

"We don't know what to do" is the operative line. It is preserved as an exemplary public prayer, which means admitting you are out of options is not a failure of prayer.

7. Nehemiah prays mid-conversation

Nehemiah is cup bearer to a foreign king and wants permission to rebuild Jerusalem. Before the conversation he prays:

Lord, I beg you, let your ear be attentive now to the prayer of your servant ... and please prosper your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” (Nehemiah 1:11)

A few verses later, standing in front of the king mid-sentence, he prays again and then speaks. The book gives the whole practice a name it never uses: the very short prayer said while something is already happening.

8. Daniel asks on the basis of mercy, not merit

Daniel's long prayer of confession ends with a rush of short imperatives.

for we do not present our petitions before you for our righteousness, but for your great mercies’ sake. Lord, hear. Lord, forgive. Lord, listen and do. (Daniel 9:18-19)

He explicitly refuses to make the request on the community's good record. The sentences at the end are almost telegraphic.

9. Mary responds with a song

Told she will bear a son, Mary answers with a poem that the church has sung ever since as the Magnificat.

My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, for he has looked at the humble state of his servant. (Luke 1:46-48, read the chapter)

It is a prayer that asks for nothing. Most of it is about what God does for the poor and the hungry, which is not what a private thanksgiving usually contains.

10. The tax collector says seven words

In a parable, two men pray in the temple. One lists his achievements. The other does this:

But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13, read the chapter)

Jesus says this man, not the other, went home justified. It is the shortest prayer commended in the Gospels, and the Jesus Prayer of the Eastern churches is built from it.

11. Stephen forgives while being killed

The first Christian martyr, mid-execution:

They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” He kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:59-60)

Two sentences, both addressed to Jesus, the second on behalf of the people throwing the stones. Luke has already recorded Jesus praying something similar from the cross.

What these eleven have in common

Read in a row, a few patterns are hard to miss.

They are short. Only Daniel's and Solomon's run to any length, and both are set speeches at formal moments. The rest are between one and four sentences.

They are specific. Nobody asks for blessing in general. Solomon asks for the capacity to judge cases; Nehemiah asks for one man's goodwill on one day; Hezekiah asks not to die yet.

They are frequently uncomfortable. Two are arguments, one is a bargain, one is an offer of self-destruction, one is an open admission of having no plan. None of them is polite in the way religious language is often assumed to be.

And they are almost all spoken in a bad moment — before an execution, before a battle, in front of a hostile king, in a temple while being accused of drunkenness. The Bible's prayers are largely emergency prayers, which is part of why they still read as usable.

The psalms are the exception in scale rather than in kind: a hundred and fifty prayers collected as a book, written to be prayed by people who did not write them, and still the backbone of daily worship in most Christian traditions.

What to borrow

The one prayer taught rather than merely recorded is the Lord's Prayer, and the most prayed text in the Bible is the psalter — Psalm 23 above all, explained line by line in our article on it. If you want to see how these prayers turned into the fixed forms different churches use, the article on how each Christian tradition prays traces that. And if you are starting from nothing, the simple guide to praying is the place to begin.