Preface.

...but that one must not pray falsely, deceitfully, hypocritically, or without devotion, like a heathen Original: Heide. Referring to non-Christian/non-Jewish pagans.; they, as Jews, already believed that before. Moreover, had Christ Original: Christus. indeed wanted to speak of such faults in prayer Original: Gebeth., he would perhaps, according to his habit, have preferred to say "like the Pharisees" and not "like the heathens." For the hypocritical Pharisees, who were always boasting with useless long prayers, would have been examples enough for him, so that he would not first have had to seek another example from the far-off heathens. It is, therefore, something entirely different and something specific to the heathens of which he now speaks. Namely, their babbling Original Greek: βαττολογεῖν (battologein). This refers to speaking in a repetitive, stammering, or empty-worded manner.. He mentions that very thing explicitly by name. I must, therefore, in this discourse, also allow my thoughts to fall upon nothing else. But "to babble," or to prattle much Original: viel plappern. This is the German vernacular used in Luther’s Bible translation of the Greek term. as it is phrased in the Bible, does not mean to pray without devotion Original: Andacht. or out of a false, deceitful, hypocritical, or otherwise evil heart; rather, it means only a