Give us day by day our daily bread. There would need no comment upon this—at first sight—quite simple prayer, but for the word ἐπιούσιος, rendered "daily." This word, in all Greek literature, occurs only in these two evangelists, in SS.
Matthew and Luke's report of the Lord's Prayer. Now, does this strange word mean "daily," as our translation gives it; or is it the rough Greek rendering of some Aramaic word of a loftier signification?
Most probably our Lord was speaking Aramaic in this place, far away from the capital, in the heart of Palestine. Jerome attempts to Latinize literally the Greek compound word with supersubstantialis; hence the Rheims Version renders it "supersubstantial," and Wickliffe "over other substance."
Generally speaking, the patristic expositors interpret this famous word in such a way that the petition prays, not for the common bread of everyday life, but for a spiritual food, even the Bread from heaven, which giveth life unto the world.
So, with unimportant differences, interpret Origen, Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Ambrose, and Augustine. Among the moderns who adopt the same view may be cited Olshausen, Stier, and Dean Plumptre.
The last-named scholar's words are an admirable answer to any who would abandon this higher and nobler meaning, for the sake of preserving the reference to the commonplace of everyday life. "So taken, the petition..
, raises us to the region of thought in which we leave all that concerns our earthly life in the hands of our Father, without asking him even for the supply of its simplest wants, seeking only that he would sustain and perfect the higher life of our spirit."
If, however, the interpretation (on the whole unlikely) of common, everyday bread, be accepted, and the simple reference of Luke 10:42 to the necessity for only one dish at table be adopted, then, with the charge to the seventy contained in Luke 10:7, to eat and drink "such things as they give," and the further instruction to "take no thought … what ye shall eat" (Luke 12:22), we have, in this last period of our Lord's public life, clear expressions on the part of the Master of his wish that his followers should ever content themselves with the simplest human food, avoiding not only all excess, but all extravagance, and even consideration and thought, in providing for anything beyond the simplest daily sustenance.