So, if what Jesus meant was "don't repeat prayers", then he would have really riled up every observant Jew of his day! Since he didn't, it stands to reason that this wasn't his meaning.
(Instead, what he meant was that we shouldn't babble like the pagans -- who used long litanies of potential names for their gods, hoping that
(if they found the right name for their god and said it
) they'd have power over their god and could force him to do what they wanted him to do. This is what Jesus is telling us not to do -- to use prayer as some sort of magical incantation to gain power over God.
)
E
ven the Psalms demonstrate prayers of repetition (cf. Psalm 136) or even Jesus repeated prayers:
am I wasting time praying this way?
