Five-minute study · Day 138 · 1 Corinthians 16
1 Corinthians 16:22
A word worth stopping on: Maranatha מָרָנָא תָא maranatha
Paul has been writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking congregation in a Greek city. Then, in the closing lines of his letter, he drops an untranslated Aramaic phrase: Maranatha. He does not define it. He does not explain it. He writes it as though the Corinthians already know what it means. An Aramaic prayer, preserved without translation in a Greek letter to Gentile believers in southern Greece. The phrase survived because it was already embedded in the church's worship. By the time Paul wrote it down, Maranatha had traveled from Aramaic-speaking Palestine to the edges of the Roman Empire.
Word study: Maranatha
- Aramaic
- מָרָנָא תָא
- Pronounced
- maranatha
- Strong's
- G3134
- Definition
- An Aramaic liturgical exclamation. Can be divided as marana tha (Our Lord, come!) or maran atha (Our Lord has come). An invocation of Christ's return or a declaration of his presence.
Maranatha is one of the oldest surviving Christian prayers. It appears in 1 Corinthians 16:22 and in the Didache (10:6), an early church manual dated by most scholars to the late first century. Both texts preserve it in untranslated Aramaic, which means it was treated as a fixed liturgical formula, a prayer so embedded in worship practice that translating it would have felt like dismantling it.
The phrase divides two ways, and the ambiguity may be intentional. Marana tha (two words): 'Our Lord, come!' A prayer directed forward, asking for Christ's return. Maran atha (two words, different division): 'Our Lord has come.' A declaration directed backward, affirming the incarnation or the resurrection. Joseph Fitzmyer's study of the Aramaic background argues that the imperative reading (Come, our Lord!) is more likely in a liturgical context, paralleling Revelation 22:20: 'Even so, come, Lord Jesus.'
The theological weight is in what the phrase reveals about early Christology. Aramaic-speaking Jewish believers applied the title maran (our Lord) to Jesus. In Aramaic, maran is the emphatic form of mare, lord or master. Daniel 2:47 uses the related form to call God 'Lord of kings.' The earliest Christians, within years of the crucifixion, were using language reserved for God and applying it to Jesus of Nazareth. This was not a later theological development imposed by Greek-speaking Gentile churches. It originated in Aramaic-speaking Palestine, among Jews, in the first generation.
The Didache places Maranatha at the conclusion of the eucharistic liturgy, after the prayers over the bread and cup. The prayer asks the Lord to come to the table, to be present in the meal, and to return in glory. The worship setting and the eschatological hope occupy the same breath. Come to us now. Come to us finally. The prayer holds both tensions without resolving them.
Historical context · First century AD
An Aramaic Prayer at the Edge of Empire
First Corinthians was written from Ephesus around AD 55. Corinth was a Roman colony, refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC and populated largely by freedmen (liberti) and veterans. The city was Greek-speaking, commercially prosperous, and religiously diverse. Temples to Aphrodite, Apollo, Asclepius, Demeter, and the imperial cult dotted the city. Paul's congregation there was predominantly Gentile (1 Corinthians 12:2). That an untranslated Aramaic prayer could appear without explanation in a letter to this audience tells us something remarkable about early Christian worship.
The prayer must have been so widely used that even Gentile converts in Greece recognized it. This means Maranatha had traveled from the Aramaic-speaking communities of Palestine and Syria, possibly through missionary contact, liturgical practice shared by traveling believers, or Paul's own teaching during his eighteen months in Corinth. The Aramaic words were preserved precisely because they were sacred. Translating them would have stripped something essential from the prayer, the way translating 'Amen' or 'Hallelujah' into vernacular English loses their liturgical force.
The Didache, discovered in 1873 in a library in Constantinople, provides the earliest window into post-apostolic worship practice. Chapter 10 records prayers to be said after the eucharistic meal, concluding with: 'Let grace come, and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David! If anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen.' The prayer positions Maranatha as the climactic cry of the liturgy, the moment where the congregation calls for the Lord's presence and return.
Fitzmyer notes that the preservation of Maranatha in Aramaic within Greek-speaking churches is parallel to the preservation of 'Abba' in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6. Both are Aramaic terms that survived translation because they carried the weight of the earliest Christian experience. 'Abba' preserved how Jesus addressed God. 'Maranatha' preserved how the first believers addressed Jesus. Together, they form an Aramaic core at the heart of Christian prayer that predates every creed, every council, and every systematic theology.
For reflection
Maranatha survived without translation because the early church treated it as sacred, a prayer too foundational to paraphrase. The earliest believers, within years of the resurrection, were crying 'Our Lord, come!' in their worship gatherings. What does your own prayer life sound like when it reaches the place of raw, unedited longing? Is there a prayer you carry that feels too essential to dress up in polished language?
The prayer holds two meanings simultaneously: Our Lord has come. Our Lord, come. Past reality and future hope in the same breath. The early church lived in both tenses at once.
Sources: BDAG Lexicon; Fitzmyer, 'The Semitic Background of the New Testament'; Niederwimmer, 'The Didache' (Hermeneia)