Trouble understanding a verse in the Lord's Prayer

[Ora_et_Labora_1]

I have always had a bit of trouble understanding the last line of the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Perhaps it is the translation’s rendering, but what exactly is meant by “lead us not into temptation”? I know it in Portuguese, and the translation seems more intelligible: “não nos deixes cair em tentação”, literally “do not let us fall into temptation”, not so much with the sense that it is not He that tempts us, but rather that He can save us from falling. If this is the same sense in the english translation, then why use the word “lead”?
Also, I have heard some say (among who one is an exorcist) that “deliver us from evil” was originally “deliver us from the evil one”. Is that true? If so, why the change?

Many thanks for those that may be able to shed some light on this.

 

[YourAverageJoe]

I have always had a bit of trouble understanding the last line of the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Perhaps it is the translation’s rendering, but what exactly is meant by “lead us not into temptation”? I know it in Portuguese, and the translation seems more intelligible: “não nos deixes cair em tentação”, literally “do not let us fall into temptation”, not so much with the sense that it is not He that tempts us, but rather that He can save us from falling. If this is the same sense in the english translation, then why use the word “lead”?
Also, I have heard some say (among who one is an exorcist) that “deliver us from evil” was originally “deliver us from the evil one”. Is that true? If so, why the change?

Many thanks for those that may be able to shed some light on this.

it reads, lead us NOT into temptations… the NOT disqualifies the lead to temptation…we are asking God to lead us away from the devil’s temptations…as you said, God can lead us from falling…

no matter how one cuts and dices it, all evil comes from the evil one… Likewise, to avoid evil, is to avoid the evil one…
my two cents, hope this helps…
God Blees

 

[DOShea]

One of the writing styles of Hebrew poetry is a type of parallelism called antithetical, where the two lines express the opposite thought. Proverbs 10:1 is a good example. We do this in English, too, when we set statements apart with the word “instead.” Instead of eating junk food, eat a good, nutritious meal. Or “Instead of complaining, do something about it.”

The difficulty comes when we try to read too much into the “opposite” part of the verse rather than look where both lines (together) point. If you only take the first part, it seems to imply God has some sort of choice to make, where he could a)lead us directly to evil, or b)lead us away from it, and we are pleading for option b. If you take them together, they are a plea for deliverance from (the temptation) of evil.

If you look at the two English examples, the word “instead” makes an implication we never want to see the first option and only want the second one. You couldn’t read either one and think the writer (or speaker) wanted the junk food or the complaining. This style of Hebrew poetry expresses thought the same way but uses no word “instead.”