Expository (english bible) Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers (11) The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself

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EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)
Ellicott's Commentary for English
Readers
(11) The Pharisee stood and prayed thus
with himself.—A false stress has often been laid on the Pharisee’s attitude, as though his standing erect was in itself an indication of his self-righteous pride. But the publican also stood, and although another tense of the same verb is used, it is an oversubtle refinement to see this difference between the two forms.
Standing was, indeed, with the Jews, the customary attitude of prayer. The selfsame participle is used hereof the Pharisee, and in
Luke 19:8
of Zacchæus. The order of the words in the Greek is standing by (or,
with
)
himself, prayed thus (or,
as follows
);” and it is a question of punctuation whether the words point to the Pharisee’s standing by himself,”
shrinking from contact with others, and so making himself the observed of all observers,”
or, as in the Authorised version, that he
“prayed with himself The general use of the preposition is all but decisive in favour of the latter view. It does not follow, however, as has been somewhat hastily assumed, that the prayer was a silent one, that even he would not have dared to utter aloud such a boast as that which follows. There was nothing in the character of the typical Pharisee to lead him to any such sense of shame and silent prayer,
never customary among the Jews at any time,
would have been at variance with every tradition of the Pharisees. (Comp. Notes on
Matthew 6:5
; Matthew 6:7
). So far as the phrase has any special point, it indicates that he was not praying to God at all he was practically praying to himself, congratulating himself, half-consciously, that he had no need to pray, in the sense of asking for pardon, or peace, or righteousness, though it might be right, byway of example, to perform his acts of devotion and to thank God for what he had received. The words remind us) of the title which Marcus Aurelius gave to his Stoic
Meditations
—“
Thoughts
(or better, perhaps,
communings
)
with himself”
—in which he, too,
begins with thanksgiving and self-gratulations on the progress he had made in virtue from his youth onward (
Meditt.
i. 1); (2) of the more modern theory which recognises the value of prayer as raising the thoughts of man to a higher level, by a kind of self-mesmerising action, but excludes from it altogether the confession of sin, or the supplication for pardon, or the making our wants known unto
God” (Philippians 4:6
). The verb for prayed is in the tense which implies continuance. He was making along address, of which this was a sample (Luke 20:47
).