When God speaks

[coksiw]

Originally Posted by Esaias

Not sure what you mean.

I see me battalogein as the negatived verb form of polylogia. So batta and poly are synonyms. They mean literally "many words". The idea is that the heathen believed they would move their gods to action by their "many words", that is, their bloated rhetorical compositions they called prayers.

In contrast, God knows all things, so we aren't praying in order to notify Him of anything. And He is our Father, so there's no need for rhetorical flattery and persuasion per se. I think it all is pointing to our view of God and our relationship with Him.

"battalogein" is repeating words without sense, like when you stutter, hence, by implication, it also means vain repetitions.
The heathen were not doing necessarily that. Their prayers introduction did have a sense, and an intention. What I think Jesus is using here is a figure of speech, comparing their persuasion flattery with words repeated without sense, like stutter, highlighting how useless they were when used towards God, not matter how much you did it, to get your petition.

We use figures of speech like that as well when we compare somebody's speech with "nonsense", or "barking", or other terms. No, in reality they are speaking something intelligible, but we are comparing their actions with something else to make a point of what they really are or mean to us.