St Ephrem’s prayer for children

A verse of St Ephrem the Syrian, written about AD 359 as war threatened his city. It asks Christ, Who was once a child, to have mercy on children.

Picture: William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 1854–60

Plain English

Have mercy, O Lord, on my children!In my children remember Your own childhood,for You were a child Yourself.Let those who are like You in Your childhoodbe saved by Your grace.

Traditional wording, 1898

Have mercy, O Lord, on my children!in my children call to mind Thy childhood,Thou Who wast a child!Let them that are like Thy childhood,be saved by Thy grace!

Plain English by Wiser Walk, from Gustav Bickell’s 1866 Latin translation of the Syriac, with Stopford’s 1898 English beside it. How the wording is made. Traditional wording: J. T. Sarsfield Stopford, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 13, 1898.

Bickell’s Latin gives Christ’s own childhood as the reason for the prayer, so the plain wording says “for You were a child Yourself”.

When it is said

It is not part of any Orthodox service today.

A mother or father might say it for their children at any time. It takes a few seconds.

Where it comes from

Author known

A city praying for her children

These words come from a hymn St Ephrem wrote at Nisibis, a city in Mesopotamia where he lived through three sieges by the Persian king Shapur. In the hymn the city herself speaks to God. She asks for peace “in all my streets for all my offspring”, and her people are her lambs and her little ones.

St Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns, tr. J. T. Sarsfield Stopford (1898)

Written in a time of war

The scholar Gustav Bickell dates this hymn to April of AD 359, when word reached Nisibis that Shapur was coming to invade Mesopotamia with a huge army. Bickell reads it as made for a day when the whole city, her little children too, prayed for an end to the war. One verse begs God to accept the cry of her little ones, “that are altogether pure.”

Gustav Bickell, S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena (1866); St Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns, tr. J. T. Sarsfield Stopford (1898)

What the words mean

“Remember Your childhood”

Two verses earlier the hymn remembers the day the Babe came down into the stall and the angels proclaimed peace. It says this Babe, the Son of Mary, gave peace on every side. Then the city turns to her own children. Christ was once a child as they are, so she asks Him to see His own childhood in them and to save them by His grace.

St Ephrem, Nisibene Hymns, tr. J. T. Sarsfield Stopford (1898)

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