This line suggests that Tolkien based his Quenya version of the prayer on the typical English wording rather than the Greek or Latin versions. In the Greek text of Matthew 6:10, the wording used is "as in heaven, so on earth" (hôs en ouranôi kai epi gês; cf. also Latin sicut in caelo et in terra). The inversion "on earth as in heaven" is however usual in English versions (found already in one Old English translation: on eorthan swa swa on heofenum), and Tolkien is seen to have carried it over into Quenya.
This line commences with the last attestation of the wishing-particle na in this text, and we can summarize the syntactical rules relating to it as follows: The particle is used to express a wish (or perhaps indeed prayer) about what happens (will happen) to an object, or what a subject does (will do). If the speaker wishes that a subject is to have or receive the qualities denoted by some adjective, the syntax is particle + adjective + subject (na aire esselya, *"wish-that holy [is] thy name" = "hallowed be thy name"). If the speaker wishes that a subject is to do something, the syntax is subject + particle + finite verb in the appropriate tense: Aranielya na tuluva, *"thy kingdom, wish-that [it] will come". If the speaker wants to express what he wishes to be done to an object, the syntax is particle + finite verb + object: Na care indómelya, *"wish-that [one] does thy will". The latter is the most remarkable construction; the subject position is simply left empty. One is reminded of the Adûnaic system, whereby the passive is rendered by "subject in accusative" (SD:439 – in other words, the "passive" construction basically consists of simply omitting the real subject, denoting the agent, from the sentence!) It may be that Quenya regularly employs "subject-less" verbs where English would have an "impersonal" subject like one: hence care = *"one does". (It may be noted that Tolkien sometimes slipped in singular third person pronouns when translating such aorist verbs, e.g. take "he fastens" in LR:389 s.v. tak-, though no explicit pronominal element "he" is present. Perhaps this could also be taken as – or is properly – an impersonal verb: *"one fastens". If so, na care indómelya is not really a subject-less construction: rather a somewhat ethereal impersonal subject is inherent in this very form of the verb, though it is only perceived when it is not "overridden" by another, explicit subject.) In Quenya, it would probably be permissible to slip in an explicit subject in the normal position and say (for instance) *na ilquen care indómelya, "wish that everyone does thy will". This would involve nothing more dramatic than merging the attested patterns subject + particle + finite verb and particle + finite verb + object (into subject + particle + finite verb + object)[9].
ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma ·
Give us this day our daily bread,
ámen imperative particle á with a dative pronoun men "to us, for us" directly suffixed (evidently #me "we, us" + dative ending -n), anta verbal stem "give", connecting with the imperative particle in the previous word to produce an imperative "give!" The dative form #men is the indirect object of this phrase, hence "give (to) us". síra "this day, today" (a somewhat surprising form; we might rather have expected *síre – see Lexical Commentary). ilaurëa "daily" (il-aurë-a "every-day-ly"), massamma "our bread" (massa "bread" + -mma pronominal ending denoting exclusive "our", as in Átaremma in the first line).
*ar ámen apsene úcaremmar sív' emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen. *
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
ar "and", ámen imperative particle á combined with the dative pronoun men "for us, to us" as above. apsene stem of the verb "forgive", connecting with the imperative particle and the suffixed dative pronoun to produce a phrase meaning "forgive us". Notice that what is in English would be the direct object of the verb "forgive" is in Quenya the indirect object instead: In Quenya, the direct object is evidently the matter that is forgiven, while the indirect object (the dative object) is the person that is forgiven. This is evident from the next word: úcaremmar "our sins", which is #úcare "sin, misdeed, trespass" + the ending -mma for exclusive "our" + the plural ending -r. (Less probably this could be #úcar "sin, misdeed, trespass" + a connecting vowel e + the other endings; but see úcaremmar in the Lexical commentary.) sív' "as", elided form of *síve (the final vowel e dropping out since the next word also begins in e – there is however no hard-and-fast rule that such elisions have to occur whenever two similar vowels follow one another, cf. na aire esselya rather than *na air' esselya, but prepositions and particles, being unstressed, may be more susceptible to elision than other words). *Síve apparently means "as" when the speakers are comparing with something in their own proximity; see note on tambe and *síve below. emme emphatic pronoun, exclusive "we" (emphatic we to contrast with those who trespass against us). apsenet probably *"forgive them", aorist tense with the pronominal suffix -t for "them" as direct object. This is one of only two published examples of a verb receiving one pronominal ending denoting the object only, and the very first example of a finite verb with such an ending (the other example being an infinitive: karitas "to do it", VT41:13, 17). In all other known examples, verb-forms that include a pronominal suffix denoting the object also have a suffix denoting the subject, the latter preceding the former. An example involving the same ending -t "them" as in apsenet is provided by the Cormallen Praise, that has andave laituvalmet for "long shall we praise them". Here the ending -t "them" is preceded by -lme- "we": object and subject respectively. Emme apsenet "we forgive them" may be seen as a reworked form of *apsenemmet, the subject being expressed as an independent pronoun instead of a suffix since "we" is to be emphatic, but the ending -t for "them" remains suffixed to the verb. tien apparently dative pronoun "(for) them" or "(to) them" (the dative of te, see Lexical commentary). This would be the indirect object of the verb "forgive", and since tien is followed by the relative sentence "who trespass against us", it is clear that the dative pronoun denotes the ones that are forgiven. As we have already observed, in Quenya the indirect (dative) object of "forgive" denotes the ones that are forgiven, the direct object the matter that is forgiven: ámen apsene úcaremmar, "forgive us [men, indirect object] our trespasses [úcaremmar, direct object]". The -t suffixed to the verb "forgive" in emme apsenet must likewise be the direct object, "we forgive them", but again, this "them" must refer to the things that are forgiven rather than the people who are forgiven: the people are referred to by the independent dative object tien instead. Tolkien apparently used the wording *"forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them [that is, trespasses] for the benefit of those [tien, dative] who trespass against us". i relative pronoun "who", úcarer verb "trespass" or "sin", literally rather "do misdeeds": aorist tense with the plural ending -r. (Based on other examples we would rather expect *úcarir, and probably also *apsenit rather than apsenet above – see care in the Lexical commentary: Regarding the formation of the aorist, Tolkien may have been in a somewhat unorthodox "phase" when he wrote this text, compared to the system he used both earlier and later.) emmen "against us" (exclusive). This is the pronoun emme (attested earlier in the sentence) with the dative ending -n, our first example of an emphatic pronoun with a case ending. This is also our first example of the dative being used to denote an indirect object adversely affected by the verbal action, hence the English translation "against us" rather than "for us, to us". All previously attested examples of the dative are used to denote indirect objects that benefit from the verbal action, e.g. nin "for me" in the sentence sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? "now who will refill the cup for me?" in Namárië. (As far as grammar is concerned, tien i úcarer emmen could probably also be interpreted **"those who trespass for us"; the context must be taken into account when determining precisely how the dative is to be understood.)
9
VT43 does not consider the possibility of a subject-less construction; na care indómelya is apparently taken as a kind of imperative: "Do thy [own!] will!" rather than "let thy will be done".