Another option is that αιων (“age”) and not ημερα (“day”) is the implied noun qualified
by επιουσιον. In other words,
it is of the age that is coming. This would render the request one for “the
bread of the age to come.” Although αιων does not appear in the immediate context, it occurs a few times
in Luke, particularly to distinguish between the present age and the age to
come. It is used with the nearer demonstrative in Luke 16:8 to compare the
children of this age with the children of light. In Luke 20:34 it is used with
the father demonstrative and linked to the resurrection from the dead, clearly
referring to the culmination of God’s kingdom. Luke 18:30 compares the present
time with the age to come (εν τω αιωνι τω ερχομενω).
Both “age” and “day” are temporal, but where “the coming day” could have
this-worldly as well as an eschatological meaning, “the coming age” would be
indisputably the latter.
To read επιουσιον as referring
to “the coming (age”) would be consonant with the eschatological context
suggested in the earlier appeal that God’s kingdom come. It would suggest a
continuation of the eschatological focus instead of a shift to a request for
the mundane necessities of life. (Jessie Rogers, “’The Bread of the Age to Come’:
The Holy Spirit in Luke 11:1-13,” in Missed Treasures of the Holy Spirit:
Distinctive New Testament Pneumatologies, ed. Jeremy Corley and Jessie
Rogers [Catholic Biblical Quarterly Imprints 5; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books,
2024], 154-55)
