to do wrong: to violate what is just by treating a person unfairly or by inflicting injury on someone or something.
This is the verb of injustice. It is built directly on the idea of the unjust person, the opposite of one who is fair and does right, so at its core it always means to act against what is owed or due. Whether the wrong is a broken promise, a cheated wage, a beating, or the ruin of a field, the common thread is that a line of right has been crossed.
Its uses spread out along a single line. At one end it simply marks someone as being in the wrong, a wrongdoer, without naming who was harmed. In the middle it takes a victim:
- to wrong a person
- to treat them unfairly
- to cheat or defraud them
At the far end the harm becomes physical and even applies to things, so the word means to "injure", "damage", or "hurt". The book of Revelation leans on this last shade again and again, warning what may or may not be harmed: the earth, the sea, the trees, and people.
Because the same word runs from a courtroom charge to a sting that hurts the body, English Bibles reach for a whole handful of words to carry it. Underneath all of them the Greek is making one steady claim: a wrong has been done, and someone is responsible for it.