to set aside what has been established, treating as void something that was meant to stand: to nullify it, reject it, or break faith with it
At its core this word means to un-place something that had been firmly put in place. The picture behind it is a settled arrangement, a command, a pledge, or a person with rightful authority, and the act of shoving that thing off its footing so that it no longer counts. This is why English translators reach for so many different words for it: "reject," "nullify," "set aside," "despise," "break faith," "annul," "declare invalid." They are all trying to render one idea from different angles.
The word barely existed in older classical Greek but became common in the Greek of the New Testament era, especially in legal documents, where it meant to cancel a contract, a will, or a treaty. At the same time the Greek Old Testament used it to translate a whole cluster of Hebrew verbs for treachery and rebellion, so it also picked up the heavier sense of breaking faith with a covenant. The New Testament writers use both flavors, sometimes shading toward the cool language of legal cancellation and sometimes toward the personal language of betrayal and defiance.
Because the one word stretches across that range, the differences below are shades within a single idea rather than separate words. What ties them together is always the same: something with real standing is being treated as though it had none.
Nuances
Whether ἀθετέω in Mark 6:26 carries the Septuagint-shaped sense of treacherous covenant-breaking ("break faith with the girl") or functions weakly as "refuse her request."
- contested"Break faith with her": Herod's dilemma is that reneging on his sworn word would be an act of faithlessness toward the girl to whom the pledge was made, reading the verb through the Septuagint's בגד background. The standard classical lexicon files this passage under exactly this sense.; LSJ, s.v. ἀθετέω (sense I.3); Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, 12; F. Field, Notes on the Translation of the New Testament, 30
- contested"Refuse her request": the verb functions as a plain refusal, and the passage turns on Herod's public honor before his dinner guests rather than on covenant-treachery. Modern Mark commentaries do not engage the Septuagint background here.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC); J. Marcus, Mark (Anchor Yale Bible); A. Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia)