vocal praise addressed to God, offered publicly as the thank-offering that takes the place of temple sacrifice
This is not an everyday Greek word for praise. It barely appears outside the Greek Old Testament, where Jewish translators adopted it as their fixed term for two things at once: the thank-offering of the sacrificial law, and the praise-language that fills the Psalms. So the word means "praise," but praise that still carries the memory of a sacrifice offered in thanks.
It appears only once in the New Testament, in Hebrews 13:15, where believers are urged to offer God a "sacrifice of praise" continually. The writer explains it in the same breath as "the fruit of lips that confess his name," so this praise is spoken out loud, offered again and again, and made acceptable through Jesus. It stands right beside the language of open confession (ὁμολογέω): to praise God this way is also to declare publicly that you belong to him.
The choice of word is deliberate. An old Jewish saying held that when every other sacrifice one day ceased, the thank-offering (תּוֹדָה) alone would remain. By naming the church's ongoing worship with exactly this term, Hebrews casts spoken praise as the one sacrifice that continues: not a rite performed at an altar, but grateful words offered to God without pause.
How much of the Levitical thank-offering ritual the phrase θυσία αἰνέσεως ("sacrifice of praise") still carries in Hebrews 13:15: whether it names essentially spontaneous verbal praise or retains genuine sacrificial, even proto-eucharistic, overtones.
- majorityThe sacrifice is now essentially spontaneous, spoken praise and public confession; the old sacrificial rite has been fully left behind, and the appositional "fruit of lips" (echoing Hosea 14:3 LXX) makes the offering words rather than a ritual act.; Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), ad Heb 13:15; Philip E. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), ad Heb 13:15; Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), ad Heb 13:15
- minorityThe phrase retains real ritual weight from the Levitical thank-offering, so the community's praise stands in continuity with (and even points toward) a sacrificial, quasi-eucharistic act rather than functioning as mere metaphor.; Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblical Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018); Jack Franicevich, "The Sacrifice of Praise (Heb. 13:15)," SBL paper (San Diego, 2024)