opposition set against someone or something: from a spoken objection, through a formal dispute, to open rebellion against rightful authority.
This one Greek word covers a surprising stretch of ground, from a calm objection written into a contract to open revolt against God. What holds the range together is a single idea: setting yourself against someone by speaking or acting in opposition. The strength of that opposition is what changes from place to place.
The New Testament uses it at three points along that scale:
- In the letter to the Hebrews it twice names a legal "dispute," the kind of contest that a sworn oath is meant to end.
- In one later verse it names the hostile opposition that sinful people aimed at Jesus, in word and in deed.
- In Jude it names outright rebellion: the revolt of Korah against Moses and Aaron.
The jump from courtroom to rebellion is not random. Greek-speaking Jews already met this word in their Bible as the name for the "waters of strife," where Israel quarreled with God in the wilderness at the place called Meribah (מְרִיבָה, from the root for a legal quarrel or lawsuit, רִיב). Because of that history, the word carried an undertone of rebellion against God whenever the subject turned to faith and authority, and that is the note it strikes in Jude and, more faintly, in the warning about Jesus.
Its close relatives sharpen the picture. The verb behind it (ἀντιλέγω) simply means to speak against or contradict, while a heavier word for organized revolt (στάσις) names the faction and uprising that this noun only points toward when it reaches its strongest sense.
Nuances
How strongly Hebrews 12:3 echoes Israel's wilderness rebellion at Meribah, where the same Greek word names the people's opposition to God.
- majorityThe verse deliberately recalls the wilderness rebellion, casting the sinners' hostility toward Christ as the same kind of opposition Israel showed God.; Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews, Hermeneia (1989); William L. Lane, Hebrews, Word Biblical Commentary 47A-B (1991); Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (1993); Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (2012)
- minorityThe echo is faint; the word carries its ordinary Greek sense of hostile opposition, and the argument does not depend on the wilderness background.; David A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude (2000); Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, Anchor Bible 36 (2001)
Whether Jude's phrase points back to a single verse of the Greek Old Testament or to a broader Jewish tradition about Korah's revolt.
- majorityIt quotes no single Old Testament verse; the Greek Old Testament of Numbers uses different words for Korah's revolt. Jude draws on the wider Jewish tradition in which this word had become the standard label for wilderness rebellion.; Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 50 (1983)
- minorityIt echoes the cluster of wilderness-rebellion passages, including Meribah and the later recap of Korah's revolt, rather than only a general tradition.; Joerg Frey, The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter (2018); J. Daryl Charles, Literary Strategy in the Epistle of Jude (1993)