StrongerBible

arrōstos

ἄρρωστος

GreekG0732“sick, sickly, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 14:14Mrk 6:5Mrk 6:13Mrk 16:181Co 11:30
Compound of
Alphaα, ἈλφαAlpha4G1
rhōnnumiῥώννυμιfarewell2G4517
Word studyResearch-gradeah-ROH-stossadjective

What arrōstos means

sick, ill: physically unwell enough to need care or healing.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the everyday Greek word for being sick. It is what an ancient letter-writer used to explain that he could not come to work or pay a bill because he was laid up, and it is the word a Greek doctor used for a patient. It carries no fixed idea of how mild or how serious the illness is; the setting decides that, and it can range from a passing complaint to being close to death.

The word is built from a picture of having no strength, so older writers sometimes tried to squeeze a special meaning out of it, treating it as a permanently frail or chronically ailing person. That reading has largely been dropped. In actual use it is a plain, unremarkable word for a genuinely sick person, and the more common near-word for weakness of every kind (ἀσθενής) sits right beside it.

In the Gospels it simply marks the people Jesus and his followers healed:

  • the sick brought to him
  • the few he healed at Nazareth
  • the many the disciples anointed with oil

Its one much-argued appearance is in Paul's warning about the Lord's Supper, where he says many in the church are weak and sick and some have died. Most readers take that as real bodily illness sent as a correction; a few read it as sickness of the soul.

Mat 14:14Mrk 6:5Mrk 6:13Mrk 16:181Co 11:30
1Co 11:30

Whether the weakness, sickness, and death Paul names in 1 Cor 11:30 are literal bodily conditions or metaphors for spiritual states.

  • majorityLiteral physical suffering: a real gradation of weakness, illness, and death among the Corinthians, understood as corrective providential judgment (παιδεία) rather than final condemnation.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, rev. ed. (2014), 565; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (2000), 891-894; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (2003), 553-554; David J. Downs, "Physical Weakness, Illness and Death in 1 Corinthians 11.30," New Testament Studies 65 (2019): 572-588
  • minorityMetaphorical: the three terms describe spiritual weakness, sickness of soul, and a sleep of the mind, not bodily illness, drawing on an Alexandrian patristic reading and Stoic-Platonic imagery of vice as illness of the soul.; Sebastian Schneider, "Glaubensmangel in Korinth," Filologia Neotestamentaria 9 (1996): 3-20; Ilaria Ramelli, "Spiritual Weakness, Illness, and Death in 1 Corinthians 11:30," Journal of Biblical Literature 130 (2011): 145-163

What scholars say about arrōstos

The critical lexica gloss ἄρρωστος as ordinary Koine for physical illness: BDAG "pertaining to being ill, sick," LSJ "weak, sickly," and Louw-Nida place it in Domain 23 within the ἀσθεν- cluster (ἀσθενής, ἀσθένεια, νόσος, μαλακία), treating it as a near-synonym of ἀσθενής with a somewhat sharper somatic focus (so also EDNT, and Stählin in TDNT s.v. ἀσθενής, which has no separate ἄρρωστος article). The word is a privative compound (ἀ- + ῥώννυμι / ῥώμη, "strength"), a structural twin of ἀσθενής (ἀ- + σθένος). Moulton-Milligan and Spicq (TLNT) document the cognate verb and noun across the documentary papyri, where the register is thoroughly quotidian yet can denote illness "near to death" (P.Ryl. II.68; P.Hawara 56), so severity is set by context, not by the lexeme. The older etymological narrowing to "constitutional" or "chronic" weakness (Phrynichus; Vincent; the Expositor's Greek Testament; Wuest) is not endorsed by any major modern lexicon or critical commentary and has been largely abandoned; in Mark 6:5 the qualifier ὀλίγοις modifies number, not gravity (Marcus, France, Yarbro Collins). In the LXX the adjective renders forms of חלה (3 Kgdms 14:5; Mal 1:8; cf. Sir 7:35). The one contested passage is 1 Cor 11:30, where ἀσθενεῖς καὶ ἄρρωστοι καὶ κοιμῶνται is read by the overwhelming majority as a physical gradation of weakness, sickness, and death understood as corrective providential judgment (Fee, Thiselton, Garland, Ciampa-Rosner, Fitzmyer, Schrage, Downs), against a minority spiritual reading (Schneider; Ramelli). Downs (NTS 2019) argues that ἄρρωστος anchors the physical reading, since Paul never uses it metaphorically elsewhere.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ἄρρωστοςlexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. ἄρρωστοςlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (1989), Domain 23lexicon
  • H. Balz and G. Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT) 1:158dictionary
  • Gustav Stählin, "ἀσθενής," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 1:490-493dictionary
  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1930), s.v. ἀρρωστίαlexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (TLNT) 1:170-184dictionary
  • Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, Anchor Yale Bible (2000), 376ff.commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, NIGTC (2002), 244f.commentary
  • Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (2007), 291ff.commentary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 2 (1991)commentary
  • Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, rev. ed. (2014), 565commentary
  • Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (2000), 891-894commentary
  • David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (2003), 553-554commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, Anchor Yale Bible 32 (2008), 447commentary
  • David J. Downs, "Physical Weakness, Illness and Death in 1 Corinthians 11.30," New Testament Studies 65 (2019): 572-588article
  • Ilaria Ramelli, "Spiritual Weakness, Illness, and Death in 1 Corinthians 11:30," Journal of Biblical Literature 130 (2011): 145-163article
  • Sebastian Schneider, "Glaubensmangel in Korinth," Filologia Neotestamentaria 9 (1996): 3-20article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἄρρωστος

accusative m p

ἀρρώστους

Mat 14:14, Mrk 6:13, Mrk 16:18

dative m p

ἀρρώστοις

Mrk 6:5

nominative m p

ἄρρωστοι

1Co 11:30