StrongerBible

aphanizō

ἀφανίζω

GreekG0853“disfigure, destroy, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 6:16Mat 6:19Mat 6:20Act 13:41Jas 4:14
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-fah-NID-zohverb

What aphanizō means

to make something no longer visible: to spoil how it looks, ruin it away to nothing, or (of the thing itself) fade from sight

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This verb is built from the ordinary Greek word for appearing or coming into view (φαίνω) with a negative prefix in front of it, so its literal force is close to "to un-appear." Everything else follows from that. Whatever takes a thing out of sight can be described with this word: a cloud covering the sun, ash smeared on a face, mice eating through stored cloth, a city leveled, a mist burning off in the morning.

That is why the same word can sound gentle in one place and terrible in another. In the Sermon on the Mount it covers both a face made unrecognizable and treasure eaten away in a storeroom. In Paul's sermon at Antioch it is a threat of being wiped out. In James it is only a morning mist thinning into nothing. The idea holding all of that together is not violence but disappearance, which is what marks this word off from the blunter Greek verbs for destroying, such as ἀπολλύω.

Three of its five appearances in the New Testament play the word against its positive twin. The hypocrites in Matthew 6:16 make their faces unseen precisely so that they will be seen, and the mist in James 4:14 appears for a moment and then un-appears. In Greek the pairing is impossible to miss, and in English it is almost impossible to keep.

Nuances

1ato spoil how a face or object looks, so that it is no longer recognizable
Mat 6:16
Mat 6:16

Whether the hypocrites of Matthew 6:16 spoiled the appearance of their faces (leaving them unwashed, ash-strewn and haggard) or covered them from view with a veil.

  • majorityThey made their faces unsightly: unwashed, ash-strewn, deliberately haggard, so that the fact of fasting would be advertised. Jesus' counter-command to wash and anoint the head is then simply ordinary daily grooming.; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC), vol. 1, p. 617; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT), p. 255; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (WBC 33A), p. 154; Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, pp. 216-18; BDAG, s.v. ἀφανίζω, sense 1 (render unsightly, disfigure)
  • minorityThe verse describes hiding the face from view, and so belongs with the sense of causing something to disappear by concealing it.; Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed., §24.28; John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, on Matthew 6:16
1bto ruin something valuable so that nothing of it is left
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 6:19Mat 6:20
1cto be wiped out, said of people under a warning of judgment
TranslatabilityApproximate
Act 13:41
Act 13:41

Whether ἀφανίσθητε in the Habakkuk 1:5 quotation at Acts 13:41 threatens destruction or, following the Hebrew text's doubled תמה, means something closer to being struck dumb with astonishment.

  • majorityIt carries the destructive force that dominates the verb in the Septuagint: perish, be destroyed, be wiped out. The Greek rendering turns Habakkuk's doubled expression of astonishment into an actual threat of judgment, which is what Paul's argument requires.; C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (ICC), vol. 1, on 13:41; F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, rev. ed. (NICNT), on 13:41; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (Anchor Yale Bible 31), on 13:41; Darrell L. Bock, Acts (BECNT), on 13:41; Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts (ZECNT), on 13:41; Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), s.v. ἀφανίζω
  • minorityIt should be softened toward astonishment or stupefaction, in line with the Hebrew of Habakkuk 1:5.; J. F. Schleusner, Novus Thesaurus Philologico-Criticus (Leipzig, 1820-21), s.v. ἀφανίζω; Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: Acts, on 13:41
1dto fade out of sight, disappear
TranslatabilityDirect
Jas 4:14

What scholars say about aphanizō

The verb is formed from alpha-privative plus the root of φαίνω, by way of the adjective ἀφανής (LSJ; BDAG; Balz, EDNT 1; Silva, NIDNTTE, s.v. φαίνω). LSJ catalogues a wide field of uses, all reducible to removal from sight: obscuring, hushing up, making away with a person by murder or exile, razing cities, obliterating writing or footprints, disfiguring the face, spoiling wine or water in the medical writers, and in the passive simply vanishing. The documentary papyri collected by Moulton and Milligan (P.Ryl. II 152, A.D. 42; P.Lond. 413; P.Oxy. IX 1220) show it as the standard Koine term for pests and animals destroying crops and stores, while funerary inscriptions use it of defacing a monument and P.Amh. I 2.3 of disfiguring the face; both scenarios in Matthew 6 are therefore ordinary first-century idiom. In the Septuagint the verb occurs well over one hundred times, concentrated in the Prophets and in the covenant-curse material of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy, rendering שׁמם, חרב and שׁחת most often (Hatch and Redpath; Muraoka, Hebrew/Aramaic Index); Muraoka's GELS groups it as cause to disappear or obliterate, destroy or wipe out, disfigure, and passive perish or be laid waste, so destruction rather than astonishment is its Septuagintal center of gravity. Louw and Nida divide the New Testament occurrences between domain 24.28 (cause to disappear, presumably by hiding) at Matthew 6:16 and 20.42 (destroy the value or use of something) at Matthew 6:19. Davies and Allison, Luz, Robertson and the Expositor's Greek Testament all read Matthew 6:16 as deliberate wordplay with φανῶσιν, and the modern consensus (France, Nolland, Hagner, Keener; b. Sotah 22b on the caricatured fasting Pharisee) takes the disfigurement as an ostentatiously unwashed and ash-strewn appearance rather than veiling. At Matthew 6:19 the genuine crux is βρῶσις, not this verb: BDAG finds no support for the traditional "rust" (the normal word being ἰός, as at James 5:3), France prefers an animal pest by comparison with LXX Malachi 3:11, and Nolland reads a literal "eating," possibly a single notion with σής. Acts 13:41 depends on the Septuagint form of Habakkuk 1:5, where θαυμάσατε ... καὶ ἀφανίσθητε renders the doubled Hebrew תמה and οἱ καταφρονηταί presupposes בגדים for MT בגוים, a reading shared with 1QpHab and the Syriac; Dogniez treats the rendering as interpretative, justifying the divine chastisement of Judah, and Wall argues that this Greek form does programmatic work through Acts 15. On James 4:14, Allison, Laws, Davids, Moo, McKnight, Johnson and Hartin agree that the paired participles φαινομένη and ἀφανιζομένη are a literary flourish meaning disappearance rather than destruction, standing within the wisdom tradition on the brevity of life (Dibelius, with Job 7:7 LXX, Psalms 39:5-6, 102:3, 144:4, Sirach 11:18-19, Wisdom 2:1-5). The cognates ἀφανισμός at Hebrews 8:13 and ἀφανής at Hebrews 4:13 exploit the same contrast with φαίνω.

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

  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford, 1940), s.v. ἀφανίζω, ἀφανής, ἀφανισμόςlexicon
  • BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 2000), s.v. ἀφανίζω, βρῶσιςlexicon
  • Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), s.v. ἀφανίζωlexicon
  • Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: UBS, 1996), §24.28, §20.42lexicon
  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914-30), s.v. ἀφανίζωlexicon
  • Horst Balz, ἀφανίζω, in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT), vol. 1theological-dictionary
  • Moisés Silva, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE), vol. 4, s.v. φαίνωtheological-dictionary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 617, 630-31commentary
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7, rev. ed. (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), pp. 300-301commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 255-56commentary
  • John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), on 6:16 and 6:19-20commentary
  • Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (WBC 33A; Dallas: Word, 1993), pp. 154, 156commentary
  • Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 216-18commentary
  • C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), vol. 1, on 13:41commentary
  • F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, rev. ed. (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), on 13:41commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (Anchor Yale Bible 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998), on 13:41commentary
  • Darrell L. Bock, Acts (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), on 13:41commentary
  • Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts (ZECNT; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), on 13:41commentary
  • Cécile Dogniez, The Twelve Minor Prophets, in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint, ed. Alison G. Salvesen and Timothy Michael Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 314essay
  • Robert W. Wall, The Function of LXX Habakkuk 1:5 in the Book of Acts, Bulletin for Biblical Research 10.2 (2000): 247-58journal-article
  • Dale C. Allison, James (ICC; London: T&T Clark, 2013), pp. 78-81 and on 4:14commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, 2nd ed. (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), on 4:14commentary
  • Martin Dibelius, James, rev. Heinrich Greeven (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), on 4:13-17commentary
  • Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A; New York: Doubleday, 1995), on 4:14commentary

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

All attested forms of ἀφανίζω

present active indicative 3s

ἀφανίζει

Mat 6:19, Mat 6:20

aorist passive imperative 2p

ἀφανίσθητε

Act 13:41

present active indicative 3p

ἀφανίζουσιν

Mat 6:16

present passive participle nominative f s

ἀφανιζομένη

Jas 4:14