aphiēmi

ἀφίημι

GreekG0863“forgive, leave, ...”

Appears 146 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 3:15 (2×)Mat 4:11Mat 4:20Mat 4:22Mat 5:24Mat 5:40Mat 6:12 (2×)Mat 6:14 (2×)Mat 6:15 (2×)Mat 7:4Mat 8:15Mat 8:22Mat 9:2Mat 9:5Mat 9:6Mat 12:31 (2×)Mat 12:32 (2×)Mat 13:30Mat 13:36Mat 15:14Mat 18:12Mat 18:21Mat 18:27Mat 18:32Mat 18:35Mat 19:14Mat 19:27Mat 19:29Mat 22:22Mat 22:25Mat 23:13Mat 23:23 (2×)Mat 23:38Mat 24:2Mat 24:40Mat 24:41Mat 26:44Mat 26:56Mat 27:49Mat 27:50Mrk 1:18Mrk 1:20Mrk 1:31Mrk 1:34Mrk 2:5Mrk 2:7Mrk 2:9Mrk 2:10Mrk 3:28Mrk 4:12

Root family

apoἀπόaway from684G575

Word studyResearch-gradeaf-EE-ay-meeverb

What aphiēmi means

to let go: to release your hold so a person or thing departs, stays behind, or is left where it is

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

At its root this is a verb of separation. You take your hand off, and what you were holding moves away or stays behind while you go on. The same motion covers:

a man walking out on a wife
disciples dropping their nets to follow Jesus
a traveler simply leaving a town

From that one image the New Testament draws a wide spread of plain uses. A fever "leaves" a sick person. People "leave" boats, families, and houses. A man dies and "leaves" a widow with no children. Not one stone is "left" standing on another. The leaving can be tender ("Peace I leave with you") or severe (a house "left" desolate, a hireling who "leaves" the sheep, the disciples who "left him and fled").

The constant thread is release. Something held, kept, or staying with you is set loose or left where it stands. The forgiveness sense and the permission sense both grow out of this physical letting-go, which is why one Greek verb has to be split into many English words.

Nuances

1ato leave behind, leave standing, or part from a person, place, or thing

Mat 4:20Mat 4:22Mat 19:27Mat 19:29Mrk 1:18Mrk 1:20Mrk 10:28Mrk 10:29Luk 5:11Luk 18:28Luk 18:29Jhn 4:3

1bto send a person away, dismiss them, or release them, including a husband putting away his wife

Mat 18:271Co 7:111Co 7:121Co 7:13

1cto give up or send forth from oneself, used of yielding up one's last breath

Mat 27:50Mrk 15:37

to forgive: to cancel what is owed, whether a debt or a sin, so it is no longer charged against the person

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the same release, now aimed at what someone owes. To forgive is to let a debt go so it is wiped off the account and no longer counted against the debtor. The New Testament reaches for one settled money-and-law picture:

a master cancels a slave's enormous debt
two debtors are let off what they owe
in the same breath God cancels the debt of sin

Because it pictures a debt released rather than a feeling softened, this forgiveness is something done and declared, not merely felt. The Lord's Prayer literally asks God to forgive our "debts." Sins are sent away from the person, no longer held against them. The same verb covers a king releasing what a servant owes him and Jesus declaring a paralyzed man's sins released.

Jesus binds the two directions together: those who release what others owe them are released by God, and those who refuse to release others are not released. Human pardon and divine pardon are deliberately named by the same word. Scholars debate which older picture is most alive underneath, a debt cancelled, a captive set free, or a burden carried off, but the New Testament keeps the language concrete and social, far from a private change of mood.

Nuances

2ato forgive sins, releasing a person from the guilt of what they have done

Mat 9:2Mat 9:5Mat 9:6Mrk 2:5Mrk 2:7Mrk 2:9Mrk 2:10Luk 5:20Luk 5:21Luk 5:23Luk 5:24Luk 7:47 (2×)

2bto forgive or cancel what one person owes another, a debt or a wrong

Mat 6:12 (2×)Mat 6:14 (2×)Mat 6:15 (2×)Mat 18:21Mat 18:32Mat 18:35Mrk 11:25 (2×)Mrk 11:26 (2×)Luk 11:4 (2×)Luk 17:3Luk 17:4

to let, allow, or leave alone: to permit something rather than stop or hinder it

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

When the release is aimed at an action, the word means to allow it. You take your hand off so the thing may proceed. "Let it be so for now," Jesus tells John before his baptism; "let the children come to me"; "leave her alone."

The same permission can be refused, and then the word marks what is not allowed: enemies who will not let two witnesses be buried, or leaders who fear the crowd will let Jesus go on unchecked. Often it carries the gentler tone of leaving a person or thing be instead of interfering.

This sense sits close to the others, since permitting is one more way of not holding something back. Context decides whether the speaker means "forgive," "send away," or simply "allow."

Mat 3:15 (2×)Mat 5:40Mat 7:4Mat 8:22Mat 13:30Mat 15:14Mat 19:14Mat 23:13Mrk 1:34Mrk 5:19Mrk 5:37Mrk 7:12

What aphiēmi does not mean

English Bibles split this one verb into a dozen words ("forgive," "leave," "let," "send away," "divorce," "give up," "remit"), which can hide that they are all the same act of releasing a hold. Two traps follow. First, do not read the modern feeling of forgiveness, a softened heart or inner reconciliation, back into it: in the New Testament the word pictures a debt cancelled or a guilt sent away, something done and declared, not an emotion. Second, do not let the old etymology (apo plus hiemi, to send off) decide every verse, as if forgiveness always means literally hurling sin away; the everyday sense in the writers' world was the plain commercial one, to cancel a debt or release from an obligation. And note that not every English "forgive" is this word; a separate verb (χαρίζω) frames forgiveness as a free gift of grace.

What scholars say about aphiēmi

The standard lexica treat ἀφίημι as a single broad verb of separation whose senses fan out from a concrete "let go, send away, leave" through dismissal, divorce, and the cancellation of debts to the forgiveness of sins. BDAG organizes it as dismiss/send away/divorce, leave/leave behind/abandon, cancel/remit/forgive, and tolerate/let/permit; LSJ documents the same spread in classical Greek and files "forgive sins" under the legal sense "remit a charge or debt." Outside the Bible the verb is ordinary Koine: Deissmann and Moulton-Milligan showed from inscriptions and papyri that the related noun ἄφεσις was a live administrative term for releasing water, remitting taxes and debts, and freeing slaves, so the New Testament's forgiveness language inherits an everyday commercial-legal idiom rather than coining a religious term. Bultmann (TDNT) traces how, through the Septuagint's use of ἀφίημι to render the Hebrew verbs for bearing sin (נשׂא) and for divine pardon (סלח), the word took on theological weight, while later study (Lee, Spicq, NIDNTTE) stresses that the noun ἄφεσις narrowed to near-technical "forgiveness of sins" even as the verb kept its full secular range. Recent work probes which underlying image is active: Anderson and Eubank argue a debt metaphor governs the New Testament, Sloan, Ringe, and Wright press a Jubilee-release frame, and Roitto shows the grammar itself distinguishes God removing the substance of sin from humans remitting the moral debt of an offense. A separate line of scholarship (Konstan, Lambert, with Bash and Hägerland) cautions that the ancient vocabulary of release is not the modern psychological idea of inner forgiveness.

Where scholars disagree about aphiēmi

Which underlying image is theologically active when the New Testament speaks of sins being forgiven (ἀφίημι): a debt cancelled, a captive or land released, sin carried away, or a sovereign's legal pardon.

contestedA commercial debt-cancellation frame controls New Testament forgiveness, sin having shifted from a burden borne to a debt owed in Second Temple Judaism (one Aramaic word meant both); the Lord's Prayer's "debts" and the parable of the unforgiving servant are paradigmatic.; G. A. Anderson, Sin: A History (Yale University Press, 2009); N. Eubank, Wages of Cross-Bearing and Debt of Sin (de Gruyter, 2013)
contestedA Jubilee and liberation frame is primary, with Jesus' Isaiah 61 program activating the Septuagint's release language (freeing slaves, cancelling debts, restoring land), so forgiveness of sins is one facet of a wider release.; R. Sloan, The Favorable Year of the Lord (1977); S. H. Ringe, Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee (1985)
contestedNo single image controls; the verb is genuinely polyvalent, and its grammar itself distinguishes God removing the substance of sin (sin as the object) from humans remitting the moral debt of an offense (a beneficiary in the dative).; R. Roitto, "The Polyvalence of ἀφίημι," Novum Testamentum 57 (2015)

Whether New Testament forgiveness (ἀφίημι / ἄφεσις) corresponds to the modern idea of interpersonal forgiveness, an inner change of heart in the offended conditioned on the offender's repentance.

minorityThe modern psychological concept of forgiveness did not exist in antiquity; the New Testament words denote God's remission of sin or punishment, not inner reconciliation, and reading the modern idea back into them distorts the ancient evidence.; D. Konstan, Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (Cambridge University Press, 2010); D. A. Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical (Oxford University Press, 2016)
contestedNew Testament forgiveness is indeed not modern psychological reconciliation, yet Christian scripture is distinctive in elevating forgiveness to a virtue, normally tied to repentance.; A. Bash, Forgiveness and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

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, s.v. ἀφίημιlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἀφίημιlexicon
R. Bultmann, "ἀφίημι, ἄφεσις," TDNT 1:509-512theological-dictionary
M. Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, s.v. ἀφίημι / ἄφεσιςtheological-dictionary
C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ἀφίημι, ἄφεσιςtheological-dictionary
J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. ἀφίημι, ἄφεσιςlexicon
A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, trans. L. R. M. Strachan (1927)monograph
J. A. L. Lee, A History of New Testament Lexicography (2003)monograph
G. A. Anderson, Sin: A History (Yale University Press, 2009)monograph
N. Eubank, Wages of Cross-Bearing and Debt of Sin (de Gruyter, 2013)monograph
R. Roitto, "The Polyvalence of ἀφίημι," Novum Testamentum 57 (2015)article
D. Konstan, Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (Cambridge University Press, 2010)monograph
D. A. Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical (Oxford University Press, 2016)monograph

What aphiēmi means

to let go: to release your hold so a person or thing departs, stays behind, or is left where it is

Nuances

to forgive: to cancel what is owed, whether a debt or a sin, so it is no longer charged against the person

Nuances

to let, allow, or leave alone: to permit something rather than stop or hinder it

Related words

The English words used to translate aphiēmi

How aphiēmi differs from similar Greek words

aphiēmi in the other biblical languages

What scholars say about aphiēmi

Where scholars disagree about aphiēmi

Sources

All attested forms of ἀφίημι

aorist active indicative 3s

second-aorist active imperative 2s

second-aorist active participle nominative m p

future passive indicative 3s

second-aorist active imperative 2p

perfect passive indicative 3p

present active infinitive

present passive indicative 3s

second-aorist active participle nominative m s

second-aorist active subjunctive 2p

future active indicative 3s

present active indicative 3s

present passive indicative 3p

aorist active indicative 1p

aorist passive subjunctive 3s

present active indicative 2p

second-aorist active subjunctive 3s

aorist active indicative 3p

future active indicative 1s

imperfect active indicative 3s

present active imperative 3s

present active indicative 1s

aorist active indicative 1s

aorist active indicative 2p

aorist active indicative 2s

aorist active infinitive

aorist passive indicative 3p

future active indicative 2s

future active indicative 3p

present active imperative 2p

present active indicative 1p

present active indicative 3p

second-aorist active subjunctive 1p

second-present active indicative 2s