StrongerBible

brugmos

βρυγμός

GreekG1030“gnashing, grinding”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 8:12Mat 13:42Mat 13:50Mat 22:13Mat 24:51Mat 25:30Luk 13:28
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradebroog-MOSSnoun

What brugmos means

the grinding or gnashing of teeth: the noisy clenching of the teeth together, used in the New Testament only in the set phrase "weeping and gnashing of teeth" for the reaction of those shut out of God's kingdom

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyContested

The word names a noisy action of the teeth: their grinding or gnashing together. In wider Greek it could describe a bite, the chattering of teeth in a fever chill, or even a lion's growl, but the New Testament keeps it to one setting. It appears seven times, six in Matthew and once in Luke, and always inside the same fixed phrase, "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." It is paired every time with weeping (κλαυθμός), the sob of the same doomed people.

By itself the word says nothing about feeling. It names a sound the mouth makes, not the emotion behind it, so what the gnashing means has to be read from the scene. Each time it falls on people who have been shut out: thrown into the darkness outside a lit banquet hall, or into the fire, while others are welcomed in.

Two older streams feed the picture, and they pull in different directions. In the Old Testament, gnashing the teeth (the Hebrew verb חָרַק) is nearly always aggression aimed at someone else: the enemy who grinds his teeth at the godly in scorn or threat. The one clear New Testament use of the matching Greek verb (βρύχω), a mob gnashing at Stephen as they stone him, is plainly rage. Later Jewish writing about the world to come, though, uses the same image for the anguish of the condemned themselves. The Gospel phrase stands between the two, and scholars still divide over whether it voices fury, despair, or both at once.

Mat 8:12Mat 13:42Mat 13:50Mat 22:13Mat 24:51Mat 25:30Luk 13:28

Disputed

What the gnashing of teeth expresses in the New Testament judgment scenes: despairing remorse, hostile rage, or a fixed idiom that fuses both.

  • majorityIt denotes despairing remorse and self-reproach, the anguish of those who realize too late that they are shut out; joined to weeping, the older sense of anger yields to anguished suffering. This is the dominant lexicographical judgment.; Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, "βρύχω, βρυγμός," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) I:641–642; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (WBC 33A), 206; J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domain 23.40
  • minorityIt is an aggressive expression of hostility and anger, in line with the Psalter and Lamentations, where gnashing is fury aimed at the righteous, and with Acts 7:54, the only undisputed New Testament use of the verb.; John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC), 358
  • minorityIt is a fixed apocalyptic formula whose emotional content is composite, fusing impotent fury with anguished regret; being idiomatic, it resists being reduced to a single emotion, and the setting of belated exclusion calls for both.; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X–XXIV (AB 28A), 1026; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC), II:27–32; I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC), 568

What scholars say about brugmos

βρυγμός is a nominal derivative of the verb βρύχω (Attic βρύκω), an expressive root whose history is tangled with the roar-verb βρυχάομαι; ancient Atticist grammarians tried to fix a distinction between βρύκω "bite" and βρύχω "gnash," but LSJ rejects it, and Rengstorf's TDNT article opens by noting how the coexistence of several βρυχ- roots frustrates any clean semantic history. LSJ assembles four senses for the noun (biting, greedy gobbling, the chattering or shivering of teeth as a medical symptom in Hippocrates, and roaring of a lion or the sea), placing the New Testament idiom under the medical "chattering" sense; BDAG glosses "grinding, gnashing" while preserving the Hippocratic dossier of chattering in chills and fevers; Louw-Nida (23.40) makes the interpretive decision in its gloss, defining the New Testament use as an expression of remorse and despair. Moulton-Milligan report no papyrological attestations at all, marking the word as literary, medical, and biblical rather than vernacular. The Hebrew substrate is the verb חרק, always paired with "tooth/teeth," occurring five times (Job 16:9; Pss 35:16; 37:12; 112:10; Lam 2:16), rendered by βρύχω/βρύκω in the Septuagint; with the sole exception of Ps 112:10 (where the wicked gnashes and melts away, self-consuming rather than aggressive), the Hebrew profile is outward-directed hostility against the righteous, a point stressed by Clines, Hossfeld-Zenger, and Berlin. The noun βρυγμός appears only twice in the Septuagint, both preserving a predatory-animal image (Prov 19:12, a lion's roar; Sir 51:3, teeth ready to devour). The fixed Gospel phrase, ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων, is without exact precedent in classical Greek, the Septuagint, or extant Second Temple Hebrew (notably absent from Qumran), and its closest antecedents lie in the Hellenistic-Jewish Greek stream: the Sibylline Oracles (2.203–205; 2.305–307; 2.332; the near-verbatim 8.231), the Apocalypse of Peter, and the judgment scene of 1 Enoch 108, which Nickelsburg identifies as the closest Jewish parallel. Six of the seven New Testament occurrences are Matthean, and Luz, Davies-Allison, France, Hagner, Nolland, and Gundry treat the phrase as a stereotyped Matthean redactional signature added to parables of exclusion; the definite articles (Marshall) mark it as a recognized idiom rather than a fresh description, attaching either to "the outer darkness" (banquet-exclusion imagery) or "the furnace of fire" (drawn from Daniel 3). Interpretation splits three ways: Rengstorf, Hagner, Keener, Bock, and Louw-Nida read despairing remorse; Nolland reads hostile rage, backed by the Old Testament profile and Acts 7:54; Fitzmyer, Marshall, Davies-Allison, Bovon, France, and Luz treat it as an idiomatic formula fusing fury and anguish, the sober conclusion being that in this phrase the two have become a single gesture.

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

  • Walter Bauer, rev. F. W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG), 3rd ed., 184lexicon
  • H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, rev. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ), 9th ed., s.v. βρυγμός, βρύκωlexicon
  • Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, "βρύχω, βρυγμός," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) I:641–642theological-dictionary
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domain 23.40lexicon
  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), 359, s.v. חָרַקlexicon
  • W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC), II:27–32commentary
  • Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (WBC 33A), 206commentary
  • John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC), 358commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X–XXIV (AB 28A), 1020–1026commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC), 568commentary
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20 (Hermeneia)commentary
  • Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53 (BECNT 3B), 1234–1238commentary
  • George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Hermeneia), 550–563commentary
  • Zoltan L. Erdey and Kevin G. Smith, "'Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth': the Nature of the Suffering of the Wicked in Matthew," Conspectus 15 (2013): 141–172article

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

All attested forms of βρυγμός

nominative m s

βρυγμὸς

Mat 8:12, Mat 13:42, Mat 13:50, Mat 22:13, Mat 24:51, Mat 25:30, Luk 13:28