to see justice done: to carry out what a wrong requires, whether by securing the wronged party's rights or by exacting the penalty from the wrongdoer
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This is a courtroom word. It comes from the world of law and justice, and at its heart it means to make a wrong right by legal means, not to nurse a private grudge. The same single act has two sides that the standard reference works keep together: the rescue of the person who has been wronged, and the penalty that falls on the one who did the wrong. Which side stands out depends on the sentence.
When the object is a wronged person, it means securing their rights, as when the widow begs the judge to grant her justice against her adversary.
When the object is an offense, it means exacting the penalty, as when Paul stands ready to punish every act of disobedience.
When the object is shed blood, it means bringing the killers to account, which is at once the vindication of their victims, as in the martyrs' cry and its answer.
In Scripture this act belongs to God, and to the courts and rulers he authorizes, never to a person settling a private score. That is why the martyrs under the altar ask God himself to act, and why the fall of the persecuting city is described as God avenging the blood of his servants. In their cry the word stands right beside κρίνω, the verb for judging a case: God gives the verdict and then carries it out. Here vindication and punishment are not two different meanings but two faces of one just outcome.
The word carries the weight of the older Greek Bible, where it stood in for the Hebrew verb for taking vengeance (נקם). That background stretched it beyond ordinary legal Greek to cover the whole range of divine justice: God as the one who both defends his people and holds their oppressors to account.
Nuances
1ato secure justice for someone who has been wronged: to take up their cause, grant them their rights, vindicate them
Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
1bto exact the penalty for a wrong: to punish an offense or those who commit it
Rom 12:192Co 10:6
1cto require the penalty for shed blood: to bring the killers of God's people to account, which is at once the vindication of the victims
Centers on the wronged party: the verb procures justice FOR the victim, who is its object. The widow begs to be granted justice against her adversary, and the plea is answered on her behalf.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
Names the rightful vengeance that answers a cry for justice, reserved to God rather than seized by the wronged themselves. Believers are told not to take it into their own hands, and God is the one who avenges the shed blood of his people.Rom 12:19Rev 6:10Rev 19:2
Both
Both belong to the sphere of just requital: each answers wrongdoing with a deserved consequence rather than letting it pass.Rev 19:2Act 22:5
Centers on the offender: the verb inflicts a penalty ON the wrongdoer, who is its object. Paul describes repeatedly making the believers suffer for their allegiance, with no thought of vindicating any victim.Act 22:5Act 26:11
κρίνωto judge or decide a case; the two are paired in the martyrs' cry, where God first judges and then carries the verdict out
Names the act of setting a wrong to rights: procuring justice for someone who has been wronged and exacting the redress they cry out for.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
Warns against taking one's own retribution, reserving the repayment of evil to God rather than to the injured party.Rom 12:192Co 10:6
Both
Both describe God's righteous answer to the blood of his people: he hands down the verdict against the guilty and carries out the redress the wronged have waited for.Rev 6:10Rev 19:2
Centers on the wronged party, doing justice for someone by acting against the one who harmed them.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5Rev 6:10Rev 19:2
Marks retribution as a deliberate act that a rightful authority carries out, one God reserves to himself rather than leaving to the injured.Rom 12:192Co 10:6
Both
Both belong to the sphere of deserved recompense for wrongdoing: the one word carries the penalty that answers guilt, and the other carries that penalty out.2Th 1:92Co 10:6
Names the penalty itself, the sentence that the guilty undergo and pay, treated as a fixed outcome rather than an action anyone performs.2Th 1:9Jud 1:7
Can stand for Justice as an almost personal power that tracks down and refuses to let the guilty escape.Act 28:4
ἀνταποδίδωμιto pay back or repay in kind; it names the recompense returned, while this word names the judicial act of setting the wrong right
Always about righting a wrong: it secures justice for someone who has been mistreated, as the widow keeps begging the judge to do for her.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
Carries out judicial punishment against wrongdoers and answers spilled blood, never a reward for good done.2Co 10:6Rev 6:10Rev 19:2
Both
Both stand behind God's own reserved response to evil done against his people: he will pay back the wrong and take vengeance himself rather than let his people retaliate.Rom 12:19
It is the word a wronged person puts in her own mouth as a demand, with herself as the one to be put right: the widow keeps coming to the judge saying "get me justice from my opponent," and he finally answers with the same word.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
What has to be answered for can be shed blood: the martyrs ask how long before God deals with their blood, and heaven later says he has dealt with the blood of his servants, so a single act punishes the killers and clears the killed.Rev 6:10Rev 19:2
The wrong itself, and not just the people caught up in it, can be what gets settled: Paul says he stands ready to deal with every act of disobedience once the church has come around.2Co 10:6
Both
Both cover the rescue side of justice as much as the penalty side: the widow asks to be put right, and Moses is said to have secured justice for the man being mistreated.Luk 18:3Act 7:24
Neither means private payback. In the one sentence that carries both, Christians are told not to do it for themselves precisely because the thing itself belongs to God, who says he will repay.Rom 12:19
Both reach from the everyday work of judges and rulers all the way to the last reckoning, with no change of word: a small town judge and the governors of the empire on one end, and God settling accounts at Christ's return on the other.Luk 18:5Rev 19:21Pe 2:142Th 1:8
Both are what the pleading of the wronged is aimed at, and both come with the promise that it will be answered: the widow's repeated request and God's promise to see to his chosen ones quickly stand in the same parable.Luk 18:3Luk 18:8
It can name a stretch of time rather than a deed: Jesus calls the coming disaster on Jerusalem "days when justice is done," a whole season identified by the reckoning that fills it.Luk 21:22
It can name a standing job rather than a single act: governors are sent for the punishing of wrongdoers and the commending of those who do right, an ongoing task of government.1Pe 2:14
It can be owned and held back by its rightful holder: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" is quoted as God's claim on the thing itself, something he possesses and no one else may take up.Heb 10:30
It can stand as one item in a list of a congregation's reactions to a scandal, alongside their grief, alarm, longing and eagerness, so it names an attitude they were credited with as much as an action they took.2Co 7:11
ekdikeō in the other biblical languages
נָקַםHebrew“to avenge”the Hebrew verb for taking vengeance that the older Greek Bible most often rendered with this word; scholars stress it too is executive and legal, not private revenge
Leans toward vindicating and securing justice for the wronged party, not just paying back the wrongdoer. The persistent widow begs the judge to give her justice against her adversary, and her plea is granted as a rescue of the wronged.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5
Is the very word used to forbid taking vengeance into your own hands, telling believers to leave it to God: do not avenge yourselves, vengeance belongs to the Lord.Rom 12:19
Names disciplined human punishment of disobedience carried out under proper authority, ready once obedience is complete.2Co 10:6
Both
Both name the act of repaying a wrong, and the Greek word regularly carries the Old Testament idea of vengeance into the New Testament, where God repays the blood of his servants on those who shed it.Deu 32:43Rev 19:2
Both center vengeance in God rather than in the wronged person: the Old Testament declares vengeance the Lord's, and the New Testament shows the martyrs crying out for God, not themselves, to avenge their blood.Jer 51:36Rev 6:10
Is the standard Old Testament word for taking vengeance, the act of requital itself, including the deliberate human payback God limits or forbids: Cain is protected by a sevenfold vengeance, and people are commanded not to take vengeance on their neighbors.Gen 4:15Lev 19:18
Marks God himself as the avenger who repays his enemies and answers shed blood, the heavy judicial requital that runs through the prophets.Nam 1:22Ki 9:7Isa 1:24
פָּקַדHebrew“to reckon: list”to attend to and call to account, including visiting punishment for wrong; broader, covering care and oversight as well as reckoning
Means specifically to secure justice for a wronged party, vindicating the victim rather than only punishing the offender. The persistent widow begs the judge to take up her cause against her opponent, and the martyrs under the altar plead for their shed blood to be set right.Luk 18:3Luk 18:5Rev 6:10
Is a narrowly judicial word: it always names the act of avenging or requiting a wrong, whether God claims that right for himself and forbids people to seize it, or an apostle stands ready to requite every act of disobedience.Rom 12:192Co 10:6
Both
Both name God as judge bringing wrongdoing to account and requiting it. Where the Hebrew word visits the guilt of the fathers upon their children, the Greek word avenges the shed blood of God's servants; when the actor is God and the object is sin, the broad Hebrew verb narrows to exactly the retribution the Greek verb always carries.Exo 34:7Rev 19:2
Ranges far beyond justice into ordinary attention and administration: to number or muster people for a census, and to appoint someone or put him in charge of a household. None of this carries any sense of avenging a wrong.Num 1:3Gen 39:4
Most often names a gracious visitation, God turning his attention toward people to help and deliver them: he attended to Sarah and gave her a son, and promised the enslaved Israelites that he had surely come to their aid.Gen 21:1Exo 3:16Gen 50:24
What scholars say about ekdikeō
The lexica agree that ἐκδικέω is a legal-forensic verb built on δίκη, distinguishing two syntactically marked senses: with a personal object (τινά, or ἀπό/ἐκ + gen.) it means to procure justice for and vindicate the wronged (BDAG sense 1; Louw-Nida §56.35), and with an impersonal object (a crime, an offense) it means to exact the penalty and punish (BDAG sense 2; Louw-Nida §38.8; so LSJ and Muraoka on the same syntactic signals). Moulton and Milligan showed from the papyri that in ordinary Hellenistic legal Greek the word and its cognate ἔκδικος denote representing a party in court, securing a legal outcome, or exacting a legal penalty, so that the passionate English sense of "revenge" is possible but not the default. Schrenk's TDNT article traces how the Septuagint's use of the ἐκδικ- family to render Hebrew נקם (and secondarily פקד and שׁפט) expanded the Greek word into a term of covenantal-juridical action in which the vindication of the oppressed and the punishment of the oppressor are two sides of one act. On the Hebrew background there is a debate of emphasis, not of basic sense: Mendenhall read נקם as the sovereign's legitimate executive action (imperium), while Peels argued for juridical retribution on behalf of the oppressed; both drive translation away from private "revenge." Commentators apply the field with contextual discipline: Fitzmyer and the mainstream on Luke 18 read "grant justice"; Moo and Cranfield on Romans 12:19 read a prohibition of self-executed retaliation, resolved against Romans 13:4 by the state as God's authorized instrument; Beale, Koester, and Aune on Revelation 6:10 and 19:2 read the Semitic "avenge blood" idiom as God's covenantal reckoning that vindicates the martyrs.
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 (Danker, 2000), s.v. ἐκδικέωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἐκδικέωlexicon
Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (2nd ed.), §§56.35, 38.8lexicon
T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. ἐκδικέωlexicon
G. Schrenk, "δίκη κτλ.," TDNT 2:442-446theological-dictionary
J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), s.v. ἐκδικέωreference
H. G. L. Peels, The Vengeance of God (OTS 31; Brill, 1995)monograph
G. E. Mendenhall, "The 'Vengeance' of Yahweh," in The Tenth Generation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)monograph
J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV (Anchor Bible 28A, 1985)commentary
D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT, 1996)commentary
G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC, 1999)commentary