StrongerBible

ekthambos

ἔκθαμβος

GreekG1569“utterly astonished, amazed, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

Act 3:11
Compound of
ekἐκout from938G1537
thambosθάμβοςamazement3G2285
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeEK-tham-bosadjective

What ekthambos means

utterly astonished: stunned by something overwhelming, with a shudder of fear mixed into the wonder

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word describes a person caught in an astonishment strong enough to stop them where they stand. The family of words it belongs to never names calm, pleasant wonder. From the oldest Greek poetry onward these words carry a jolt of shock, dread, or being frozen in place before something that cannot be taken in, and the front of this word only strengthens that force. "Stunned through and through" is closer than "pleasantly surprised."

It appears once in the New Testament, in Acts 3:11, where a crowd rushes together to Peter and John in the temple after a man lame from birth gets up and walks. Luke has already said, one verse earlier, that these people were filled with astonishment (θάμβος) and bewilderment (ἔκστασις), so the word here gathers up the state the crowd was in as they came looking for an explanation. Their reaction pulls two ways at once: they are shaken by what they have seen, and yet they press toward the two men rather than away from them.

The verb of this same family (ἐκθαμβέω) shows how heavy these words can be. Mark saves it for his most overwhelming scenes, including the women's alarm at the empty tomb and Jesus shuddering in the garden as his death draws near. So the astonishment in Acts is not idle curiosity, and it is not the neutral marveling of θαυμάζω.

Act 3:11

Disputed

How much force the intensifying prefix on this adjective adds, and so how strong a reaction the word names.

  • majorityThe compound is a deliberate strengthening of the simplex θαμβέω / θάμβος group, naming an overwhelming reaction rather than ordinary surprise.; BDAG (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. ἔκθαμβος, ἐκθαμβέω; C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, CGTC (Cambridge, 1959); Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, Anchor Yale Bible (Yale, 2009); Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007)
  • minorityHellenistic writers frequently flattened the force of such compounds, so the prefix may add little beyond the simplex.; J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 2, on compound verbs

What scholars say about ekthambos

An intensified compound adjective of the classical θαμβέω / θάμβος group, which from Homer through the tragedians and on into Hellenistic prose denotes stupefaction mingled with dread before portents, gods, or the uncanny, never the neutral wonder of θαυμάζω. Beekes traces the root to Pre-Greek, related to the perfect τέθηπα. BDAG glosses ἔκθαμβος "utterly astonished"; LSJ is similarly prosaic ("amazed, astonished"); Louw and Nida place the group in Domain 25 (Attitudes and Emotions), subdomain Surprise / Astonishment. The adjective is rare: within the New Testament it occurs only at Acts 3:11, of the crowd converging on Peter and John in Solomon's portico after the healing at the Beautiful Gate, where Luke has just used the cognate noun θάμβος paired with ἔκστασις (Acts 3:10). Theodotion uses ἔκθαμβον at Daniel 7:7 of the fourth beast, rendering the Aramaic אֵימְתָנִי, and the cognate verb ἐκθαμβέω is confined in the New Testament to Mark (9:15; 14:33; 16:5, 16:6), with only scattered pre-Byzantine attestation outside it (Orphica Argonautica 1218, Sirach 30:9, Galen 16.493). Georg Bertram's TDNT article on the group (3:4-7, frequently misattributed to Grundmann) reads the whole θαμβ- family as registering Otto's mysterium tremendum, the numinous shudder before divine presence, a coloring the Septuagint deepened by giving the group a causal force ("to terrify, dumbfound") and a specifically theophanic setting. Whether the ἐκ- compounds differ substantially from the simplex or only in intensity is disputed: Moulton allowed that Hellenistic writers often flattened such distinctions, while BDAG, Cranfield, Marcus, and Yarbro Collins treat the stronger form as deliberate.

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 (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. ἔκθαμβος, ἐκθαμβέωlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. ἐκθαμβέω, θαμβέω, θάμβοςlexicon
  • G. Bertram, "θάμβος κτλ.," in TDNT, vol. 3 (Eerdmans, 1965), 4-7theological-dictionary
  • H. Balz, "ἐκθαμβέω, ἔκθαμβος," in H. Balz and G. Schneider, eds., Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testamenttheological-dictionary
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (2nd ed., 1989), Domain 25lexicon
  • R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2010), s.v. θάμβος, 532lexicon
  • J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 2grammar
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, CGTC (Cambridge, 1959)commentary
  • Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, Anchor Yale Bible (Yale, 2009)commentary
  • Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007)commentary

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

All attested forms of ἔκθαμβος

nominative m p

ἔκθαμβοι

Act 3:11