StrongerBible

eleos

ἔλεος

GreekG1656“mercy, pity, ...”

Appears 27 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 9:13Mat 12:7Mat 23:23Luk 1:50Luk 1:54Luk 1:58Luk 1:72Luk 1:78Luk 10:37Rom 9:23Rom 11:31Rom 15:9Gal 6:16Eph 2:41Ti 1:22Ti 1:22Ti 1:162Ti 1:18Tit 3:5Heb 4:16Jas 2:13 (2×)Jas 3:171Pe 1:32Jn 1:3Jud 1:2
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeEH-leh-osnoun

What eleos means

mercy: undeserved kindness toward someone in trouble, shown not as a mere feeling but as help actually given

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Greek writers before the New Testament used this word for pity felt at someone's suffering, and they assumed the sufferer did not deserve the trouble. The New Testament keeps the word but turns that assumption inside out. The people who receive God's mercy here are not the innocent who fell on hard times; they are the guilty, the ones who have no claim on kindness at all. Mercy in this sense is God choosing to rescue people who have earned the opposite.

The word also carries the weight of the Old Testament idea of loyal, covenant-keeping love (חסד). When the Gospel writers and Paul reach for it, they are usually echoing the Greek Old Testament, where this same word stood for God's faithful kindness to Israel, the kindness he promised and keeps on showing across generations. So the word looks back to ancient promises and forward to their rescue in Christ.

The two senses below are one mercy seen from two sides. First and mainly it is God's mercy, the kindness that saves people who do not deserve it. From that flows the second: the mercy God's people owe one another, the practical kindness to those in need that Jesus calls the very heart of God's Law. The same word covers both because the second is meant to mirror the first.

Throughout, the stress falls on action rather than mood. Mercy here is something done:

  • a debt forgiven
  • a sick man healed
  • a sinner saved
  • a neighbor cared for.

It is kindness that costs the giver something and rescues the receiver.

Nuances

1aGod's saving mercy: his faithful, undeserved kindness reaching down to rescue people who have earned the opposite
Luk 1:50Luk 1:54Luk 1:58Luk 1:72Luk 1:78Rom 9:23Rom 11:31Rom 15:9Gal 6:16Eph 2:41Ti 1:22Ti 1:2
1bthe mercy God's people owe one another: practical kindness to those in need, which Jesus calls the heart of God's Law
Mat 9:13Mat 12:7Mat 23:23Luk 10:37Jas 2:13 (2×)Jas 3:17

What scholars say about eleos

The dominant scholarly judgment is that New Testament ἔλεος fuses two streams: the classical Greek emotion of pity at undeserved suffering (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.8) and, more decisively, the Hebrew חֶסֶד of covenant loyalty enacted in saving action, mediated through the Septuagint, where ἔλεος renders חֶסֶד in roughly 213 of about 245 cases (Zobel, TDOT V). Bultmann's TDNT II:477-487 argues that the LXX reshaped ἔλεος into a covenantal-relational term and that its New Testament recipients are the guilty rather than Aristotle's innocent sufferers, inverting the classical schema. The post-Barr correction (Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, 1961; Joosten 2004/2012; Silva, NIDNTTE; Louw-Nida 88.76) qualifies this: the koine sense of kindness toward the needy remains operative, and covenantal weight is supplied by discourse and intertext, not by the bare lexeme. Behind it lies the debate over חֶסֶד itself between Glueck's covenant-obligation thesis and the gentler gracious-goodness reading of Stoebe, Zobel, Andersen, and Sakenfeld. The word is concentrated in Luke 1, Romans 9-11, and the soteriological summaries of Ephesians 2, Titus 3, and 1 Peter 1, where it names God's saving mercy on the unworthy, and in Matthew's twin Hosea 6:6 citations and James, where it names the mercy God's people owe.

Where scholars disagree about eleos

Scholars disagree over how much of the Hebrew covenant-loyalty sense the Greek word actually carries in itself. The older view holds that the Septuagint reshaped the word so that its New Testament uses denote God's covenant faithfulness rather than mere Greek pity; the corrective view holds that the word kept its ordinary Greek sense of kindness toward the needy, and that any covenant weight comes from the surrounding text and its Scripture echoes rather than from the word alone.

  • contestedThe Septuagint reshaped the word into a covenant-loyalty term, so its New Testament uses denote God's faithful covenant love rather than Greek pity; Rudolf Bultmann, "ἔλεος, ἐλεέω," TDNT II:477-487; Nelson Glueck, Hesed in the Bible (Hebrew Union College Press, 1967)
  • contestedThe word kept its ordinary Greek sense of kindness toward the needy; any covenant weight comes from context and Scripture echoes, not from the word itself; Jan Joosten, "ḥesed, 'Benevolence,' and ἔλεος, 'Pity'," in Collected Studies on the Septuagint, FAT 83 (Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 96-111; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961); Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 88.76
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

  • Rudolf Bultmann, "ἔλεος, ἐλεέω," TDNT II:477-487lexicon
  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ἔλεος, p. 316lexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 88.76lexicon
  • Moisés Silva, ed., NIDNTTE, s.v. ἔλεος (rev. of H.-H. Esser, NIDNTT)lexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament 1:471-479lexicon
  • F. Staudinger, "ἔλεος," EDNT 1:428-431lexicon
  • H.-J. Zobel, "חֶסֶד," TDOT V:44-64lexicon
  • Jan Joosten, "ḥesed, 'Benevolence,' and ἔλεος, 'Pity'," in Collected Studies on the Septuagint, FAT 83 (Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 96-111article
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961)monograph
  • Nelson Glueck, Hesed in the Bible (Hebrew Union College Press, 1967)monograph
  • Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible, HSM 17 (Scholars Press, 1978)monograph
  • David Konstan, Pity Transformed (Duckworth, 2001)monograph
  • David Hill, "On the Use and Meaning of Hosea VI.6 in Matthew's Gospel," NTS 24 (1977/78) 107-119article
  • Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed. (Doubleday, 1993), 346-365monograph
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, ICC, vol. 2 (T&T Clark), 483-485commentary
  • Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale, 1989), 63-68monograph

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

All attested forms of ἔλεος

accusative n s

ἔλεος

Mat 9:13, Mat 12:7, Mat 23:23, Luk 1:58, Luk 1:72, Luk 10:37, 2Ti 1:16, 2Ti 1:18

nominative n s

ἔλεος

Luk 1:50, Gal 6:16, 1Ti 1:2, 2Ti 1:2, Jas 2:13, 2Jn 1:3, Jud 1:2

genitive n s

ἐλέους

Luk 1:54, Luk 1:78, Rom 9:23, Rom 15:9, Jas 3:17

dative n s

ἐλέει

Rom 11:31, Eph 2:4