StrongerBible

embaptō

ἐμβάπτω

GreekG1686dip

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 26:23Mrk 14:20
Compound of
Word studyResearch-gradeem-BAP-tohverb

What embaptō means

to dip something into a bowl or liquid: a brief, partial dipping, not a plunging under

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is a kitchen word before it is a Bible word. Greek writers used it for dipping cakes in honey, meat in brine, and beets in water, and doctors used it for steeping ingredients in a liquid. It is the ordinary verb "to dip" (βάπτω) with a short prefix meaning "in" fixed to the front, and scholars agree that the prefix adds very little: at most it spells out the "into" that the plain verb already implies. Greek of this period simply liked the longer, prefixed forms of common verbs.

That ordinariness matters, because one close relative of this word did become a religious term. The verb "to immerse" (βαπτίζω), which stands behind the English "baptize", carries the weight of ritual washing and Christian baptism. This word never made that move. It describes brief, partial contact: a hand or a piece of bread touched to what is in a dish, not a body put under water.

In the New Testament it turns up only twice, both times in the same moment. At his last meal Jesus says that the man dipping with him in the bowl is the one who will hand him over. Everyone at that table was reaching into the shared dishes, which is why the disciples keep asking whether he means them: the sentence does not point out a face. It says something worse. The traitor is a table companion, eating from the same bowl, and in that world sharing food was a pledge of trust and peace. The force of the scene rests on that gesture, and on the echo of Psalm 41:9, rather than on the choice of verb.

Mat 26:23Mrk 14:20

What scholars say about embaptō

Standard lexica (LSJ, BDAG) give ἐμβάπτω a single sense, "to dip in", and LSJ's citations are entirely mundane: Hipponax and Cratinus on dipping food, Aristophanes (Clouds 150, dipping a flea's feet into wax), Xenophon (Cyropaedia 2.2.5), Hippocrates on dipping beets into water, and Nicander; the Diccionario Griego-Español files the senses as culinary and medical. Moulton and Milligan's documentary evidence places verbs of this kind in the everyday Koine of ordinary people rather than in any specialized biblical dialect. Oepke's TDNT article on the βάπτω word group traces the technical development, first Jewish ritual washing and then Christian baptism, onto βαπτίζω alone, leaving βάπτω and its ἐν- compound as ordinary verbs; the prefix is read as directional at most, and largely as the Koine preference for compound forms. The compound is absent from the Septuagint, where טָבַל is rendered by the simplex βάπτω roughly eighteen times (Exodus 12:22; Leviticus 4:6, 17; 14:6; Numbers 19:18; Ruth 2:14; Joshua 3:15; 1 Samuel 14:27; 2 Kings 8:15; Job 9:31, among others) and by βαπτίζω once, at 4 Kingdoms 5:14 (Naaman). At John 13:26 the critical text (NA28, UBS5) prints βάψω and βάψας with א B C L X 33, against (καὶ) ἐμβάψας in p66c, A, Θ and the Byzantine tradition behind the Textus Receptus; editors judge the compound a harmonization to Matthew 26:23 and Mark 14:20, an argument set out in Bernard's ICC commentary and already in Meyer, and consistent with the harmonization criterion Metzger states in his Textual Commentary (2nd ed., p. xxvii), though that volume carries no dedicated note on this variant. The exegetical discussion attaches to the gesture rather than the verb: Jeremias on table fellowship as a guarantee of peace and trust, and the allusion to Psalm 41:9, which John 13:18 makes explicit. Whether the meal was a Passover Seder is contested (Jeremias and Pitre for it, Klawans, McKnight and Letham against), but the dipping vocabulary is neutral evidence there, since dipping into a common bowl was equally at home at an ordinary Jewish meal.

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

  • LSJ, s.v. ἐμβάπτωlexicon
  • BDAG, s.v. ἐμβάπτωlexicon
  • Albrecht Oepke, "βάπτω, βαπτίζω, κτλ.", TDNT 1:529-546dictionary
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Non-Literary Sources (Hodder and Stoughton, 1930)lexicon
  • J. H. Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, ICC (T. and T. Clark, 1928)commentary
  • Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (United Bible Societies, 1994)monograph
  • Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. Norman Perrin, 3rd ed. (SCM Press, 1966)monograph
  • Jonathan Klawans, Was Jesus' Last Supper a Seder?, Bible Review 17.5 (2001)article
  • Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015)monograph

All attested forms of ἐμβάπτω

aorist active participle nominative m s

ἐμβάψας

Mat 26:23

present middle participle nominative m s

ἐμβαπτόμενος

Mrk 14:20