StrongerBible

enochos

ἔνοχος

GreekG1777“guilty, liable, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 5:21Mat 5:22 (3×)Mat 26:66Mrk 3:29Mrk 14:641Co 11:27Heb 2:15Jas 2:10
Root family
Word studyEN-okh-ossadjective

What enochos means

1

held fast in the wrong so that punishment can follow: answerable to a court, deserving of a sentence, or guilty in relation to what has been violated

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This is a courtroom word. It does not describe a feeling, and on its own it does not even describe a completed verdict. It describes a position: a person is now held in the wrong, and something is coming. The picture underneath it is one of being gripped, since it is built on a verb that means to hold someone in something (ἐνέχω). Whoever this word describes is caught and cannot get free of what is owed.

What the word points at depends on what comes next in the sentence, and the New Testament uses all three patterns:

  • a court a person must answer to, as in the warnings of Matthew 5:21 and Matthew 5:22
  • a punishment a person now deserves, most starkly the death sentence pronounced at the trial of Jesus
  • an offense committed or a person wronged, so that someone can be guilty in relation to the body and blood of the Lord

Because of that flexibility, one English word rarely serves twice in a row. Translators write "liable to judgment" in one line, "deserving death" in another, "guilty of" in a third, and "accountable for" in a fourth. Each of those choices carries only part of what the Greek does. The steady element under all of them is exposure: a person standing exactly where the penalty can reach.

James pushes the word furthest. Someone who keeps the whole law but trips at a single point has become this word with respect to all of it. The law, on that reading, cannot be broken in pieces.

Nuances

1aanswerable to a court: on the hook to face a tribunal and whatever it decides
Mat 5:21Mat 5:22 (3×)
1bdeserving of a specific punishment, above all the death sentence
Mat 5:22 (3×)Mat 26:66Mrk 14:64
1cguilty in relation to the thing violated or the person wronged
Mrk 3:291Co 11:27Jas 2:10
2

held fast by something and unable to get out from under it: in its grip

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Once, in Hebrews 2:15, the word steps out of the courtroom and does what the picture behind it always suggested: it holds people. The people described there are held fast by slavery, and what pins them there is the fear of death, running the whole length of their lives.

The legal use is not far off, and translations show it. Some versions read the line as being subject to slavery and some as being held in slavery, and a few interpreters still hear the courtroom in it, as though the fear of death had a claim that could be enforced. The verb this word is built on, which means to hold someone in something (ἐνέχω), does something very similar in Galatians 5:1, where readers are told not to let themselves be held again in a yoke of slavery. Either way the point is that these people cannot free themselves, which is why the verse goes on to say that someone else had to do it for them.

Heb 2:15

What scholars say about enochos

ἔνοχος is a verbal adjective from ἐνέχω, "to hold in," and belongs to the vocabulary of Greek law, where it is at home from the classical orators onward. BDAG and LSJ agree on the range and organize it by construction. With the dative of the tribunal a person is answerable before it (Matthew 5:21 and 5:22, τῇ κρίσει, τῷ συνεδρίῳ). With the genitive of the penalty the person is liable to that penalty, ἔνοχος θανάτου being the standard idiom for a capital sentence (Matthew 26:66; Mark 14:64), which corresponds to Jewish legal language for one who is deserving of death. With the genitive of the offense or of the injured party the person is guilty in respect of it (Mark 3:29, αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος; 1 Corinthians 11:27, τοῦ σώματος καὶ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ κυρίου; James 2:10, πάντων). Matthew 5:22 adds a construction with εἰς, which most commentators read as an extension into the sphere of punishment rather than a further tribunal; Davies and Allison, Betz, and France discuss the escalating series in Matthew 5:21 to 22 and its debated referents, that is, whether κρίσις denotes a local court, the Sanhedrin, or the eschatological judgment of God. That is a question about the referent, not about the lexical value of ἔνοχος. At Mark 3:29 the text itself divides: αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος is read by the Alexandrian witnesses and αἰωνίου κρίσεως by a substantial body of later manuscripts, which would shift the phrase from the offense to the punishment. On 1 Corinthians 11:27 Thiselton takes the genitive to identify the party offended against rather than the elements as objects; on James 2:10 Johnson discusses whether πάντων ἔνοχος means liability for every individual commandment or answerability to the law as an indivisible whole. For Hebrews 2:15, ἔνοχοι δουλείας, BDAG assigns the phrase to a separate sense, subject to or in the grip of, comparing the cognate verb in Galatians 5:1 (ζυγῷ δουλείας ἐνέχεσθε); Attridge renders it as held in slavery, while some interpreters retain a legal nuance. No lexicon posits homonymy: the forensic use and the sense of being held fast are two applications of one root idea, being held within something.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich), s.v. ἔνοχοςlexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell, Scott, Jones), A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. ἔνοχοςlexicon
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (International Critical Commentary), on Matthew 5:21-22commentary
  • Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Hermeneia), on Matthew 5:21-22commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament), on Matthew 5:21-22commentary
  • Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia), on Mark 3:28-30commentary
  • Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (New International Greek Testament Commentary), on 1 Corinthians 11:27commentary
  • Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A), on James 2:8-11commentary
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia), on Hebrews 2:14-15commentary
  • F. Blass, A. Debrunner and R. W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, on the genitive with adjectives of guilt and liabilitygrammar

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

All attested forms of ἔνοχος

nominative m s

ἔνοχος, ἔνοχός

Mat 5:21, Mat 5:22, Mat 5:22, Mat 5:22, Mat 26:66, 1Co 11:27, Jas 2:10, Mrk 3:29

accusative m s

ἔνοχον

Mrk 14:64

nominative m p

ἔνοχοι

Heb 2:15