StrongerBible

zeō

ζέω

GreekG2204“fervent, aglow, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Act 18:25Rom 12:11
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeZEH-ohverb

What zeō means

to be at a boil: to burn with wholehearted eagerness that spills over into action

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the ordinary Greek word for water at a rolling boil, the bubbling and hissing of a pot left over the fire. Long before the New Testament, Greek writers had turned that picture on people: poets and philosophers of the fifth century BC described anger, temper, and desire as things that boil, and the usage never went away. Everyday letters and recipes from the same world keep using the word for boiling an egg or simmering a medicine, so the heat was a live picture, not a faded figure of speech.

Both New Testament uses take it that way, of a person rather than a pot, and both use the identical phrase: someone is "boiling in spirit." Luke describes Apollos teaching about Jesus with that kind of heat, and Paul makes it a command to a whole church, placed between not being slack in eagerness and serving the Lord. The picture is not a mood but an energy, heat that has to go somewhere: in Acts it goes into accurate teaching, in Romans into work done for God and for other people.

What the word leaves open is whose heat it is. The Greek word for spirit in these two verses can name a person's own inner life or God's Spirit, and readers have argued both ways since antiquity. Many now take it as both at once: a person's own fervor, kindled and kept burning by God's Spirit.

The same boiling image drives the words closest to it. ζῆλος, "zeal" or "jealousy," was understood by ancient writers as feeling brought to a boil, heat that can run toward devotion or toward resentment. The adjective built straight off this verb, ζεστός, "boiling hot," is what the risen Christ wishes the lukewarm church at Laodicea were.

Act 18:25Rom 12:11

Disputed

Whether the dative τῷ πνεύματι in the two New Testament occurrences (Acts 18:25; Romans 12:11) refers to the human spirit, to the Holy Spirit, or deliberately to both.

  • contestedThe reference is to the human spirit: the phrase characterizes the person's own burning enthusiasm, not the divine Spirit. In Acts 18:25 this is reinforced by the note that Apollos knew only the baptism of John.; Charles J. Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers, on Acts 18:25 and Romans 12:11
  • contestedThe reference is to the Holy Spirit as the source in the believer of the activities being urged, with ζέοντες in Romans 12:11 read alongside Acts 18:25 and the cognate ζεστός in Revelation 3:15-16.; Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges, on Romans 12:11
  • contestedThe senses are deliberately blended: the πνεῦμα in view is the Spirit of God as bestowed upon and operative within the human spirit, so a hard division misreads the theology of the passages.; The Expositor's Greek Testament, on Romans 12:11

What scholars say about zeō

The lexical tradition is unusually consistent. LSJ gives "boil, seethe" as the primary sense, citing Homer, Iliad 18.349 and 21.362 for water boiling in a cauldron, and the word is generally taken as onomatopoeic. Thayer records the metaphorical use "of boiling anger, love, zeal for what is good or bad (Tragedians, Plato, Plutarch, others)," and glosses the New Testament phrase ζέων τῷ πνεύματι as "fervent in spirit" at Acts 18:25 and Romans 12:11; BDAG and Louw and Nida agree, the latter placing the figurative New Testament use in the domain of intense emotion and zeal. The metaphor is demonstrably pre-Christian and continuous: Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 378 (ὀργῆς ζεούσης); Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 434 (ἔζει θυμός); Plato, Republic 440c and Timaeus 70b; Plutarch and the first-century epigrammatists. Moulton and Milligan record no metaphorical instance in the documentary papyri at all, only literal boiling (P Lond 121.170; P Oxy XI.1384.36), which supports treating "fervent in spirit" as ordinary idiom rather than Jewish-Christian coinage. Septuagint attestation is negligible: Job 32:19 (fermenting wine) and Ezekiel 24:5 (the boiling pot, for Hebrew רתח and בשל); Exodus 16:20 is a common miscitation, since it uses the compound ἐκζέω. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 499-500) derives the verb from Proto-Indo-European *yes-, comparing Sanskrit yásati and Old High German jësan, so fermentation and bubbling heat are the semantic core, which also motivates the traditional derivation of the ζῆλος family. The one substantive exegetical crux is the referent of τῷ πνεύματι in the two New Testament occurrences: Ellicott argued for the human spirit in both, the Cambridge Greek Testament for the Holy Spirit, and the Expositor's Greek Testament for the Spirit of God as bestowed upon man, a blended reading that most modern interpreters find least distorting. For the cognate adjective ζεστός in Revelation 3:15-16, the local water-supply reading of Rudwick and Green, developed by Hemer and Porter, has been contested by Koester on the grounds that comparable water systems served all the cities of Asia, and by Wilson on the basis of the Laodicea excavations begun in 2003; all parties nonetheless agree that ζεστός means "boiling hot."

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 (Liddell-Scott-Jones), A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • BDAG (Danker, ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. 2000, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • J. H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2010), 499-500, s.v. ζέωlexicon
  • TDNT (Kittel, ed.), s.v. ζέω / ζεστός, II:875-876theological-dictionary
  • Charles J. Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers, on Acts 18:25 and Romans 12:11commentary
  • The Expositor's Greek Testament, on Romans 12:11commentary
  • Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges, on Romans 12:11commentary
  • M. J. S. Rudwick and E. M. B. Green, "The Laodicean Lukewarmness," The Expository Times 69/6 (1957-58): 176-178journal-article
  • Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting (Sheffield, 1986)monograph
  • Stanley E. Porter, "Why the Laodiceans Received Lukewarm Water (Revelation 3:15-18)," Tyndale Bulletin 38 (1987)journal-article
  • Craig R. Koester, "The Message to Laodicea and the Problem of Its Local Context: A Study of the Imagery in Rev 3.14-22," New Testament Studies 49.3 (2003): 407-424journal-article
  • Mark Wilson, "Neither Cold nor Hot but Lukewarm: Rethinking the Temperature Metaphor in Revelation 3:15-16," Tyndale Bulletin 76 (2025): 1-29journal-article

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

All attested forms of ζέω

present active participle nominative m p

ζέοντες

Rom 12:11

present active participle nominative m s

ζέων

Act 18:25