StrongerBible

zugos

ζυγός

GreekG2218“yoke, scales”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 11:29Mat 11:30Act 15:10Gal 5:11Ti 6:1Rev 6:5
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What zugos means

1

a yoke: the wooden bar laid across the neck to bind someone to a load or a master, and so a picture of being placed under an authority, from crushing servitude to willing service

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

The literal object is a farm tool. A yoke is the heavy crossbar that harnesses a pair of oxen to a plow so they pull as one, or that a person carries across the shoulders to bear two loads. From that plain image the word opens out into one of the Bible's richest pictures of what it means to live under someone's power.

In most of its uses the yoke stands for bondage. To be yoked is to be owned and driven:

  • an enslaved people under a conquering empire
  • a person kept as property
  • a set of demands laid so heavily on people that no one can carry it

When the leaders in Acts debate whether non-Jewish believers must keep the whole Law of Moses, Peter calls that demand a yoke no one has managed to bear, and Paul warns the Galatians not to slip back under a yoke of slavery. In a letter to Timothy the word simply names the real condition of people held as slaves.

Against that dark background Jesus does something startling: he offers his own yoke. He does not pretend there is no yoke to wear; he invites the weary to trade the crushing one for his, which he calls good and light. The point is not that following him makes no demands, but that being bound to him is unlike being bound to a hard master. The same word that names oppression becomes, in his mouth, an invitation.

Nuances

1athe yoke of servitude: a burden of bondage, oppression, or obligation laid on people, and the state of slavery itself
Act 15:10Gal 5:11Ti 6:1
1bthe yoke Jesus gives: being bound to him in discipleship as a good and welcome yoke, deliberately set against the crushing yoke of bondage
Mat 11:29Mat 11:30
2

a pair of scales: the balance beam from which two weighing pans hang, used to measure out goods by weight

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

A balance is, in effect, a small yoke: a horizontal bar with a pan hanging from each end, so that the two loads must move together, exactly as a yoke links two oxen. Greek used one word for both objects, where English keeps them apart as yoke and scales.

This is the meaning in the vision of the third horseman, who holds a pair of scales while a voice calls out steep prices for a day's wheat and barley. Weighing out grain by the ounce is the picture of famine and rationing, when food is so scarce it has to be measured rather than simply eaten. The scales here signal scarcity and judgment, not commerce as usual.

Rev 6:5

What scholars say about zugos

The lexica agree on the physical basis of the word and its two-sense range for the New Testament. LSJ catalogues the wide classical spread (plow-yoke, lyre-crossbar, ship's thwarts, balance-beam, and by extension the constellation Libra), while BDAG collapses this to two headings for New Testament purposes: the yoke as a symbol of servitude (Matthew, Acts, Galatians, 1 Timothy) and the pair of scales (Revelation 6:5); Louw-Nida distributes it across the artifact domains and the domain of control and subjection. Rengstorf's TDNT article traces the Indo-European root shared with Latin iugum and reads Matthew 11:29-30 as a conscious paradox, with the possessive "my yoke" redefining the rabbinic yoke of Torah as gift rather than burden; Silva's NIDNTTE updates him with closer attention to Second Temple backgrounds and to Revelation's exclusively balance-sense. Three debates remain live and belong to the interpretation of the passages rather than to the word's meaning. On Matthew 11, Deutsch and the Wisdom-Christology reading (Suggs, Davies and Allison) see dependence on Sirach 51:23-27, while Stanton and others judge the verbal links slender; Mitchell (JBL 2016) argues that the traditional "easy" for chrestos smuggles in a Law-versus-grace antithesis and that "kind" or "beneficial" is lexically better. On Acts 15:10 the yoke is read either as the whole Mosaic Law (Barrett, Fitzmyer, Bruce) or, on a more recent contextual reading, as the proselyte obligation given the overwhelmingly positive Jewish sense of the yoke of Torah (Keener, Jervell, Gaventa). On Galatians 5:1 the yoke of slavery is variously the Law as a cosmic enslaving power (Martyn, de Boer), the Law misused for self-justification (Bruce, Longenecker, Moo), or the ethnic boundary markers of the New Perspective (Dunn). For Revelation 6:5 the commentators are essentially unanimous that the scales picture famine-rationing against the background of Leviticus 26:26 and Ezekiel 4 (Beale, Aune, Koester, Mounce).

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 (F. W. Danker, rev.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 429lexicon
  • H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), s.v. ζυγόνlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida (eds.), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: UBS, 1989)lexicon
  • K. H. Rengstorf, "ζυγός, ἑτεροζυγέω," in TDNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:896-901theological-dictionary
  • M. Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), s.v. ζυγόςtheological-dictionary
  • C. Deutsch, Hidden Wisdom and the Easy Yoke: Wisdom, Torah and Discipleship in Matthew 11.25-30 (JSNTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987)monograph
  • M. W. Mitchell, "The Yoke Is Easy, but What of Its Meaning?" JBL 135 (2016): 321-340article
  • J. L. Martyn, Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 447-466commentary
  • J. D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (BNTC; London: Black, 1993), 260-265commentary
  • C. K. Barrett, Acts (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 2:717commentary
  • C. S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014)commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 379-381commentary

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

All attested forms of ζυγός

accusative m s

ζυγὸν, ζυγόν

Act 15:10, 1Ti 6:1, Rev 6:5, Mat 11:29

dative m s

ζυγῷ

Gal 5:1

nominative m s

ζυγός

Mat 11:30