tharreō

θαρρέω

GreekG2292“confident, bold, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Co 5:62Co 5:82Co 7:162Co 10:12Co 10:2Heb 13:6

Root family

tharsosθάρσοςcourage/confidence1G2294
- tharseōθαρσέωtake heart8G2293
  - tharreōθαρρέωbe confident6G2292

Word studythar-REH-ohverb

What tharreō means

to be confident: to hold a settled inner courage that stays steady under pressure and shows up in what a person dares to say and do

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is courage as a state a person is already in, not a shout of encouragement to someone else. It never appears in the New Testament as a command. Paul and the writer of Hebrews use it to describe people who are steady, and the steadiness is always aimed somewhere: at what lies ahead, at other people, or at opponents.

The three directions are worth seeing together, because one Greek word covers all of them:

facing death and the unseen, it is the calm of knowing that leaving the body means being at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6, 5:8)
facing other people, it is trust: Paul says he can count on the Corinthians in everything (2 Corinthians 7:16)
facing opposition, it is nerve: Paul warns that he is prepared to be firm with the people who are writing him off (2 Corinthians 10:1, 10:2)

What holds those together is that the courage rests on something outside the person. In Hebrews 13:6 believers can speak up because "the Lord is my helper," so there is nothing a human being can do to them worth fearing. This is not the self-made calm of a philosopher who has talked himself out of being afraid; it is confidence with a reason for it, and the reason is God.

The word sits close to several others without being any of them. The same verb in an older spelling, θαρσέω, is what Jesus says out loud to frightened people in the Gospels: "take heart!" A different word, παρρησιάζομαι, is public plain speaking in front of strangers and hostile crowds, while this word only supplies the nerve behind the speaking. Another, τολμάω, is the daring act itself, and Paul uses both in one breath in 2 Corinthians 10:2. The related noun (θάρσος) names the courage itself, which is what Paul picks up when believers come out to meet him on the road to Rome.

Nuances

1ato be of good courage: to stay steady and unafraid about what lies ahead

2Co 5:62Co 5:8Heb 13:6

1bto have confidence in someone: to trust people and count on them

2Co 7:16

1cto be bold with someone: to turn that confidence outward and press it firmly on people who are resisting

2Co 10:12Co 10:2

What tharreō does not mean

English Bibles use a different word almost every time this one appears: "we are always confident," "we are of good courage," "I have complete confidence in you," "I am bold toward you," "we can confidently say." That variety is good translation, but it hides the fact that a single Greek word runs through all six places. If you are tracing a theme, trace the word, not the English.

Two other traps:

"Bold" in 2 Corinthians 10 is not brashness or rudeness. Paul opens that very sentence by appealing to the gentleness of Christ, and his opponents were the ones accusing him of being brave only at a safe distance.
This is not self-confidence or positive thinking. Every use points to a ground outside the speaker: the Lord who helps, the home with the Lord that death opens onto, the people whose changed behavior has earned Paul's trust.

What scholars say about tharreō

θαρρέω is the new-Attic spelling of the verb θαρσέω, standard from Plato onward and the ordinary literary Koine form; LSJ, Thayer, Grundmann (TDNT 3:25-27) and Silva (NIDNTTE 2:407-409) agree that the two spellings are one word and that the New Testament's distribution is a matter of authorial register, not sense: the Gospels and Acts use only θαρσέω (always imperative), while Paul and Hebrews use only θαρρέω (never imperative). BDAG glosses it "to be firm or resolute in the face of danger or adverse circumstances, be confident, be courageous," and distinguishes the constructions Paul uses: θαρρῶ ἔν τινι, to have confidence in someone (2 Corinthians 7:16), against θαρρῆσαι ἐπί τινα, to be bold toward someone (10:1-2), where it stands beside πεποίθησις and τολμάω. Thayer, following Aristotle's treatment of θάρρος and ἀνδρεία in Nicomachean Ethics 3.6-9, separates the inner firmness of this verb from the outward daring of τολμάω; Spicq traces the sense back to the Homeric θάρσος, a god-given surge of confidence breathed into a warrior rather than mustered by him. On the 2 Corinthians 5 passage, Furnish, Thrall and Harris all stress that Paul's confidence is eschatologically grounded in the Spirit given as a down payment (5:5) and is not Stoic detachment; Attridge notes that at Hebrews 13:6 the participle θαρροῦντας licenses the quotation of Psalm 117:6 LXX, grounding the boldness in God as helper. No lexicon records a competing sense for the verb.

Sources

BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 444, s.v. θαρρέωlexicon
LSJ (Liddell, Scott, Jones), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with revised supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), s.v. θαρσέωlexicon
Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: Harper, 1889), 285-286lexicon
Walter Grundmann, "θαρρέω, θαρσέω, θάρσος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 25-27theological-dictionary
Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 2:407-409theological-dictionary
Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 2:190-194, s.v. θαρρέω, θαρσέωtheological-dictionary
Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians, AB 32A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 271-273, 302commentary
Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994-2000), 1:388-390commentary
Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 396-397, 401-402commentary
Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 388-389commentary

tharreō

What tharreō means

to be confident: to hold a settled inner courage that stays steady under pressure and shows up in what a person dares to say and do

Nuances

What scholars say about tharreō

Sources

All attested forms of θαρρέω

present active indicative 1s

aorist active infinitive

present active indicative 1p

present active participle accusative m p

present active participle nominative m p

What tharreō means

to be confident: to hold a settled inner courage that stays steady under pressure and shows up in what a person dares to say and do

Nuances

Related words

The English words used to translate tharreō

How tharreō differs from similar Greek words

tharreō in the other biblical languages

What scholars say about tharreō

Sources

All attested forms of θαρρέω

present active indicative 1s

aorist active infinitive

present active indicative 1p

present active participle accusative m p

present active participle nominative m p