the right moment: a stretch of time defined by what it is fit for
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
At its core this word is not time measured on a clock but time weighed for its fitness. It names the moment that suits an action, the season ripe for a thing to happen, the window in which something can be done. Where another Greek word counts duration, this one judges quality: is now the time?
That is why it covers such a spread, from the season a tree bears fruit to the hour a master expects his servants to be ready. The senses below are this one idea seen from two angles: the fitting occasion when a thing is due, and the limited window of opportunity that is open only for a while. What unites them is that the moment is never neutral. It carries a demand or an opening that an empty span of hours does not.
Because the moment is defined by what it is good for, missing it matters. A reader meets this word most often where someone is urged to recognize the moment for what it is and act while it lasts.
Nuances
1athe fitting or proper occasion for something to happen
1ca fixed, recurring period of the sacred calendar kept as an observance, such as a festival day, month, or year
Gal 4:10*
2
the appointed time: the moment God has set for a decisive event
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
The same idea of a fitting, weighted moment turns, in much of the New Testament, into a charged one: the time God himself has fixed. Here the moment is not merely suitable for human action but already set on God's calendar, often hidden from people until it arrives.
This is the language of God's timetable. It marks the moment of fulfillment when the long wait ends, the set hour of judgment or salvation, and the future crisis the present age is moving toward. The plural can gather up these appointed times as a whole, the spans into which God has divided history.
The two senses below separate the moment of fulfillment that has already come from the appointed moment still ahead. Both share the conviction that the timing is God's to set, not ours to calculate, which is why people are repeatedly told to stay ready rather than to predict the day.
Nuances
2athe present moment of fulfillment that God has now brought about
Names the decisive, appointed moment, the right time for something to happen, not time as a quantity. Jesus says his moment has not yet come, and the demons ask whether judgment has arrived before its set time.Jhn 7:6Mat 8:29
Carries the sense of the favorable opportunity, the open window to act, which can be seized or missed. Believers are told to make the most of it and to do good while the chance lasts.Eph 5:16Gal 6:10
Used for the charged, climactic season in God's plan: the day of salvation now open, and the appointed end-time of fulfillment and judgment.2Co 6:2Mrk 1:15
Both
Both render English time, and the New Testament pairs them as a near-doublet for the whole of history's unfolding, the dates and the seasons that the Father has set under his own authority.Act 1:71Th 5:1
Names measured duration, a stretch or span of time, answering how long rather than when. Paul stays a considerable while, and the master returns after a long time away.Act 14:28Mat 25:19
Marks a fixed point or length on the calendar that can be questioned or pinned down, such as the exact time a star appeared or how long a condition has lasted.Mat 2:7Mrk 9:21
Points to time as elapsing, the running of days that fill up or run out: years completed, a short remaining stretch, no more delay.Act 7:23Rev 10:6
ὥραa specific hour or short point on the clock; this word is broader, a season or fitting occasion rather than a pinpoint time
Names a particular moment or season, the fitting or appointed time for something to happen.Mrk 1:15Rom 5:6Gal 6:10
Used of a critical opportunity or the decisive hour that can be recognized or missed.Luk 19:44Mat 16:3Act 1:7
Both
Both can frame the present versus the future order, and stand side by side when measuring what is received now against what comes later.Mrk 10:30Luk 18:30
The noun for the appointed or decisive moment itself: the charged occasion as a thing that arrives, is fulfilled, or is awaited.Mrk 1:15Mat 8:29Rom 5:6
Also stretches over a whole era or season under God's ordering, a length of time rather than a single instant.Act 1:7Luk 21:24
Both
Both turn on the idea of the right, opportune moment rather than mere clock-time: the fitting occasion when something is due.Heb 4:162Co 6:2
An adjective that labels an occasion or a provision as coming at exactly the fitting moment; it describes something as timely rather than naming the time itself.Mrk 6:21Heb 4:16
kairos in the other biblical languages
עֵתHebrew“time”the standard Hebrew word for the fitting or appointed time, the closest counterpart, covering both the right occasion and the set season
presses the note of decisive fitness: this is the right moment, the appointed hour when something must happen or be seized, so it carries the urgency of a window that opens and closesMrk 1:15Gal 6:10Rom 13:11
the New Testament uses it for the end-time seasons and the final appointed hour when God brings history to its close, so it takes on an eschatological weight that the Hebrew word rarely carries1Th 5:1Rev 1:3
Both
both name the God-determined fitting time when his saving purpose arrives: Isaiah's promise of the acceptable time and Paul's citation of it as fulfilled in the present moment show the same theological claim across both testamentsIsa 49:82Co 6:2
both stand for the moment of crisis and opportunity that belongs to God, not to human calculation: a time that can be missed, a moment that calls for action before it passesEst 4:14Rom 5:6
covers the full range from neutral clock-time to the right moment, so it can name the ordinary time when something happens as well as the appointed moment when it mustGen 24:11Ecc 3:1
is the word Qohelet uses for the God-appointed time built into creation for every human activity, a time whose moment a person does not fully know in advanceEcc 3:2Ecc 8:6
מוֹעֵדHebrew“meeting”a fixed appointed time, especially a set festival or meeting, overlapping the appointed-time sense but tied to scheduled sacred occasions
Names the decisive moment in God's plan of salvation: the right time at which Christ acts and the age turns. It is the time that has now arrived or is soon to arrive, not merely a date set on a calendar.Mrk 1:15Rom 5:6Eph 1:10
Carries the sense of a fleeting opportunity, a window to act rightly before it closes. The stress falls on the person seizing the moment, not on a fixed institution observed on schedule.Eph 5:16Gal 6:10
Marks the end-time crisis, the season of distress and judgment that climaxes history. It points forward to a coming hour rather than back to a recurring sacred season.Rev 1:3Rev 11:181Pe 1:5
Both
Both name a divinely fixed, appointed time rather than ordinary clock-time: the right and decreed moment that God sets and brings to pass. The Greek often renders this Hebrew sense.Gen 18:14Act 1:7
Both can mark a future moment whose arrival is certain because God has appointed it, an event awaited until its set time comes.Hab 2:31Ti 6:15
Names the appointed sacred seasons of Israel's calendar, the set feasts kept year by year. The emphasis is on a recurring institution fixed in the cultic year, which the Greek word does not carry.Lev 23:2Lev 23:4Num 29:39
Names a PLACE of meeting, above all the tent of meeting where God meets his people. This spatial sense, a building rather than a moment, is wholly absent from the Greek word.Exo 33:7Exo 40:2Lev 1:1
Names the appointed gathering-spot of God's enemies, the place where hostile assemblies convene. This too is a location, a sense the Greek word for time never bears.Psa 74:8Isa 14:13Lam 2:6
carries the charged sense of the decisive, opportune moment: the right time for action, a moment weighted with opportunity that can be seized or missedMrk 1:152Co 6:2Luk 4:13
names the great appointed seasons of God's unfolding plan, including the end-time crises kept in his own controlAct 1:7Mat 8:29Luk 21:24
Both
both point to an appointed time set for a purpose rather than raw passing duration, a designated season fixed for what it is meant to holdEcc 3:1Act 17:26
stays close to a fixed date on the calendar, a set time scheduled or decreed for a specific event, without the Greek word's freight of opportunity or crisisNeh 2:6Est 9:27Est 9:31
It names the favorable moment for a person to act, an opening that can be seized or squandered, which is why it is rendered "opportunity" as readily as "time".Gal 6:10Eph 5:16Col 4:5Gal 6:9
It covers the natural seasons of the growing year, the stretch when fruit ripens and harvest comes, so it is often rendered "season" of crops and weather.Mat 21:34Mrk 11:13Mat 13:30Act 14:17
It can name a whole era rather than a point, the age people are living through now or the age still coming, and takes descriptive words that characterize that age.Rom 8:18Rom 11:5Mrk 10:302Ti 3:11Ti 4:1
Both
Both name a moment fixed in advance whose arrival is itself the decisive event, and the Greek word is the closest New Testament counterpart to that use of the Aramaic one.Dan 7:22Mrk 1:151Ti 6:15
Both stand in the paired phrase for the "times and seasons" that order history, which God alone sets and changes and which neither a ruler nor a disciple may command.Dan 2:21Dan 7:25Act 1:71Th 5:1
Both work as the ordinary dating tag of a narrative, the plain "at that time" that fixes where an episode falls in the flow of the story.Ezr 5:3Dan 3:7Dan 4:36Mat 14:1Mat 11:25Act 12:1
It counts repeated occasions, so that a plain number can be put with it and the sense becomes "times" in the sense of how many times something is done.Dan 6:10Dan 6:13
It names a term of time formally granted or extended by someone in authority: a delay a king is asked to allow, or a lease of life prolonged by decree.Dan 2:16Dan 7:12
It names an opening that stands open now and can be taken or lost, so people are urged to make the most of it while it lasts.2Co 6:2Gal 6:10Eph 5:16Luk 19:44
It marks the turning point at which a promise finally arrives, the ripe moment God had been waiting for.Mrk 1:15Rom 5:6Eph 1:10
It covers the ordinary seasons of the farming year, the stretch when fruit ripens and rain falls.Mat 21:34Act 14:17
Both
Both name a span whose limits God alone fixes and shifts, so the schedule is not something people can work out for themselves.Dan 2:21Act 1:7Act 17:26
Both carry the counted prophetic span of Daniel, "a time, times, and half a time": the Greek word takes over the Aramaic phrase and its arithmetic unchanged.Dan 7:25Rev 12:14
Both can mean nothing more than the point at which something happens, the moment a signal is given or a report reaches a ruler.Dan 3:5Dan 3:15Mat 14:1
It can be treated as a quantity that is bargained for or drawn out: the wise men are accused of playing for time, and the beasts are left alive for a further stretch of it.Dan 2:8Dan 7:12
It is the mere passing of time that does the work, so a situation is expected to shift simply because enough of it has gone by.Dan 2:9Dan 4:25
What scholars say about kairos
Standard lexica (BDAG) divide the word into a span or period of time, the fitting or favorable moment (opportunity), and, distinctively in the New Testament, the decisive or appointed time set by God. Theological dictionaries (TDNT, EDNT, NIDNTT) trace its classical contrast with chronos: chronos is time as measured duration, while this word is the qualitatively right or critical moment, a contrast the New Testament intensifies into the language of God's appointed time of fulfillment and judgment. The contrast can be overdrawn, since the two words sometimes overlap, but it remains a real and useful distinction.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. καιρόςlexicon
LSJ, s.v. καιρόςlexicon
G. Delling, "καιρός," TDNT 3:455-464theological-dictionary