badness inside a person: above all ill will toward others, and more broadly a corrupt character and the wrongs it produces.
When New Testament writers list what a Christian is to strip off, this word keeps company with bitterness, anger, shouting, slander, envy, and mutual hatred. In that setting it is not a general label for sin. It names the sour attitude underneath those behaviors: the settled wish that another person come to harm. Most English Bibles say "malice" there.
What the word means in a given verse is set by the company it keeps.
- Beside personal wrongs such as envy, slander, and hatred, it narrows to ill will aimed at a particular person.
- In a call to leave an old life behind, it widens to wickedness of every kind, the corruption a person is told to be rid of.
- With a pointing word attached, as when Peter tells Simon to repent of "this" thing of his, it names one wrong already committed.
Paul can also heap it together with πονηρία, a second word for wickedness, and mean nothing more precise than the whole rotten state a congregation must clear out (1 Corinthians 5:8). Elsewhere he tells the Corinthians to stay infants in it while they grow up in their thinking (1 Corinthians 14:20). The steady thread is that the badness belongs to a person, not to a circumstance.
Nuances
Whether this word in 1 Corinthians 5:8 keeps its narrow sense of malice or, paired with a second word for wickedness, forms one broad phrase for the whole corrupt state Paul wants swept out.
- majorityThe two words form a rhetorical doublet for comprehensive moral corruption: the old leaven is the entire pre-Christian moral state, not one named vice.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, rev. ed. (2014); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (2000), 402-405; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (ET 1975)
- minorityThe narrower rendering "malice" should be retained even here, with the broadened force coming from the context rather than from the word.; Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, Pillar (2010); Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (1997)
Whether the "overflow" of this word in James 1:21 is general moral evil or the specific malice of the human anger condemned in James 1:19-20.
- majorityGeneral moral evil: the filth that must be stripped off so that the implanted word can save, in line with the same "putting off" language at Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:8, and 1 Peter 2:1.; Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, Pillar (2000); Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, Anchor Bible (1995); Ralph P. Martin, James, WBC 48 (1988); Dale C. Allison Jr., James, ICC (2013)
- minorityThe specific malice James has just condemned as human anger, since 1:21 belongs with 1:19-20 and the language of overflow suggests a chronic disposition rather than pre-conversion dirt washed off once.; Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, NIGTC (1982); Scot McKnight, The Letter of James, NICNT (2011), 142
Disputed
Whether this word specifically names the vicious inner disposition while its near-synonym for wickedness names evil in action.
- majorityThe distinction should not be pressed: the two words overlap heavily, and either can cover both the inner attitude and the act, with context deciding.; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (1996); Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, BECNT (1998); Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia (2007)
- minorityThis word denotes the vicious disposition, the malevolent inner posture, while its near-synonym denotes the active exercise of it.; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, §xi; J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, on Colossians 3:8