StrongerBible

kaminos

κάμινος

GreekG2575“furnace, oven”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 13:42Mat 13:50Rev 1:15Rev 9:2
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeKAM-ih-nossnoun

What kaminos means

a large industrial furnace or kiln: an enclosed, intensely hot fire for smelting metal or firing bricks, pottery, and lime

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

A furnace of this kind was a big industrial fire: an enclosed, blistering-hot installation used to smelt metal, fire bricks and pottery, or burn lime. It was not the small clay oven in which bread was baked; that was a different word (κλίβανος). So whenever a New Testament writer reaches for this word, he pictures a large-scale furnace, fierce enough to consume what is thrown into it and to pour out thick, sky-darkening smoke.

The same furnace can mean two opposite things depending on what is put into it, and the New Testament uses both. Thrown at the wicked, its fire destroys: Jesus twice warns of a "furnace of fire" at the end of the age, where the unrighteous are gathered like weeds and burned. Applied to precious metal, the very same fire purifies: John sees the risen Christ with feet like bronze that has been refined in a furnace until it glows. And at its most basic, the furnace is known by its smoke: when the pit of the abyss is opened, smoke billows up "like the smoke of a great furnace" and blots out the sun.

Each use is soaked in Old Testament memory. The "furnace of fire" repeats, almost word for word, the blazing furnace into which Daniel's three friends were thrown, an image Jewish readers already knew as the great test of faith under persecution; Jesus turns it around, so that the furnace that once threatened God's faithful now awaits the unfaithful. The refining picture recalls the Hebrew smelting furnace (כּוּר) through which God was said to temper his people like metal, and the smoking abyss recalls both the kiln (כִּבְשָׁן) whose smoke rose over ruined Sodom and the smoke of Mount Sinai.

Nuances

1athe furnace of fire: a blazing furnace as the instrument of final judgment on the wicked
Mat 13:42Mat 13:50
1ba refiner's furnace, whose fire purifies metal and makes it glow
Rev 1:15
1ca great kiln, named for the dense smoke it pours out
Rev 9:2

What scholars say about kaminos

The major lexicons (LSJ, s.v. κάμινος; BDAG 506; Muraoka, GELS 356) agree that κάμινος is generic rather than technical: an oven, furnace, or kiln for smelting, baking, or firing bricks and pottery. It is distinguished from κλίβανος, the domestic bread-oven, and from χωνευτήριον, the narrower smelting-crucible. In the Septuagint κάμινος renders two different Hebrew nouns whose distinction it flattens: כִּבְשָׁן, the smoking brick or lime kiln (Genesis 19:28; Exodus 19:18), and כּוּר, the metallurgical smelting furnace (Deuteronomy 4:20; Isaiah 48:10). The single densest source is Daniel 3, where the phrase "the furnace of fire" (ἡ κάμινος τοῦ πυρός) recurs some nine to eleven times for Nebuchadnezzar's execution furnace; by the first century this had become a fixed Jewish-Greek phrase for the fire of martyrdom and judgment, echoed in 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, Sirach 2:5, and Josephus (Ant. 10.213-214). Matthew reproduces the Danielic phrase verbatim (13:42, 50), which Davies-Allison, Luz, and France read as a deliberate reversal, turning the furnace of pagan injustice into the instrument of God's judgment. Revelation 1:15 uses the refining sense for the glorified Christ (Beale; Koester; Bauckham), and Revelation 9:2 echoes the smoke of Genesis 19 and Exodus 19 (Aune; Beale). The consensus on what the word denotes is stable across a century of commentary; the live disagreements are theological, over eternal conscious torment versus annihilation, and not lexical.

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

  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (1940), s.v. κάμινοςlexicon
  • BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (2000), p. 506lexicon
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2009), p. 356lexicon
  • H. Balz and G. Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2 (1991), p. 247reference
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., Matthew (ICC), vol. 2 (1991), pp. 431-432commentary
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20 (Hermeneia, 2001), pp. 265-266, 284commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, 2007), pp. 543-544commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC, 1999), pp. 208-210, 493-495commentary
  • David E. Aune, Revelation (WBC 52A, 1997; 52B, 1998)commentary
  • Craig R. Koester, Revelation (Anchor Yale Bible 38A, 2014), pp. 246-252commentary
  • Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (1993), pp. 54-58monograph
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia, 1993), pp. 178-179, 195-207commentary

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

All attested forms of κάμινος

accusative f s

κάμινον

Mat 13:42, Mat 13:50

dative f s

καμίνῳ

Rev 1:15

genitive f s

καμίνου

Rev 9:2