StrongerBible

kamnō

κάμνω

GreekG2577“grow weary, faint, ...”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Heb 12:3Jas 5:15Rev 2:3
Word studyResearch-gradeKAM-nohverb

What kamnō means

1

to grow weary: to be worn down by long effort until strength and resolve start to give out

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the older, more vivid of the word's two lives. It pictures a person who has spent everything on a long, hard task and is now close to buckling. In the New Testament it is used for weariness of the inner person, not the body: the danger of losing heart and quitting.

The imagery behind it is athletic. The Letter to the Hebrews sets it inside a picture of a race, warning readers not to collapse like a runner who folds before the finish. The point is not ordinary tiredness but the deeper draining of will that tempts a person to give up on faith itself. In the message to the church at Ephesus in Revelation, the same family of meaning appears in praise: they have carried a heavy load for the sake of Jesus and have not worn out.

So the weariness here is a spiritual and moral condition, the kind that endurance is meant to outlast.

Heb 12:3Rev 2:3
2

to be sick: to be ill, worn down and laid low by disease

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is the word's specialized medical life. In everyday Greek from the classical period onward, this verb became the ordinary way to speak of being ill, and its participle became the standard term a doctor used for a patient. It carries more than the neutral English word sick: it pictures someone genuinely worn down by their illness.

In the New Testament this sense appears in the Letter of James, in the instruction to call the elders to pray over a person who is ill and anoint them with oil. Read this way, the promise that the Lord will raise the person up is a promise about recovery from sickness.

Both of the word's meanings grow from a single root idea, the cost of being worn down, whether by hard labor or by disease. But a reader needs two different English words for them, which is why they are treated here as two distinct meanings.

Jas 5:15
Jas 5:15

Whether the word here means the physically sick person (so James 5:14-15 concerns illness and healing) or the weary and discouraged person (so it concerns spiritual restoration).

  • majorityThe sick person: James is addressing physical illness, and the following promise that the Lord will raise him up is a promise of recovery. This is supported by the classical and medical use of the verb for patients, by the collocation with the ordinary word for being sick in the previous verse, and by the language of restoration to life rather than preparation for death.; Douglas J. Moo, James (Pillar New Testament Commentary, 2000); Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC, 1982), 192-95; Martin Dibelius, James (Hermeneia, ET 1976), 252-55; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A, 1995), 330-34
  • minorityThe weary or fatigued person: the verb's primary sense is to grow weary, and James 5:14-15 concerns spiritual weakness and restoration rather than physical healing.; Daniel R. Hayden, "Calling the Elders to Pray," Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (1981): 258-66; John MacArthur, James (MacArthur New Testament Commentary, 1998), 277-78

What scholars say about kamnō

From an Indo-European root meaning to exert oneself and grow tired, kamno is Homeric for laboring, tiring, and (in the aorist participle) for the dead whose work is done. Classical Attic extended it to the sense of being ill, so that hoi kamnontes became the standard word for patients in the Hippocratic corpus and later medical writers through the first century. LSJ groups the intransitive senses as toil, be weary, be sick, be distressed, and (aorist participle) the dead; BDAG reduces these for early Christian literature to two, to become weary (Heb 12:3; Rev 2:3 as a variant) and to be ill (Jas 5:15); Louw-Nida assigns the two New Testament uses to different semantic domains (weariness/discouragement and sickness). The Septuagint uses the verb only six times, all in wisdom and Hellenistic-Jewish books, for weariness of soul, exhaustion, or (once, poetically, Wis 4:16) death, never in the medical sense (so Muraoka). In Hebrews 12:3 commentators are near-unanimous for a metaphorical spiritual weariness, reading the verb inside a race-and-collapse image paired with ekluomai (Attridge, Lane, Ellingworth, Koester). In Revelation 2:3 the earliest witnesses (A, C) read a perfect of kopiao, with kamno a secondary Byzantine gloss, but the sense of endurance without wearing out is stable either way (Aune, Beale). James 5:15 is the contested case: the great majority of critical commentators read the participle as the sick, taking up asthenei from v.14, against a persistent evangelical minority that reads the weary; the dying reading is ruled out because James uses the present, not the aorist, participle.

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, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. κάμνωlexicon
  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with Supplement, s.v. κάμνωlexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains (1988), 23.147 and 25.288lexicon
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. κάμνωlexicon
  • F. Hauck, TDNT III (ET 1965), 827-30, s.v. κόπος, κοπιάωtheological-dictionary
  • Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews (Hermeneia, 1989), 358-60commentary
  • Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NIGTC, 1993), 641-43commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, James (Pillar New Testament Commentary, 2000), 243, 306commentary
  • Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC, 1982), 192-95commentary
  • Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A, 1995), 330-34commentary
  • Daniel R. Hayden, "Calling the Elders to Pray," Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (1981): 258-66article
  • David Aune, Revelation 1-5 (WBC 52A, 1997)commentary

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

All attested forms of κάμνω

perfect active indicative 2s

κέκμηκας

Rev 2:3

present active participle accusative m s

κάμνοντα

Jas 5:15

second-aorist active subjunctive 2p

κάμητε

Heb 12:3