StrongerBible

lithazō

λιθάζω

GreekG3034stone, stone to death

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Jhn 10:31Jhn 10:32Jhn 10:33Jhn 11:8Act 5:26Act 14:192Co 11:25Heb 11:37
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Names & words formed with this
Word studylith-AD-zoverb

What lithazō means

to stone someone: to throw stones at a person in order to kill them

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This verb names one specific act: pelting a person with stones so that the stones kill them. It is built on the ordinary Greek noun for a stone (λίθος), and in the world of the New Testament stoning was not random violence but the community's own way of putting someone to death, the penalty the Law of Moses set for offenses such as blasphemy. The word therefore carries the weight of a killing that a crowd carries out together, each person's hand in it.

Every New Testament use describes stoning that people attempt or suffer rather than a sentence a court has properly handed down. Three times in one scene a crowd in Jerusalem picks up stones for Jesus, and he asks which good work they are stoning him for (John 10:31, 32, 33), a danger his disciples remember when he proposes going back to Judea (John 11:8). The temple guard brings the apostles in gently because it fears being stoned by the people (Acts 5:26). A mob at Lystra stones Paul and drags him out of the city for dead (Acts 14:19), an experience he later counts among his sufferings (2 Corinthians 11:25), and the roll call of faithful sufferers in Hebrews says of some of them simply that they were stoned (Hebrews 11:37).

Greek has a second verb for the same act, λιθοβολέω, which is the one the Greek Old Testament prefers when it translates the law's death penalty, and a fuller form, καταλιθάζω, which stresses stoning someone thoroughly. They mean the same thing, so the choice between them is a matter of a writer's style rather than of sense.

Jhn 10:31Jhn 10:32Jhn 10:33Jhn 11:8Act 5:26Act 14:192Co 11:25Heb 11:37

What scholars say about lithazō

λιθάζω is formed on the noun λίθος ("stone") and denotes pelting a person with stones with lethal intent (BDAG; LSJ). The standard lexica treat it as semantically indistinguishable from the compound λιθοβολέω (G3036), which the Septuagint favors when rendering Hebrew סָקַל (H5619) and רָגַם (H7275) for the judicial penalty; the intensive καταλιθάζω (G2642) occurs once, at Luke 20:6. In the New Testament λιθάζω clusters in Johannine narrative (John 10:31, 32, 33; 11:8) and in accounts of apostolic and prophetic suffering (Acts 5:26; 14:19; 2 Corinthians 11:25; Hebrews 11:37), where the act is attempted or extralegal violence rather than a completed court sentence; Stephen's death, by contrast, is narrated with λιθοβολέω (Acts 7:58, 59). Jeremias's treatment of the λίθος word group in TDNT sets this vocabulary against the Old Testament law of stoning, from which its gravity derives.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. λιθάζωlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. λιθάζωlexicon
  • J. Jeremias, "λίθος, λίθινος," in TDNT, vol. 4dictionary

All attested forms of λιθάζω

aorist active infinitive

λιθάσαι

Jhn 11:8

aorist active participle nominative m p

λιθάσαντες

Act 14:19

aorist active subjunctive 3p

λιθάσωσιν

Jhn 10:31

aorist passive indicative 1s

ἐλιθάσθην

2Co 11:25

aorist passive indicative 3p

ἐλιθάσθησαν

Heb 11:37

aorist passive subjunctive 3p

λιθασθῶσιν

Act 5:26

present active indicative 1p

λιθάζομέν

Jhn 10:33

present active indicative 2p

λιθάζετε

Jhn 10:32