StrongerBible

margaritēs

μαργαρίτης

GreekG3135“pearl”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 7:6Mat 13:45Mat 13:461Ti 2:9Rev 17:4Rev 18:12Rev 18:16Rev 21:21 (2×)
Word studyResearch-grademar-gah-REE-tacenoun

What margaritēs means

a pearl: the round, shining gem that grows inside a sea shell, and in the ancient world the costliest small object money could buy

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

The word names one thing, a pearl, and it means the same thing everywhere it appears. What a modern reader has to supply is the price. The Roman writer Pliny, working in the same decades the New Testament was being written, put pearls at the very top of the price list of everything sold in the empire, above gold and above every other gem. They were dived for off the coasts of Sri Lanka, India, and the Persian Gulf, they arrived already finished so they could not be improved or faked, and no two were alike. One fine pearl could cost more than a working man earned in several lifetimes.

That price tag is what every passage leans on:

  • Jesus warns against throwing pearls in front of pigs, which pictures the most valuable thing there is being trampled by animals that cannot tell the difference.
  • A dealer who finds one flawless pearl sells everything he owns to buy it, which first-century readers would have recognized as a real, if extreme, business gamble.
  • A letter to Timothy lists pearls with gold (χρυσίον) and costly clothing as the badges of a wealthy woman putting her money on show.
  • Revelation dresses the doomed great city in pearls, puts pearls at the head of its list of imported cargo, and then builds each of the twelve gates of the new Jerusalem out of a single pearl.

The word is a foreigner in Greek. It came in from the east, most likely by way of Persian, travelling the same route as the pearls themselves, and it appears in Greek only after Alexander opened the Persian Gulf to Greek traders. That is why it is missing from the Greek Old Testament: the Hebrew writers had little access to pearls and no settled word for them. The Hebrew word that older English Bibles rendered "pearls" in Job and Proverbs (פנינים) is now usually read as coral, or simply as costly gems.

The last use is the sharpest. Everything the great city hoarded for the very rich turns up in the new city as ordinary building material, set in gates that are never shut. The most expensive thing in the world becomes the doorway anyone may walk through.

Nuances

1athe gem itself: worn as jewelry, shipped as high-priced cargo, or in a vision built into a wall
Mat 13:45Mat 13:461Ti 2:9Rev 17:4Rev 18:12Rev 18:16Rev 21:21 (2×)
1bpearls as a picture of what is supremely precious, put in front of those who cannot value it
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 7:6
Mat 7:6

What the "pearls" of this saying stand for, and whether the saying belongs to its setting in the Sermon on the Mount.

  • majorityThe pearls stand for the holy things of the gospel and the secrets of God's kingdom, and the saying belongs where Matthew put it, balancing the command not to judge with a call to discernment.; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 675-83; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), ad loc.; C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 244
  • minorityThe saying is a free-standing proverb inserted here, so its original reference cannot be recovered; the pearls simply picture great value wasted on those unable to receive it.; J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 323-24; D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 170-72; U. Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, trans. J. E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 355-58
  • minorityBehind the Greek stands an Aramaic play on words in which the holy thing was originally a gold ring, making the saying a parallel to Proverbs 11:22; the pearls are then simply ornaments.; M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 200-201

What scholars say about margaritēs

The lexica are unanimous on a single sense. BDAG (616) treats margarites as an eastern loanword attested from Theophrastus onward and stresses its Greco-Roman associations with female luxury adornment, citing Pliny, Natural History 9.106ff.; LSJ (1080) places the earliest attestation at Theophrastus, De Lapidibus 36, and catalogues the by-forms margaritis, margaris; Louw-Nida assign it to Domain 6.15 (Adornments). Hauck's TDNT article (IV:472-73) supplies the classic theological treatment, arguing that pearls entered Greek horizons only after Alexander opened the Persian Gulf fisheries and that the New Testament metaphors trade on a stock symbolism of inestimable value already fixed in rabbinic usage, where the re-borrowed margalit / marganita commonly figures Torah or a precious teaching; Balz compresses the same points in EDNT 2:388. Moulton-Milligan document the word in dowry lists such as P.Oxy. III.496.4, and Spicq (2:445-47) marshals the literary and papyrological evidence that Matthew 13:45-46 reflects recognizable Hellenistic commerce rather than economic fantasy. Chantraine, Frisk, and Beekes (904-5) classify the noun as an oriental loanword mediated most likely through Iranian (Middle Persian marvarid, Sogdian margart, Parthian murgarit); the frequently cited Sanskrit manjari is possible but, as Beekes notes, too late on both sides to be secured. Pliny himself calls the term barbarous (NH 9.109) while conceding that it, not the Latin coinage unio, was the shared international word (NH 9.112). The absence of the word from the Old Greek is agreed by Hatch-Redpath, Muraoka, and Hauck; the traditional identification of Hebrew peninim (Job 28:18; Prov 3:15; 8:11; 20:15; 31:10; Lam 4:7) with pearls is now widely rejected in favor of red coral or a generic "costly gems," following Pope (Anchor Bible Job, 202-4) on the ruddiness required by Lamentations 4:7, with Clines, Fox, and Waltke concurring; the Old Greek itself renders generically (lithon polutelon at Prov 3:15; 8:11). On the individual passages: Jeremias fixed the modern reading of Matthew 13:45-46, whose point of comparison is the surpassing worth of the kingdom rather than any allegorical identification of the pearl, and Davies-Allison, Luz, France, Nolland, Hagner, Gundry, and Keener all follow; the patristic Christ-as-pearl reading (Origen, Comm. Matt. X.7-10; Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 47.2) is judged pastorally productive but exegetically beyond the parable. On 1 Timothy 2:9 the gold-pearls-costly-clothing triad is a commonplace of Greco-Roman moralist critique (cf. 1 Peter 3:3; Philo, De virtutibus 39; Plutarch, Conjug. praec. 26; Juvenal 6), and commentators divide over whether ostentation (Knight, NIGTC 135-36; Mounce, WBC 46:108-11) or sexual self-display (Marshall, ICC 449-52; Towner, NICNT 205-14, on the "new Roman woman") is the primary target. In Revelation, Aune (WBC 52C:935-38) shows that the harlot's costume conflates the iconography of Dea Roma with the visual profile of a wealthy meretrix, with Beale tracing the Old Testament backgrounds to Ezekiel 28:13 and 16:9-13; Bauckham's analysis of the cargo list of 18:12 (Climax of Prophecy, 350-66) counts twenty-eight items in four blocs, modeled on Ezekiel 27 but updated to first-century Rome, with pearls standing first in agreement with Pliny's price hierarchy. For 21:21 Aune documents the Jewish eschatological parallel at b. Baba Bathra 75a, where gates of Jerusalem are hollowed out of single stones and pearls, with Isaiah 54:11-12 and Tobit 13:16-17 in the background; Beale, Koester, Caird, and Bauckham read the pearl gates as the deliberate reversal of Babylon's hoarded luxury into freely accessible architecture.

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

  • F. W. Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 616lexicon
  • H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with rev. suppl. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 1080lexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), 1:74, section 6.15lexicon
  • F. Hauck, "margarites," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, trans. G. W. Bromiley, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 472-73theological dictionary
  • H. Balz, "margarites," in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. H. Balz and G. Schneider (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 2:388theological dictionary
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), 388lexicon
  • C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, trans. J. D. Ernest (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 2:445-47theological dictionary
  • R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 904-5etymological dictionary
  • P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque, rev. ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2009), s.v. margarosetymological dictionary
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), s.v.lexicon
  • Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 9.54-58 (106-124), trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 353ancient source
  • Suetonius, Divus Julius 43.1, 47, 50.2, trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library 31ancient source
  • L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), sections 35-36, 56, 59monograph
  • M. H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 202-4commentary
  • D. J. A. Clines, Job 21-37, WBC 18A (Nashville: Nelson, 2006), 892, 915commentary
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 892, 1066commentary
  • B. K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 256commentary
  • J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 2nd rev. ed., trans. S. H. Hooke (New York: Scribner, 1972), 198-201monograph
  • W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988-1991), 1:675-83 and 2 ad loc.commentary
  • U. Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, trans. J. E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 355-58commentary
  • J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 323-24, 565-66commentary
  • D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 170-72; Matthew 14-28, WBC 33B (Dallas: Word, 1995), 396commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), ad loc.commentary
  • C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 244commentary
  • M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 200-201monograph
  • I. H. Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 449-52commentary
  • W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (Nashville: Nelson, 2000), 108-11commentary
  • G. W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 135-36commentary
  • P. H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 205-14commentary
  • L. T. Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy, Anchor Bible 35A (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 199-202commentary
  • R. Bauckham, "The Economic Critique of Rome in Revelation 18," in The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 338-83monograph
  • D. E. Aune, Revelation 17-22, WBC 52C (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 935-38, 1165-67commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 854-58, 907-11, 1080-82commentary
  • C. R. Koester, Revelation, Anchor Yale Bible 38A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 673-74, 706-8, 819-20commentary
  • G. B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St John the Divine, HNTC (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 275-79commentary

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

All attested forms of μαργαρίτης

accusative m p

μαργαρίτας

Mat 7:6, Mat 13:45

dative m p

μαργαρίταις

1Ti 2:9, Rev 17:4

accusative m s

μαργαρίτην

Mat 13:46

dative m s

μαργαρίτῃ

Rev 18:16

genitive m p

μαργαριτῶν

Rev 18:12

genitive m s

μαργαρίτου

Rev 21:21

nominative m p

μαργαρῖται

Rev 21:21