to translate a foreign word or saying into the reader's own language, handing over its plain equivalent rather than explaining it
This word does one job in the New Testament, and it always does it the same way. A writer quotes a Hebrew or Aramaic word, then stops the sentence to tell readers what it says in their own language. Seven of its eight appearances use the identical formula, "which, translated, is ...", set off from the story like a footnote dropped into the middle of a line.
What gets carried across is short, and the pattern is easy to see:
- a name and the promise inside it: Immanuel, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23)
- a place name outside the city wall: Golgotha, "the place of a skull" (Mark 15:22)
- a title people used for Jesus: Rabbi, "Teacher" (John 1:38), and Messiah, "Christ" (John 1:41)
- a nickname the apostles gave a man: Barnabas, "son of encouragement" (Acts 4:36)
- a whole sentence spoken out loud: the two words Jesus says to a dead girl (Mark 5:41) and his cry from the cross (Mark 15:34)
It is the narrowest word in a small Greek family for moving between languages. The broader verb (διερμηνεύω) can also mean opening up a difficult text or making Spirit-given speech intelligible to a gathering, and the plain verb (ἑρμηνεύω) does this same translating work in a handful of other verses while keeping the wider range. This word never stretches to explaining or expounding. It swaps one language for another and stops there.
Because these asides keep the original words and only then translate them, they are among the few places where the Gospels preserve the actual sound of what was said and hand the reader its meaning in the same breath.