StrongerBible

methē

μέθη

GreekG3178“drunkenness”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Luk 21:34Rom 13:13Gal 5:21
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeMETH-aynoun

What methē means

drunkenness: the state of being drunk, and in the plural the repeated heavy drinking that brings it on

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word names a condition, not a person and not a party. It is what happens to someone who has had far too much to drink: the head heavy, the judgment blurred, the alertness gone. Greek kept a whole set of separate words for the world of heavy drinking, and this one sits at the center of it. The drunkard as a settled type of person had its own word (μέθυσος), so did the drinking binge and its miserable aftermath (κραιπάλη), so did the loud street party that followed the wine (κῶμος), and so did habitual wine-guzzling (οἰνοφλυγία). This word is the intoxication itself.

The two shades of the word come down to counting. In the singular it names one state: being drunk. In the plural it names the occasions, one after another, which is why the standard lexicons render the plural "drinking bouts" or "carousing." English has no comfortable plural for "drunkenness," so translations flatten both into the one word and the picture of a recurring habit quietly fades.

In all three places the word carries a warning about time. Luke sets it beside the ordinary worries of daily life as one of the things that weighs a heart down until it fails to notice the day arriving. Paul drops it into two lists of behavior that belongs to a night nearly over, the way of living that a person is to step out of the way one steps out of yesterday's clothes. The point in each case is attention rather than the chemistry of wine: someone drunk cannot see what is coming.

Nuances

1athe state of being drunk: perception and self-control dulled by too much to drink
TranslatabilityDirect
Luk 21:34
1bdrinking bouts: heavy drinking repeated as a pattern of living
Rom 13:13Gal 5:21

What scholars say about methē

The lexicographical tradition is unanimous on the core sense: the word denotes the state or act of drunkenness, episodic intoxication rather than habitual alcoholism. LSJ groups three classical senses (the intoxicating drink itself in older poetry, e.g. Herodotus 5.20 and Sophocles OT 779; the state of drunkenness, Plato Rep. 363d, Laws 674a, 775b; and in the plural drinking-bouts or carousals, Plato Laws 682e, Judith 13:15, Rom 13:13). BDAG (3rd ed., 625–626) glosses the singular "state of intoxication, drunkenness" and the plural "drinking-bouts, carousing"; Louw-Nida places it at 88.285, "the state of intoxication," distinguished from μέθυσος (88.286, the intoxicated person) and οἰνοφλυγία (88.287, the state of being habitually drunk). The noun is a back-formation from μεθύω, itself built on the Homeric μέθυ ("intoxicating drink," cognate with Sanskrit madhu and Old English medu). Preisker (TDNT 4:545–548) and Spicq trace the group from Homer through the classical moralists, where Plato is famously ambivalent (defending controlled μέθη within the symposium at Laws 637a–b and 666a–674c, mocking μέθη αἰώνιος at Rep. 363d) and Aristotle is not (Nic. Eth. 3.1113b30–1114a3 on double culpability; οἰνοφλυγία among the vices at 3.5), and into the documentary papyri (P.Hal. 1.193; BGU IV.1024), where drunkenness figures as a routine social and legal category. Trench, Synonyms §lxi, established the distinction still followed by BDAG, Louw-Nida, and NIDNTTE: μέθη is the drinking and intoxication, κῶμος the revel that traditionally followed it.

In the Septuagint the word-group renders chiefly שֵׁכָר, שִׁכָּרוֹן, שָׁכַר, and רָוָה, with μέθη itself appearing roughly 24 times; the evaluation is uniformly negative (Gen 9:21; Isa 5:11, 22; 28:1–8; Ezek 23:33; Jer 13:13; Prov 20:1; 23:29–35; Sir 31:25–31, the balanced Second Temple summary that wine in moderation is the life of man but wine drunk ἐν μέθῃ is ruin). The cup-of-wrath strand (Ps 60:5 [LXX 59:5]; Isa 51:17–23; Jer 25:15–29; Ezek 23; Hab 2:16; Jer 51:7 LXX) supplies the imagery reused in Rev 14:10; 16:19; 17:2, 6, as Preisker, Silva's NIDNTTE, and the Revelation commentators (Aune WBC, Beale NIGTC, Koester AYB, Osborne BECNT, Boxall BNTC) all note.

On Luke 21:34 Green (NICNT), Nolland (WBC), Bovon (Hermeneia), Bock (BECNT), Marshall (NIGTC), and Fitzmyer (AB) converge: κραιπάλη (a NT hapax, well attested in Aristophanes and Hippocrates for the drinking-bout and its hangover) plus μέθη plus μέριμναι βιωτικαί make drunkenness the paradigm of unpreparedness for the day, with the παγίς of v. 35 alluding to Isa 24:17 and the dulled heart recalling Isa 6:10. In the two Pauline occurrences the noun is plural, and virtually every major commentator reads the plural as iterative or intensive: Cranfield (ICC 2:688) takes each pair in Rom 13:13 as "one composite idea" and notes that the plural "suggests frequent repetition," with Dunn (WBC), Moo (NICNT), Longenecker (NIGTC), and Schreiner (BECNT) agreeing, while Jewett (Hermeneia) reads the three pairs as a coherent convivium scenario running from drinking-party to street procession to sexual license to violent rivalry, framed by the eschatological contrast of 13:11–12. On Gal 5:21 Betz (Hermeneia) classifies the catalogue as a traditional Hellenistic-Jewish Lasterkatalog with parallels in Philo, Wisdom, 4 Maccabees, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; Bruce (NIGTC) glosses μέθαι "drunken bouts"; Longenecker (WBC) files both terms under vices of intemperance; Martyn (AB) reads the list as diagnostic of the cosmic power of the Flesh without disputing the lexical sense, and the participle πράσσοντες carries the force of habitual practice. Across the paraenetic material the word stands in fixed opposition to νήφω, which Malherbe, Best, Achtemeier, and Elliott read as a metaphor for eschatological watchfulness drawn simultaneously from Jewish apocalyptic and Hellenistic moral philosophy. Philo's coinage μέθη νηφάλιος (Ebr. 146–149), traced by Lewy in Sobria Ebrietas, shows how readily ecstatic experience and intoxication were assimilated in Hellenistic Jewish thought, the datum behind the charge of Acts 2:13 and the antithesis of Eph 5:18.

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

  • H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), s.vv. μέθη, μεθύω, μέθυlexicon
  • Frederick W. Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 625–626lexicon
  • Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: UBS, 1989), 88.284–88.288lexicon
  • Herbert Preisker, "μέθη, μεθύω, μέθυσος, μεθύσκομαι," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 545–548theological-dictionary
  • Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), s.v. μέθη word-grouptheological-dictionary
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, trans. J. D. Ernest (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), vol. 2, s.v. μέθη κτλ.dictionary
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), s.vv. μέθη, μεθύω, μεθύσκωlexicon
  • R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, 9th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1880), §lxireference
  • Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997)commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 780ff.commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X–XXIV, AB 28A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 1355–1358commentary
  • Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996)commentary
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975–79), vol. 2, 688commentary
  • Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007)commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)commentary
  • Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 281–283commentary
  • F. F. Bruce, Commentary on Galatians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 255commentary
  • Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, WBC 41 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 266commentary
  • J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 496–499commentary
  • Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, AB 32B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)commentary
  • John H. Elliott, 1 Peter, AB 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)commentary
  • Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996)commentary
  • Hans Lewy, Sobria Ebrietas: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der antiken Mystik, BZNW 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1929), 43–51monograph
  • Anton Vögtle, Die Tugend- und Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament, NTAbh 16.4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936)monograph
  • Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003)monograph
  • Everett Ferguson, "Wine as a Table-Drink in the Ancient World," Restoration Quarterly 13.3 (1970): 141–153article

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

All attested forms of μέθη

dative f p

μέθαις

Rom 13:13

dative f s

μέθῃ

Luk 21:34

nominative f p

μέθαι

Gal 5:21