StrongerBible

metamellomai

μεταμέλλομαι

GreekG3338“repent, regret, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 21:29Mat 21:32Mat 27:32Co 7:8 (2×)Heb 7:21
Compound of
metaμετάwith/after477G3326
melōμέλωto concern10G3199
Names & words formed with this
Word studymet-am-EL-oh-myverb

What metamellomai means

to wish undone something you have already done or decided: to be sorry about it, or to take it back

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is the word for second thoughts. Something has already been said, done, or settled, and now the person wishes it were otherwise. Sometimes that shows up as sorrow over the deed, sometimes as a flat reversal of the decision, and the same verb covers both.

Its five New Testament passages spread across a range wider than any single English word:

  • A son who told his father no changes his mind and goes out to the vineyard anyway.
  • Judas, seeing Jesus condemned, is sick over what he has done and tries to hand the money back.
  • Paul says he is not sorry he sent a letter that hurt the Corinthians, though for a while he was.
  • Hebrews quotes God's oath about his priest: he has sworn, and he will not take it back.

The old rule that this word means mere regret while the New Testament's usual verb for repentance (μετανοέω) means the real thing is too tidy. Judas did feel this and it took him nowhere good, and Paul does distinguish worldly grief from the sorrow that produces a turning. But in the parable the son who has these second thoughts actually goes and works, and when Jesus tells the religious leaders they never had them about John the Baptist, he means they never came around to believing him. So this word can name a change of heart that goes all the way through. What it does not do on its own is name the whole-life turning to God that the good news calls for.

Hebrews puts the word to a different use. Quoting Psalm 110:4, it says the Lord swore and will not take his oath back, standing where the Hebrew has its own word for relenting (נָחַם). Applied to God, the word is denied: his commitment to this priest is not the kind of decision that gets revisited.

Nuances

1abeing sorry for something you yourself have done, wishing it undone
TranslatabilityApproximate
Mat 27:32Co 7:8 (2×)
Mat 27:3

Whether Judas's response here amounts to repentance or only to remorse, and whether Matthew's choice of this verb rather than the ordinary verb for repentance is meant to mark the difference.

  • contestedMatthew chose this verb deliberately. Judas was sorry and tried to undo the deed, but he went to the chief priests rather than to God and then to his own death, so the word marks remorse that stops short of repentance.; Trench, R. C., Synonyms of the New Testament, §lxix ("μετανοέω, μεταμέλομαι"); Davies, W. D., and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 3 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), on Matthew 27:3
  • contestedThe two verbs are not sharply divided in the New Testament, so the word choice cannot carry that weight on its own; the verb states only that Judas had a change of heart about the betrayal, and the narrative, not the lexicon, shows where it led.; Michel, O., "μεταμέλομαι, ἀμεταμέλητος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 4, pp. 626-629; Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), s.v. μεταμέλομαι
1bchanging your mind about a position you had taken, and acting on the change
Mat 21:29Mat 21:32
1cgoing back on a sworn commitment, which is what God is said never to do
TranslatabilityApproximate
Heb 7:21

What scholars say about metamellomai

The lexica define the verb narrowly. BDAG gives it as having regrets about something in the sense that one wishes it could be undone, and lists Hebrews 7:21 separately for the use with God as subject, where it means to change one's mind about an oath. LSJ supplies the classical range: to feel regret, to repent of, to change one's mind. Otto Michel's TDNT article treats the verb together with its negated adjective ametameletos and stresses that in the New Testament it stays close to the reversal of a particular decision rather than the theological turning carried by metanoeo, and that its five occurrences are distributed between Matthean narrative, Pauline self-reference, and a scriptural quotation. The long-running question is whether that boundary is lexical. R. C. Trench's Synonyms argued for a firm distinction and took Judas as the standing example of regret that is not repentance; the contrast appears to be reinforced by 2 Corinthians 7, where Paul uses this verb of his own letter in v. 8, metanoia of the Corinthians' response in vv. 9 and 10, and the derived adjective ametameletos of the resulting salvation in v. 10. Against a hard split, interpreters point to Matthew 21:29, where the verb issues directly in obedience, and Matthew 21:32, where its denial stands where a refusal to repent and believe is meant; BDAG and Michel accordingly locate the difference in context rather than in the words themselves, and Louw and Nida place the verb in the domain of changing one's mind about a course of action. On Hebrews 7:21 Attridge notes that the clause reproduces Psalm 110:4 in the Greek Old Testament, where the verb renders Hebrew nacham, so the negated form belongs to the scriptural language of divine relenting, here withheld from the priestly oath (compare the same denial in 1 Samuel 15:29 and Psalm 132:11). On 2 Corinthians 7:8 Thrall and Harris discuss the crux of the doubled clause, whether ei kai metemelomen looks back to the sending of the letter or forward to the sentence that follows, and how the imperfect relates to the preceding present denial. Matthew 21:28 to 31 also carries a tangled textual history, with three main arrangements of the two sons in the manuscript tradition as set out by Metzger; the verb attaches in each arrangement to the son who reverses his refusal.

Where scholars disagree about metamellomai

Whether this verb is lexically distinct from the ordinary New Testament verb for repentance, so that it names only regret, or whether the two overlap and the difference is carried by context.

  • contestedThe two are genuinely distinct: this verb names sorrow or regret over a past act, a change of feeling that need not lead anywhere, while the other names the turning of the whole person to God. The New Testament writers keep them apart, as the account of Judas and Paul's contrast between worldly grief and the sorrow that produces a turning both show.; Trench, R. C., Synonyms of the New Testament, §lxix ("μετανοέω, μεταμέλομαι"); Davies, W. D., and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 3 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), on Matthew 27:3
  • contestedThe two verbs overlap. This one can name a real change of heart that issues in obedience, as the parable of the two sons shows, and Matthew uses it where a call to repentance is plainly in view. The difference between the words is a matter of context and subject matter, not of built-in lexical content.; Michel, O., "μεταμέλομαι, ἀμεταμέλητος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 4, pp. 626-629; Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), s.v. μεταμέλομαι

Sources

  • Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG), 3rd ed., s.v. μεταμέλομαιlexicon
  • Liddell, H. G., R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ), 9th ed., s.v. μεταμέλομαιlexicon
  • Louw, J. P., and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. μεταμέλομαιlexicon
  • Michel, O., "μεταμέλομαι, ἀμεταμέλητος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 4, pp. 626-629theological-dictionary
  • Trench, R. C., Synonyms of the New Testament, §lxix ("μετανοέω, μεταμέλομαι")monograph
  • Davies, W. D., and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 3 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997)commentary
  • Luz, U., Matthew 21-28 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005)commentary
  • Attridge, H. W., The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), on Hebrews 7:20-22commentary
  • Thrall, M. E., The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. 1 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), on 2 Corinthians 7:8commentary
  • Harris, M. J., The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), on 2 Corinthians 7:8commentary
  • Metzger, B. M., A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994), on Matthew 21:28-31textual-commentary

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

All attested forms of μεταμέλλομαι

aorist passive participle nominative m s

μεταμεληθεὶς

Mat 21:29, Mat 27:3

aorist passive indicative 2p

μετεμελήθητε

Mat 21:32

future passive indicative 3s

μεταμεληθήσεται

Heb 7:21

imperfect middle-or-passive indicative 1s

μετεμελόμην

2Co 7:8

present middle-or-passive indicative 1s

μεταμέλομαι

2Co 7:8