StrongerBible

misthos

μισθός

GreekG3408“wages, reward, ...”

Appears 29 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 5:12Mat 5:46Mat 6:1Mat 6:2Mat 6:5Mat 6:16Mat 10:41 (2×)Mat 10:42Mat 20:8Mrk 9:41Luk 6:23Luk 6:35Luk 10:7Jhn 4:36Act 1:18Rom 4:41Co 3:81Co 9:181Ti 5:18Jas 5:4Jud 1:11Rev 22:12
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-grademis-THOSSnoun

What misthos means

1

wages: the pay a worker earns for labor done

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is the plain marketplace word for a wage. In the everyday Greek of the New Testament era it named the cash a weaver, a hired hand, a soldier, or a day laborer received for work, usually at an agreed rate written into a contract. It is the money a poor laborer needed in hand by nightfall to eat.

The New Testament uses it in exactly this ordinary way:

  • the householder pays his vineyard workers their wage at the end of the day
  • the worker deserves his pay
  • God hears the cry of harvest hands whose wages have been held back

Because a wage is something owed, the same word can carry a dark twist when the pay is earned by wrongdoing. Scripture speaks of the "wages of unrighteousness," the ill-gotten gain a Judas or a Balaam collects for betrayal or greed. The pay is real, but so is the guilt that comes with it.

Nuances

1athe pay owed to a worker for work done
Mat 20:8Luk 10:7Jhn 4:36Rom 4:41Co 9:171Co 9:181Ti 5:18Jas 5:4
1bill-gotten gain: money earned by wrongdoing
Act 1:182Pe 2:132Pe 2:15Jud 1:11
2

reward: what God gives back in answer to how a person has lived

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Built on the everyday word for wages, this is the New Testament's word for divine recompense, what God repays a person for the way they have lived. The picture keeps the shape of the marketplace: God is the faithful employer who keeps honest books and pays his servants in full, but the payment is his to give, often kept for the future, and far larger than anything earned.

Jesus uses it most. The persecuted have a great reward waiting in heaven; those who give or pray or fast to be seen by others have already collected their reward and can expect nothing further. Even a cup of cold water given to a disciple does not lose its reward. Paul promises that work which survives God's testing fire will be rewarded, though the worker is saved either way. Revelation ends with the returning Christ announcing, "My reward is with me, to repay each one according to what they have done."

Scholars debate how this fits with grace, since the New Testament also insists salvation is a free gift. The older view treated reward language as something Jesus and Paul kept only to overturn it. Most scholars today read it differently: God genuinely repays his people for faithful lives, yet always within a relationship he began by grace, so reward and gift are not rivals. The word is not an embarrassment the writers tried to explain away; they were simply careful about whose reward it was.

Nuances

2athe reward God will give for a faithful or good life
Mat 5:12Mat 5:46Mat 10:41 (2×)Mat 10:42Mrk 9:41Luk 6:23Luk 6:351Co 3:81Co 3:142Jn 1:8Rev 11:18Rev 22:12
2bthe empty reward of those who do good only to be seen
Mat 6:1Mat 6:2Mat 6:5Mat 6:16

Disputed

Whether the New Testament's reward language is fully compatible with salvation by grace, or names an alternative economy of merit that stands in tension with grace.

  • majorityReward and grace are not antithetical: God repays deeds within a covenant relationship he initiated by grace, so judgment according to works coheres with justification by faith. This post-Sanders reading is now the scholarly mainstream (Yinger; N. T. Wright; Donfried's already/not-yet structure).; Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds (SNTSMS 105, 1999)
  • minorityJesus and Paul retained the vocabulary of reward chiefly in order to subvert and dissolve a Jewish merit scheme, so that the word survives only as paradox or relic against grace.; Hans Preisker, "μισθός," TDNT IV.695-728
  • contestedThe Second Temple and New Testament writers held a genuinely economic conception of righteousness in which faithful labor and cross-bearing accrue real heavenly capital, while the relationship to God stays gracious because creation itself is gift.; Nathan Eubank, Wages of Cross-Bearing and Debt of Sin (BZNW 196, De Gruyter 2013)

What scholars say about misthos

Every major lexicon recognizes a bipolar structure for μισθός: (1) hire, pay, wages, and (2) recompense, reward, especially from God. LSJ divides the word into hire/pay and recompense; BDAG condenses to remuneration for work and divine recognition for the moral quality of an action, with Danker's gloss "recognition" deliberately softening merit; Louw-Nida alone splits it into two lexical entries in two semantic domains (57.173 pay/wages; 38.14 reward). Documentary papyri (Moulton-Milligan; Spicq) establish the everyday wage register (P.Fay. 91.23 τὸν ἡμερήσιον μισθόν; P.Oxy. IV 724 apprenticeship contract), and Rathbone's study of the Heroninos archive shows μισθός characteristically denoted the casual-labor wage as against ὀψώνιον for standing salary. In the LXX it renders chiefly שָׂכָר and carries the reward tradition of Gen 15:1, Ruth 2:12, and the eschatological doublet Isa 40:10 / 62:11, cited at Rev 22:12. The grace-reward debate splits the literature: the older Lutheran-Bultmannian reading (Preisker in TDNT) treats NT reward as subverted merit; the post-Sanders covenantal-nomism mainstream (Yinger; Wright; Donfried) holds reward and grace non-antithetical; and a newer theo-economic school (Eubank, Anderson, Wagner) reads a genuinely economic righteousness within prior grace. James Barr's warning against illegitimate totality transfer underwrites the consensus that the everyday-wage verses (Matt 20:8; Luke 10:7; 1 Tim 5:18; Jas 5:4; Jude 11; 2 Pet 2:15) must not be loaded with eschatological freight.

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

  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. μισθόςlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. μισθόςlexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 38.14 and 57.173lexicon
  • Hans Preisker and Ernst Würthwein, "μισθός," TDNT IV.695-728lexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (ET 1994), s.v. μισθόςlexicon
  • Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, p. 413lexicon
  • Nathan Eubank, Wages of Cross-Bearing and Debt of Sin (BZNW 196, De Gruyter 2013)monograph
  • Gary A. Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (Yale, 2013)monograph
  • Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds (SNTSMS 105, 1999)monograph
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia)commentary
  • Dominic Rathbone, Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third-Century A.D. Egypt (Cambridge, 1991)monograph

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

All attested forms of μισθός

accusative m s

μισθὸν

Mat 5:46, Mat 6:1, Mat 6:2, Mat 6:5, Mat 6:16, Mat 10:41, Mat 10:41, Mat 10:42

nominative m s

μισθὸς, μισθός

Mat 5:12, Luk 6:23, Luk 6:35, Rom 4:4, Jas 5:4, 1Co 9:18, Rev 22:12

genitive m s

μισθοῦ

Luk 10:7, Act 1:18, 1Ti 5:18, Jud 1:11