StrongerBible

peirasmos

πειρασμός

GreekG3986“temptation, trial, ...”

Appears 21 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 6:13Mat 26:41Mrk 14:38Luk 4:13Luk 8:13Luk 11:4Luk 22:28Luk 22:40Luk 22:46Act 20:191Co 10:13 (2×)Gal 4:141Ti 6:9Heb 3:8Jas 1:2Jas 1:121Pe 1:61Pe 4:122Pe 2:9Rev 3:10
Word studyResearch-gradepay-rahs-MOSSnoun

What peirasmos means

a testing or trial: pressure that reveals whether a person will stay faithful, whether as hardship that proves faith or as enticement that erodes it

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its heart this word names an ordeal: a situation of pressure in which it becomes clear whether a person will stay faithful. English Bibles reach for several words to carry it, mostly "trial," "testing," and "temptation," because no single one covers the whole range.

What gives the word its color is who is doing the testing and why. When God tests his servants, the ordeal is meant to prove and refine them, as with Abraham or Israel in the wilderness. When people test God, the same word turns into rebellion, an attempt to force his hand (the pattern the Old Testament calls Massah). When an enemy tests the faithful, the aim is to pull them away from God altogether. And when a person's own desire does the pulling, the ordeal is felt as an inward enticement to sin. The word itself stays the same; the setting decides its weight.

Running underneath all of this is a further note the first readers would have caught: the Jewish expectation of one great final testing that would come upon the world before the end. Because of it, any severe trial could feel like a foretaste of that last ordeal, which is why texts like the Lord's Prayer and the hour of trial in Revelation reach in that direction.

The practical upshot is that "temptation" is usually the wrong first guess. Far more often the word describes hardship, persecution, or suffering that puts faith to the proof, and the question it raises is not whether someone will feel a forbidden urge but whether they will hold fast.

Nuances

1aan outward ordeal, such as hardship, suffering, or persecution, endured as a test of loyalty to God
Luk 4:13Luk 8:13Luk 22:28Act 20:191Co 10:13 (2×)Gal 4:14Jas 1:2Jas 1:121Pe 1:61Pe 4:122Pe 2:9
1bthe testing that Jesus teaches his followers to pray about, asking to be kept from it or spared from entering it
CertaintyContested
Mat 6:13Mat 26:41Mrk 14:38Luk 11:4Luk 22:40Luk 22:46
Mat 6:13

Whether the Lord's Prayer petition "lead us not into peirasmos" asks to be spared the one climactic end-time ordeal or any everyday trial in which faith might fail.

  • minorityThe petition looks to a single great end-time ordeal; the once-for-all force of the verb and the prayer's apocalyptic frame point to one climactic event.; R. E. Brown, 'The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer,' Theological Studies 22 (1961) 175-208; J. Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (SBT 2/6, 1967) 82-107; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (1996) 292-94
  • majorityThe petition covers any pressure in which fidelity might fail, of which the final ordeal is only the sharpest case.; U. Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. 2007) 322-29; J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC, 2005) 292-94; C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1999) 224-25
1cthe great end-time testing that comes upon the whole world
Rev 3:10
1dprovoking God by demanding that he prove himself, as Israel did in the wilderness
Heb 3:8
1ethe ordeal felt from within, as desire luring a person toward wrongdoing
TranslatabilityApproximate
1Ti 6:9

What scholars say about peirasmos

The noun peirasmos is largely a Jewish-Greek coinage: outside the Septuagint and New Testament it is rare, and the Septuagint minted it to render Hebrew nasah (H5254), the verb of divine testing (Genesis 22, the wilderness, Massah and Meribah). Seesemann in TDNT built the modern consensus on this: peirasmos denotes an ordeal that discloses fidelity, its charge (benign, rebellious, or malicious) fixed by who acts and against whom, not by the word itself. Spicq and Popkes (EDNT) preserve this Septuagint-shaped continuum, whereas Louw-Nida split "test" and "tempt" into separate glosses for translators. BDAG organizes the cognate verb into attempting, testing, entrapping, and enticing. The most-debated crux is the sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer and its Gethsemane parallel: Brown, Jeremias, Wright, and Pitre read an eschatological final ordeal, while Luz, Nolland, France, Marshall, and Keener read any trial of fidelity, and Davies-Allison mediate. Gibson's survey of pre-150 CE usage denies that peirasmos was ever a fixed technical term for the climactic test. For James 1, Davids and Moo argue a shift from external trial (1:2, 1:12) to inner enticement, while Johnson holds the word univocal with only the source of the pressure changing. Revelation 3:10 is the clearest technical use of the final ordeal.

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. Seesemann, 'πεῖρα, πειράω, πειράζω, πειρασμός, ἀπείραστος, ἐκπειράζω,' Theological Dictionary of the New Testament 6 (1968) 23-36theological-dictionary
  • C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (1994) 3.80-91lexicon
  • F. W. Danker (ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG, 3rd ed., 2000) 792-93lexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (1988-89) §§27.46, 88.308lexicon
  • W. Popkes, 'πειράζω, πειρασμός,' Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament 3 (1993) 64-67theological-dictionary
  • J. B. Gibson, The Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity (JSNTSup 112, 1995)monograph
  • R. E. Brown, 'The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer,' Theological Studies 22 (1961) 175-208article
  • U. Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. 2007) 322-29commentary
  • P. H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC, 1982) 65-68, 80-83commentary
  • L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A, 1995) 176-79, 193-95commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC, 1999) 290-93commentary

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

All attested forms of πειρασμός

accusative m s

πειρασμόν, πειρασμὸν

Mat 6:13, Mat 26:41, Mrk 14:38, Luk 11:4, Luk 22:40, Luk 22:46, Jas 1:12, Luk 4:13

genitive m s

πειρασμοῦ

Luk 8:13, Heb 3:8, 2Pe 2:9, Rev 3:10

dative m p

πειρασμοῖς

Luk 22:28, Jas 1:2, 1Pe 1:6

dative m s

πειρασμῷ

1Co 10:13

genitive m p

πειρασμῶν

Act 20:19

nominative m s

πειρασμὸς

1Co 10:13