StrongerBible

pleonexia

πλεονεξία

GreekG4124“greed, covetousness, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mrk 7:22Luk 12:15Rom 1:292Co 9:5Eph 4:19Eph 5:3Col 3:51Th 2:52Pe 2:32Pe 2:14
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradepleh-on-ex-EE-ahnoun

What pleonexia means

grasping for more: the restless drive to have more than one's fair share, always at someone else's expense

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The word is built from the Greek for "more" and "to have," so at root it means "having-more-ness": the drive to grasp more than one's rightful portion. What sets it apart from a broader word for craving (ἐπιθυμία), and from the love of money that simply hoards (φιλαργυρία), is that this word is measured against other people. To want more is to want more than someone else has, or more than is fair, so the greedy person's gain is always another's loss.

That relational core lets the word swing between two poles that were never really separate in the ancient mind. It can name an inward appetite, the insatiable heart that always wants more, and it can name the outward act, the defrauding or extortion by which that appetite reaches out and takes. English usually needs different words for the two ("greed" for the disposition, "extortion" for the deed), which is one reason a single translation never quite holds the whole word.

Its most startling turn is theological. Twice the New Testament flatly calls greed idolatry (Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 5:5), singling it out from the sins around it. The background is a Jewish conviction, already old by Paul's day, that whatever you love, trust, and serve above God has become your god, and for most people that rival is money. So this is not a minor fault in the biblical picture but a diagnosis of the heart: the quiet drive to have more is the drive to be one's own god.

Nuances

1athe vice of greed: the insatiable craving to have more than one has any right to
TranslatabilityApproximate
Luk 12:15Rom 1:29Eph 4:19Eph 5:3Col 3:51Th 2:52Pe 2:32Pe 2:14
1ba concrete act of greedy taking: defrauding or extortion that wrings gain out of someone else
Mrk 7:222Co 9:5

Disputed

Whether πλεονεξία carries a sexual sense (a grasping lust for what belongs to another) when Paul lists it beside sexual sins, or always denotes economic greed as a separate vice.

  • majorityIt denotes material greed even in these lists; Paul moves from sexual sins to a distinct sin of acquisitiveness, mirroring the Jewish grouping of idolatry, sexual sin, and greed.; Brian S. Rosner, Greed as Idolatry (Eerdmans, 2007), ch. 8; Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC 42, 1990); Ernest Best, Ephesians (ICC, 1998)
  • minorityIn the immediate context of sexual immorality the word shades into a sexual grasping, coveting a neighbor's spouse alongside the goods of the tenth commandment.; T. K. Abbott, Ephesians and Colossians (ICC, 1897); Markus Barth, Ephesians (Anchor Bible, 1974)

What scholars say about pleonexia

Gerhard Delling's TDNT article (6:266-274) traces the word-group from "having more" to "wanting more," with the abstract noun denoting the vice and its cognates the greedy person and the act of defrauding. BDAG glosses it "the state of desiring to have more than one's due," noting a shading toward "an act of covetousness, rapacity" in some Pauline texts, and Louw-Nida formally splits the noun (a desire, domain 25) from the verb (to exploit, domain 88). R. C. Trench's Synonyms distinguished this active grasping from the money-love that hoards (φιλαργυρία), a distinction refined by Lightfoot. In classical usage, documented by Balot's Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens, the term is the standing antithesis of justice (Plato, Aristotle's πλεονέκτης in Nicomachean Ethics V, Thucydides on civil war). The Septuagint fused it with Hebrew בֶּצַע (unjust gain), importing the prophetic protest of Jeremiah 22:17, Ezekiel 22:27, and Habakkuk 2:9. Second Temple witnesses (Philo, Spec. Leg. 1.21-27; Testament of Judah 19:1; the Qumran "nets of Belial") already treated love of money as functional idolatry, the background Brian Rosner's Greed as Idolatry (2007) argues stands behind Paul's identification of greed with idolatry in Colossians 3:5 and Ephesians 5:5. Two debates recur: why Paul equates greed with idolatry (money-as-god versus the broader displacement of God's rightful claim), and whether the word means economic or sexual grasping when it stands beside sexual sins, on which the modern majority (Rosner, Lincoln, Best) reads it as economic. Bauckham's commentary treats its double use in 2 Peter 2:3, 14 as classic polemic against false teachers who exploit congregations for gain.

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

  • Gerhard Delling, "πλεονέκτης, πλεονεκτέω, πλεονεξία," TDNT 6:266-274dictionary
  • BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. πλεονεξίαlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains (1988/1996), 25.22; 88.144lexicon
  • R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, section xxivlexicon
  • Brian S. Rosner, Greed as Idolatry: The Origin and Meaning of a Pauline Metaphor (Eerdmans, 2007)monograph
  • Ryan K. Balot, Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (Princeton, 2001)monograph
  • Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC 42, 1990)commentary
  • James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC, 1996)commentary
  • Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (WBC 50, 1983)commentary

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

All attested forms of πλεονεξία

dative f s

πλεονεξίᾳ

Rom 1:29, Eph 4:19, 2Pe 2:3

genitive f s

πλεονεξίας

Luk 12:15, 1Th 2:5, 2Pe 2:14

accusative f s

πλεονεξίαν

2Co 9:5, Col 3:5

nominative f p

πλεονεξίαι

Mrk 7:22

nominative f s

πλεονεξία

Eph 5:3