StrongerBible

porneuō

πορνεύω

GreekG4203“commit sexual immorality, commit fornication, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Co 6:181Co 10:8 (2×)Rev 2:14Rev 2:20Rev 17:2Rev 18:3Rev 18:9
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studypor-NYOO-ohverb

What porneuō means

1

to commit sexual immorality: to actually engage in sex that falls outside the boundaries the law of Moses set for marriage

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is the verb of a family of Greek words built on the picture of prostitution. The noun (πορνεία) names the immorality itself, and this word names someone actually doing it. It is rare, appearing only eight times in the New Testament, and every time it is something a writer is telling readers to stop or to avoid.

In ordinary Greek the verb was narrower and more concrete: to sell the use of one's own body, which is what a prostitute (πόρνη) did for a living. Jewish writers in the centuries before the New Testament stretched the whole family to cover any sex their Scriptures forbade, so by the time Paul used it the verb reached well past the brothel to adultery, incest, and forbidden marriages.

Two settings account for the uses that describe real sexual conduct. Paul tells the Corinthians to run from it, in a port city where paying a slave prostitute was assumed to be harmless. Then three times the verb stands next to eating food offered to idols: Israel's sin at Peor, Balaam's scheme to trap Israel, and the teaching of the woman called Jezebel at Thyatira. In that second group sexual sin and idol worship are not two problems but one, which is also why this verb slides so easily into a picture of unfaithfulness to God.

Nuances

1ato have sex outside marriage as one's own act, above all by going to a prostitute
1Co 6:18
1bsexual sin bound up with the worship of idols, where sleeping with someone and eating food offered to an idol belong to the same act of unfaithfulness
1Co 10:8 (2×)Rev 2:14Rev 2:20
Rev 2:14

Whether the verb in Revelation 2:14 describes actual sexual conduct at pagan gatherings or is an image for compromising with idolatry.

  • contestedReal sexual behavior is in view, since meals at Hellenistic trade guilds and civic festivals commonly involved sexual revelry, and the verb sits beside the literal eating of food offered to idols.; David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5 (WBC 52A; Word, 1997), 203-208
  • contestedThe verb is primarily figurative here, naming an illicit intimacy with idols rather than a sexual act, in continuity with the prophetic use of harlotry language.; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1999), 248-262
  • contestedThe two readings are not exclusive: the language points at real conduct at pagan meals and works at the same time as an image of unfaithfulness to God.; Craig R. Koester, Revelation (AYBC 38A; Yale University Press, 2014), 285-290
Rev 2:20

Whether the verb in Revelation 2:20 charges the followers of the woman called Jezebel with actual sexual conduct or with religious compromise described in sexual language.

  • contestedReal sexual conduct at trade-guild and civic banquets is in view, alongside the literal eating of food offered to idols.; David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5 (WBC 52A; Word, 1997), 203-208
  • contestedThe verb is primarily figurative, naming an illicit intimacy with idols in continuity with the prophetic harlotry image.; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1999), 248-262
  • minorityThe charge is polemical sexual language aimed at a rival prophet who urged Christians to accommodate themselves to Greek and Roman civic life, not a report of sexual behavior.; Paul B. Duff, Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse (Oxford University Press, 2001), 50-95
2

to be unfaithful to God by binding oneself to a corrupt power, pictured as sleeping with a prostitute

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

Israel's prophets had long described the nation's turn to other gods as a wife's infidelity or a prostitute's trade, and Revelation takes that language up whole. The city called Babylon, which its first readers would have heard as Rome, appears as a great prostitute (πόρνη), and the kings of the earth are said to have slept with her.

No sexual act is being reported. What the kings do is bind themselves to an empire: they accept its protection, share in its worship, and grow rich on its trade. The picture is chosen because abandoning God is a betrayal of the same kind as betraying a spouse, and because what the empire offers, like what a prostitute offers, is bought.

The money is part of the point. In the same chapters the merchants of the earth grow wealthy on her luxury, and when she burns it is the kings and the traders who mourn. The Greek Old Testament had already used this word family this way for a people chasing after other gods, most heavily in Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, so the first readers of Revelation were meeting a familiar image rather than a new one.

Rev 17:2Rev 18:3Rev 18:9

What scholars say about porneuō

The standard reference works agree on the verb's basic force and split it in two: to engage in forbidden sexual activity, and, figuratively, of the worship of other gods (BDAG, s.v.). The Hauck-Schulz article in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament treats the verb with the rest of the word family and stresses that in classical Greek it described the prostitute's own activity rather than the customer's, a point Kyle Harper's 2012 Journal of Biblical Literature article develops at length: the abstract noun was rare in pagan Greek, and the whole family was widened by Greek-speaking Jewish writers under pressure from the prophets and the marriage laws of Leviticus. Liddell-Scott-Jones records the classical range. For the Revelation material the commentary tradition is agreed: Koester's Anchor Yale volume, Aune's Word Biblical Commentary, Beale's NIGTC volume and Bauckham's Climax of Prophecy all read chapters 17 and 18 as metaphor in direct continuity with Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel 16 and 23, sharpened by an economic critique of Roman luxury trade. The live disagreement concerns Revelation 2:14 and 2:20, where Aune leans toward real sexual conduct at trade-guild banquets, Beale toward a figurative sense of illicit intimacy with idols, Duff toward polemical sexual metaphor aimed at a rival prophet, and Koester toward holding both poles together. On 1 Corinthians 6, Murphy-O'Connor dismantled the older picture of sacred prostitution at Corinth: the prostitutes Paul has in view are the ordinary slave prostitutes of a Roman port, and Fee reads 6:18 as Paul's application of that to the body of the believer. On 1 Corinthians 10:8 commentators are agreed that the verb points back to Israel at Peor in Numbers 25, where sexual sin and idol worship are fused.

Sources

  • Friedrich Hauck and Siegfried Schulz, "πόρνη, πόρνος, πορνεία, πορνεύω, ἐκπορνεύω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, 6:579-595dictionary
  • Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. F. W. Danker (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. πορνεύωlexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with revised supplement (Clarendon, 1996), s.v. πορνεύω, πόρνηlexicon
  • Kyle Harper, "Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm," Journal of Biblical Literature 131.2 (2012): 363-383article
  • Craig R. Koester, Revelation (AYBC 38A; Yale University Press, 2014), 285-290, 689-705commentary
  • David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5 (WBC 52A; Word, 1997), 203-208commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1999), 248-262commentary
  • Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (T&T Clark, 1993)monograph
  • Paul B. Duff, Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse (Oxford University Press, 2001), 50-95monograph
  • Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed. (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2014), 259-268, 453-457commentary
  • Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, St. Paul's Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, 3rd ed. (Liturgical Press, 2002), 55-57monograph
  • William Loader, The Septuagint, Sexuality, and the New Testament (Eerdmans, 2004)monograph

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

All attested forms of πορνεύω

aorist active indicative 3p

ἐπόρνευσαν

1Co 10:8, Rev 17:2, Rev 18:3

aorist active infinitive

πορνεῦσαι

Rev 2:14, Rev 2:20

aorist active participle nominative m p

πορνεύσαντες

Rev 18:9

present active participle nominative m s

πορνεύων

1Co 6:18

present active subjunctive 1p

πορνεύωμεν

1Co 10:8