to put out a fire or flame, or (of a fire or lamp) to go out
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is the ordinary Greek word for a fire stopping. It works in two directions. Someone can put a fire out, as when a shield smothers a burning arrow, and a fire or lamp can simply go out on its own once the fuel or the oil runs down. The same verb covers both, so the context tells you whether a fire was stamped out or just died.
Because fire and lamplight carry so much weight in the New Testament, the word turns up at some charged moments:
a shield of faith smothering the burning arrows aimed at a believer
lamps that die out for want of oil at exactly the wrong moment
a smoldering wick that a gentle servant refuses to pinch out
the fire of judgment that nobody puts out, in a line borrowed from Isaiah
Paul takes the picture one step further and tells a church not to put out the Spirit, treating the Spirit's work among them as a flame that people can damp down. That is the only place the word leaves literal fire behind, and it works only because everyone already knew the everyday sense. Alongside the verb the New Testament also uses the matching adjective "unquenchable" (ἄσβεστος) for a fire no one can put out.
Nuances
1asomeone puts out a fire or flame that is burning
Mat 12:20Eph 6:16Heb 11:34
1ba fire or lamp goes out and stops burning
Mat 25:8Mrk 9:44*Mrk 9:46*Mrk 9:48
1cto damp down something living and active, the way a fire is put out
It names the act of putting something out, so it takes an agent: someone or something does the extinguishing, or fails to. People smother the force of a fire, and a shield stops flaming arrows dead.Heb 11:34Eph 6:16
It reaches well past judgment fire to ordinary lights and small flames: lamps running out of oil at a wedding, and a smoldering wick that is spared instead of pinched out.Mat 25:8Mat 12:20
Because it is something a person can do, it becomes a picture of how believers treat God's work among them, warning them not to smother what the Spirit is doing.1Th 5:19
Both
Both belong to the same picture of a fire that will not go out, and Mark's warning uses them side by side: first the fire called "unquenchable", then the same fire described as one that is never put out.Mrk 9:43Mrk 9:48
Both assume the same everyday fact, that fire normally can be put out, and both get their force from a case where it is not: the chaff fire that keeps burning, and the furnace whose power was stopped.Mat 3:12Heb 11:34
It is a description of the fire itself, a settled quality the fire has, not something anyone does to it. The fire is simply that kind of fire, whether or not anyone ever tries to put it out.Mat 3:12Luk 3:17
Every use of it is a warning about the fire of final judgment. It never describes an ordinary flame, a lamp, or anything a person handles in daily life.Mrk 9:43Mrk 9:45Mat 3:12
It works as a label attached to the word "fire" in a single phrase, so translators render it with one adjective such as "unquenchable" and the reader meets it as a name for a place or a fate rather than as an event unfolding.Luk 3:17Mrk 9:45
ἀναζωπυρέωthe opposite move, fanning a dying flame back into life, used for stirring up a gift that has gone quiet
Names the act of putting a fire out or keeping it from catching, and stretches to suppressing something alive in a person. It is used for quenching the flaming arrows of the enemy with the shield of faith, and for the warning not to quench the work of the Spirit.Eph 6:161Th 5:19
Reaches into the idea of a fire that cannot be put out at all, picturing a judgment that does not stop. The Gospels describe the fire that is never quenched.Mrk 9:48Mat 25:8
Both
Both words picture a real flame and a person acting on its life, so each only makes sense against the same image of a fire that can either be revived or die out. One word fans the dim flame back up while the other gently refuses to snuff out a flame already barely burning.2Ti 1:6Mat 12:20
Names the act of coaxing a weakening flame back to full strength, the very opposite of putting it out. Paul uses it for reviving a gift that has gone quiet, telling Timothy to fan into flame the gift God gave him.2Ti 1:6
sbennumi in the other biblical languages
כָּבָהHebrew“to quench”the Hebrew verb standing behind most of these images, covering both a fire going out on its own and a fire being put out
The Greek word reaches past literal fire to the work of God's Spirit among believers, who are told not to damp down what he is doing in their gathering.1Th 5:19
It covers stopping fire from doing its damage in the middle of an attack, rather than a fire simply dying down: burning arrows caught and put out by a shield, and flames stripped of their power to harm the people thrown into them.Eph 6:16Heb 11:34
Both
Both words name the plain physical event behind every figure built on them: a flame fails once its fuel is gone, whether the wood under a fire or the oil in a lamp.Pro 26:20Mat 25:8
Both describe the fire of final judgment as one that never goes out, and the New Testament phrase is built directly on the Old Testament one: the closing line of Isaiah about fire that is not put out is taken up word for word in Mark.Isa 66:24Ezk 20:47Mrk 9:48
The Greek word is the natural stand in for the Hebrew one when the Old Testament is quoted: Isaiah's promise that the servant will not snuff out a smoldering wick is repeated in Matthew, with each language using its own ordinary word for putting a flame out.Isa 42:3Mat 12:20
The Hebrew word carries a standing picture of a person's life or family line as a small flame that must not be put out, as when a widow pleads that her last surviving son not be snuffed out, or when David's men refuse to let the lamp of Israel go dark.2Sa 14:72Sa 21:17
It names a fire that people are charged with keeping alive, so that letting it die is itself the failure: the altar fire that was never to go out, the sanctuary lamp still burning through the night, and the lamps a neglectful generation had shut off.Lev 6:12Lev 6:131Sa 3:32Ch 29:7
It is the regular word for God's anger itself as the thing that burns, poured out with no one able to put it out, where the burning subject is the anger rather than a fire or a lamp.2Ki 22:17Jer 7:20Jer 21:12Amo 5:6
It is used once of love as a flame that no amount of water can put out, a comparison the Greek word never draws.Sng 8:7
דָּעַךְHebrew“to put out”a Hebrew verb for a light guttering and dying down, leaning toward a lamp that fails on its own rather than a fire someone puts out
Takes a person as the one doing the quenching: someone actively puts the fire out, so it is normally transitive. A believer quenches the flaming arrows of the enemy, and is warned not to quench the Spirit.Eph 6:161Th 5:19
Stretches well beyond a literal flame into spiritual reality: the Spirit of God can be "quenched" and the assault of temptation can be "quenched", using the image of dousing a fire for what a person does to God's work or to an attack.1Th 5:19Eph 6:16
Names the fire that specifically CANNOT be put out: the "unquenchable" fire of final judgment, where the point is precisely that no one succeeds in extinguishing it.Mrk 9:44Mrk 9:48
Both
Both describe a real flame being put out. The Greek word covers fire whose violence was quenched, and the Hebrew word covers a blaze of thorns quenched as quickly as it flared.Heb 11:34Psa 118:12
Both picture a small light dying down: a lamp or wick failing. The Greek word describes lamps that are going out for lack of oil, and the Hebrew word describes the lamp above a person's tent that fades to dark.Mat 25:8Job 18:6
Belongs to a fixed poetic picture: the lamp or light of the wicked going out. It is the wisdom image for a wrongdoer's life and prosperity being snuffed, and the word keeps returning to that one scene.Job 18:5Pro 13:9Pro 24:20
Reaches past fire to things that simply vanish or dry up: desert streams that disappear when the heat comes are said to be "put out", so the word can mean fading away, not only a flame dying.Job 6:17
What scholars say about sbennumi
BDAG divides σβέννυμι into a literal sense, "extinguish, put out," used of fire (Heb 11:34), of the flaming missiles of Eph 6:16 and the smoldering wick of Mt 12:20, with the passive "go out" of the lamps at Mt 25:8 and of the fire at Mk 9:48; and a figurative sense, "stifle, suppress," for τὸ πνεῦμα μὴ σβέννυτε at 1 Th 5:19. LSJ documents the same transitive and intransitive range across classical and Hellenistic Greek, including figurative uses of quenching anger or desire, so the Pauline usage is idiomatic rather than novel. The Markan refrain reproduces Isa 66:24 in its Greek form, where σβέννυμι renders כבה, which is why the Hebrew verb and this one line up so closely. Metzger's textual commentary records the strong external evidence that Mk 9:44 and 9:46 are a later assimilation to v. 48: both are absent from the principal Alexandrian and Western witnesses and are printed only in the Byzantine tradition.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. σβέννυμιlexicon
LSJ, s.v. σβέννυμιlexicon
Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (1994), on Mark 9:44, 46textual-commentary