StrongerBible

spendō

σπένδω

GreekG4689“poured out as a drink offering, offered”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Php 2:172Ti 4:6
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradeSPEN-dohverb

What spendō means

to pour out as a drink offering: to be poured out like wine spilled before God as an offering

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

In ordinary Greek life this was the most common act of worship there was: before drinking, a person poured a little wine from the cup onto the ground or an altar as a small gift to a god. The Old Testament had the same gesture. Alongside the main animal offering, an Israelite poured out wine at the base of the altar, and the Greek translation of the Old Testament used this very word for it. So the word carried a worship meaning that any reader, Jewish or not, would recognize: a measure of wine poured out and given up.

Paul uses the word only twice, and in both places he turns it on himself. He is not the priest doing the pouring; he is the wine being poured. In Philippians he pictures the Christians' faith as the real offering and his own life as the drink offering poured out on top of it, the small extra portion that goes with the larger gift. In Second Timothy he says the pouring is already happening and his death is near. The shade of meaning is the same in both: a life given up and poured out in service to God and to others.

Two things give the picture its weight. First, the form Paul uses means he is being poured out, not that he is pouring. Someone else holds the cup, and that someone is God. Paul's part is simply to be willingly emptied. Second, this is a picture of devotion, not of paying for sin. Scholars are agreed that Paul is not calling his death a sacrifice that takes away sin (he reserves that for the death of Christ); he is describing a life freely spent for the gospel and for the churches he served.

Php 2:172Ti 4:6

What scholars say about spendō

The lexica (BDAG, LSJ, Louw-Nida domain 53, EDNT) agree on the basic sense: to pour out a libation (a drink offering). The verb is one of the oldest religious terms in Greek, denoting the ubiquitous pouring of wine before drinking (Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus; Burkert, Greek Religion, 70-75); the middle developed the sense "make a treaty," since libations ratified oaths. The Septuagint adopted it for the Israelite drink offering, Hebrew נֶסֶךְ/נָסַךְ (Num 15; 28-29), so the word carried both a Greco-Roman and a Levitical home. Otto Michel's TDNT article (7:528-536) traces the trajectory classical Greek to LXX to Hellenistic Judaism to the NT; the Maccabean martyr theology (4 Macc 6:28-29; 17:21-22; van Henten 1997, deSilva 2006) supplies the matrix for reading a faithful death in cultic terms. On Philippians 2:17, since Lightfoot the dominant reading takes the believers as priests offering the sacrifice of their faith, with Paul the libation poured alongside (O'Brien NIGTC, Fee NICNT, Hawthorne WBC, Hansen Pillar, Bockmuehl BNTC). On 2 Timothy 4:6 nearly all commentators read the libation as the announcement of imminent death (Lock ICC, Knight NIGTC, Mounce WBC, Marshall ICC, Johnson AYB, Towner NICNT). Scholars broadly agree the libation is a paradigmatic, not atoning, self-offering, connected to Romans 12:1, and that the passive form makes God the implicit agent (Bernard, Expositor's Greek Testament; Hawthorne, WBC). The closest extra-biblical parallels are Ignatius (Romans 2.2) and Seneca's death (Tacitus, Annals 15.64), the latter differing in voice (Seneca actively libates himself; Paul is libated).

Where scholars disagree about spendō

Whether Paul's libation language in Philippians 2:17 draws primarily on the Israelite drink offering (poured beside the altar) or on the everyday Greco-Roman libation (poured over the victim), or is deliberately meant to evoke both at once.

  • contestedPrimarily Jewish: Paul's frame is the Greek Old Testament, and the surrounding worship vocabulary in the verse is unmistakably that of the Jerusalem temple.; Gerald F. Hawthorne, Philippians (WBC 43; Word, 1983), ad 2:17; Peter T. O'Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1991), ad 2:17
  • contestedPrimarily Greco-Roman: Philippi was a Roman colony with a largely Gentile church, and the wording fits the pagan practice of pouring wine over the sacrifice.; J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (Macmillan, 1868), ad 2:17; Markus Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians (BNTC; Hendrickson, 1998), ad 2:17
  • contestedDeliberately both: the word lived in both worlds of worship, and the image draws its power from that double resonance.; William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC 46; Thomas Nelson, 2000); Gregory E. Lamb, Living and Dying Well in Philippians (WUNT II; Mohr Siebeck, 2024)

Whether Paul means his imminent death (martyrdom) or his ongoing daily ministry when he says he is being poured out in Philippians 2:17.

  • majorityIt anticipates Paul's possible execution, read alongside the death language earlier in the letter and the parallel in 2 Timothy 4:6.; J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (Macmillan, 1868), ad 2:17; Markus Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians (BNTC; Hendrickson, 1998), ad 2:17
  • minorityThe present-tense verb describes Paul's continuing, daily apostolic labor as itself a poured-out life, not a future death.; Richard B. Gaffin Jr., "Poured Out Like a Drink Offering: An Ordination Sermon" (OPC, 2021)
  • majorityAn integrative reading: Paul is being poured out now, and the process may end in execution, but the image is not narrowly fixed on the moment of death.; Gordon D. Fee, Paul's Letter to the Philippians (NICNT; Eerdmans, 1995), 252-255; Peter T. O'Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1991), ad 2:17
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 (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich, 3rd ed., 2000), 937, s.v. σπένδωlexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. σπένδω, σπονδήlexicon
  • Otto Michel, "σπένδω, σπονδή," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich (Eerdmans, 1971), 7:528-536lexicon
  • H. Balz and G. Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1993), 3:264lexicon
  • Peter T. O'Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1991), ad 2:17commentary
  • Gordon D. Fee, Paul's Letter to the Philippians (NICNT; Eerdmans, 1995), 252-255commentary
  • Gerald F. Hawthorne, Philippians (WBC 43; Word, 1983), 104-106commentary
  • Walter Lock, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (ICC; T&T Clark, 1924), ad 2 Tim 4:6commentary
  • George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1992), ad 2 Tim 4:6commentary
  • William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC 46; Thomas Nelson, 2000), ad 2 Tim 4:6commentary
  • J. H. Bernard, The Pastoral Epistles, in The Expositor's Greek Testament (Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), ad 2 Tim 4:6commentary
  • Jan Willem van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviours of the Jewish People (JSJSup 57; Brill, 1997), 156-160monograph
  • Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. John Raffan (Harvard University Press, 1985), 70-75monograph

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

All attested forms of σπένδω

present passive indicative 1s

σπένδομαι

Php 2:17, 2Ti 4:6