to be a soldier on active duty: to serve in an army and keep up its campaign.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
The picture behind this word is not a brawl but a tour of duty. Someone has been enlisted, is under a commander, draws rations and pay, and stays in the field for as long as the campaign lasts. Greek can therefore use it of real troops and, without changing the picture at all, of anyone whose whole life is organized around a long fight.
In the New Testament it works at three distances from the barracks:
Actual soldiers, who come to John asking what a change of heart looks like for men with weapons and wages.
The servant of Christ, who is on a campaign with orders, a commander to please, and no room for the tangles of civilian business.
Cravings inside a person, pictured as troops quartered in the body who mount operations against the soul.
The idea of steady service under orders is what separates this verb from the plainer word for fighting a war (πολεμέω) and from the picture of an athlete straining in a contest (ἀγωνίζομαι). Paul can even set the verb beside its own noun, the campaign itself (στρατεία), telling Timothy to serve well in the good campaign. When the target of the attack has to be named, the New Testament reaches for a longer compound built on this same verb (ἀντιστρατεύομαι), which spells out that the troops are marching against something.
Nuances
1ato serve as a soldier: to be on active military duty, with a commander, wages, and orders.
TranslatabilityApproximate
Luk 3:141Co 9:72Ti 2:4*
1bto keep up the campaign of a servant of Christ: sustained, ordered work for the gospel.
2Co 10:31Ti 1:18
1cof cravings and pleasures: to mount a campaign against a person from the inside.
Describes soldiering as an occupation, with everything that goes with the job: the men who come to John are simply the soldiers, Paul asks who ever serves at his own expense instead of drawing wages, and a soldier stays clear of ordinary business so he can please the officer who signed him up.Luk 3:141Co 9:72Ti 2:4
Covers being on campaign, a stretch of service carried on over time rather than one decisive clash. Timothy is told to keep up a good campaign, and Paul says that he and his coworkers are on campaign, but not by the tactics the world uses.1Ti 1:182Co 10:3
Both
Both come out of the world of real armies, and a reader in the first hundred years would hear weapons, ranks, and orders behind either one.Luk 3:14Rev 12:7
Both get turned on struggles that are not military at all, and James puts them back to back: the cravings inside people keep up their campaign in the body, and those same people end up fighting each other. Peter uses the first the same way, of desires that campaign against the soul.Jas 4:11Pe 2:11Jas 4:2
Names the enemy and squares off against it. There are two sides, they are matched head to head, and the whole point is which one wins: the dragon and his angels lose the battle in heaven, the world asks who could possibly beat the beast, and the kings who attack the Lamb are conquered by him.Rev 12:7Rev 13:4Rev 17:14
Is used of God and of the Lamb going to war as an act of judgment, striking the people who refuse to turn back. The rider on the white horse both judges and fights, and the risen Christ warns a church that he will come and attack the ones holding false teaching.Rev 19:11Rev 2:16
ἀγωνίζομαιto strain and contend, drawn from the games rather than the army: effort against an opponent without the enlisted service, wages, and commander.
This word names soldiering as a trade and a standing: men whose work is arms, who draw their keep and their pay from the one who put them in the field.Luk 3:141Co 9:7
It carries the loyalty of a man who has been enlisted by someone: he stays clear of ordinary business because his job is to please the one who signed him up.2Ti 2:4
It can put a hostile force in the subject's place, so that cravings are said to run a campaign against a person or against each other, and the fighting described is not the good side's.Jas 4:11Pe 2:11
Because it means conducting a campaign, it can be qualified by the weapons and methods used, so the question it raises is how the war is fought rather than how hard someone tries.2Co 10:3
Both
Both are turned into pictures of staying faithful to God at real cost, and the same letter lays each on the same young leader, once as "fight the good fight" and once as "wage the good warfare".1Ti 6:121Ti 1:18
Both also keep their plain everyday meaning in the New Testament, describing armed men actually fighting and men actually making their living in the army, so neither word has faded into a figure of speech only.Jhn 18:36Luk 3:14
This word belongs to the world of the public games: a contest with a finish line and a prize, which asks for an athlete's training and self-denial rather than enlistment under a commander.1Co 9:252Ti 4:7
It covers exhausting effort with no opponent in view at all, such as wearing oneself out in prayer for a distant church or in the plain labor of teaching.Col 4:12Col 1:291Ti 4:10
It can describe straining toward a goal a person is trying to reach, pressing to get in through an entrance that is too narrow for a casual effort.Luk 13:24
στρατείαthe noun of this verb: the campaign or tour of duty itself, rather than the act of serving in it.
ἀντιστρατεύομαιthe same verb with a prefix that names the enemy: to campaign against someone, used once of sin's operations against the mind.
It covers plain military service as a job, with no enemy in view at all: soldiers asking John what to do while they draw their pay, the point that nobody funds his own campaign, and the soldier who keeps clear of outside business so he can please the one who enlisted him.Luk 3:141Co 9:72Ti 2:4
It can name a campaign someone is meant to carry out well, not only an attack to resist. Timothy is told to wage the good warfare, and Paul says the campaign he is on is not fought with the weapons the world reaches for.1Ti 1:182Co 10:3
Because fighting against someone is not built into it, the target has to be spelled out when there is one: the cravings are described as at war inside a person, and as waging war on the soul.Jas 4:11Pe 2:11
Both
Both describe a war going on inside a person rather than on a battlefield: an impulse in the body attacking the mind, cravings quarreling within, desires making war on the soul.Rom 7:23Jas 4:11Pe 2:11
Both borrow the same soldiering picture and turn it on the reader's own life, so armed conflict becomes the way to talk about a struggle no army is fighting.Rom 7:232Co 10:3
The hostility is packed into the word itself: it means "to fight against" something, so the opponent is stated directly and nothing more has to be added to make the attack clear. In its one appearance the drive at work in the body is said to be making war on the mind's own law, and that clash is all the word ever names.Rom 7:23
στρατιώτηςthe soldier himself, the person in the ranks, where this word is what he spends his time doing.
strateuō in the other biblical languages
צָבָאHebrew“to serve”the Hebrew verb for doing military service and going out with the army, which also stretches to service at the tent of meeting, a religious use this Greek verb never takes.
Can point simply at the trade, the people whose living is soldiering. When a crowd is sorted by occupation, this is the word that marks out the ones who serve under arms for pay.Luk 3:14
Turns the fighting inward, so that a person's own cravings are the attacking force. The battle line runs through the desires, and the target is the person himself.Jas 4:11Pe 2:11
Frames a whole Christian life as a campaign fought with weapons that are not physical, something a person can be told to carry through well.2Co 10:31Ti 1:18
Both
Both are the plain verb for going out to fight, an organized force taking the field against an enemy. The Greek word is the New Testament's ordinary word for the activity the Hebrew word names in the Old Testament, which is why English Bibles reach for "wage war" and "serve as a soldier" in both places.Num 31:71Co 9:7
Both cover the whole stretch of duty and not only the moment of battle: being enrolled, kept under orders, and answerable to whoever called you up.Num 31:422Ti 2:4
Reaches past war into worship: standing a tour of duty at the tent of meeting, where nobody is fighting anyone. Levites are counted for it by age, and women are described as keeping station at its entrance.Exo 38:8Num 4:23Num 8:241Sa 2:22
Describes whole nations massed against one city, the sheer crowd of them pressing an attack on Jerusalem or on Zion.Isa 29:7Isa 29:8Zec 14:12
Can put God himself in the fighter's place, coming down to do the fighting over Mount Zion rather than sending anyone else to do it.Isa 31:4
Covers the calling up as well as the fighting: an officer who musters ordinary people of the land onto the roll of those who must go out.2Ki 25:19Jer 52:25
What scholars say about strateuō
BDAG (s.v. στρατεύω, in the NT always middle) gives two senses: (1) "to serve as a soldier, do military service" (Lk 3:14;1 Cor 9:7;2 Tim 2:4), and (2) "to engage in a conflict, wage battle, fight" of a figurative campaign, covering both the apostolic warfare of 2 Cor 10:3 and 1 Tim 1:18 and the hostile operations of the passions in Jas 4:1 and 1 Pet 2:11. LSJ documents the same range in classical usage ("serve in war, take the field, wage war"), where the verb regularly denotes a campaign or term of service rather than a single engagement. Bauernfeind's TDNT article on the στρατεύομαι word group (TDNT 7) treats the figurative Christian uses as continuous with, not detached from, the military sense, since the point of comparison is the soldier's discipline, loyalty to his commander, and provisioning. Marshall (ICC) reads the cognate accusative construction of 1 Tim 1:18 (στρατεύῃ τὴν καλὴν στρατείαν) as the whole ministerial task rather than a single struggle, paralleled by 1 Tim 6:12 and 2 Tim 4:7. Malherbe's study of the military imagery in 2 Cor 10:3-6 (HTR 76, 1983) shows Paul drawing on a widely used philosophical topos of the sage's campaign, which explains the density of siege vocabulary in that passage.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. στρατεύωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. στρατεύωlexicon
O. Bauernfeind, "στρατεύομαι κτλ.," TDNT 7theological-dictionary
I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), on 1 Tim 1:18commentary
A. J. Malherbe, "Antisthenes and Odysseus, and Paul at War," Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983)article