a plan settled on together: what a group decides to do after conferring, and then goes and does
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Greek had a whole family of words for advice and planning, and this one names the product rather than the process: not the talking, but what the talkers agree on. Seven of its eight appearances sit inside a fixed phrase that older English Bibles render "took counsel." That rendering can mislead. The men are not merely turning a question over; they have settled what to do, and in Matthew the action almost always follows in the same sentence.
What the plan is for varies, and only the surrounding words tell you which it is:
with "against him" attached, the plan is a plot, aimed at trapping or destroying someone
standing on its own, it is an ordinary resolution, such as what to do with money nobody wants to keep
once it covers a shabby arrangement, paying soldiers to spread a false story
So the word is neither sinister nor innocent by itself. It carries the idea of several people committing to one course of action, and the moral color comes from what they commit to. That is also what marks it off from βουλή, which can name the settled purpose of a single mind, God's included, and from the verb συμβουλεύω, which is the advising itself rather than the decision it produces.
Nuances
1aa plot: a plan formed against someone, to trap or destroy them
Mat 12:14Mat 22:15Mat 27:1Mrk 3:6
1ba decision to act: a course of action a group agrees on and carries out
Mat 27:7Mat 28:12*Mrk 15:1*
Disputed
Whether the fixed phrase behind these verses, literally "to take a plan," is a Greek reworking of a Roman administrative expression or ordinary Hellenistic Greek owing nothing to Latin.
majorityThe phrase calques the Latin idiom consilium capere, "to adopt a plan," and is a standing exhibit in the discussion of Latinisms in the Gospels; on this reading it denotes reaching a resolution rather than deliberating.; Danker, BDAG, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. συμβούλιον; Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (1961), §5
minorityDocumentary papyri attest the noun in ordinary Greek official usage, so the phrase can be read as normal Hellenistic idiom rather than as borrowed Roman administrative language.; Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1930), s.v. συμβούλιον
2
council: the circle of advisers a Roman official had beside him when he ruled on a case
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Once, in Acts, the word points at people instead of at a plan. When Paul appeals to Caesar, the governor Festus turns aside and talks the matter over with his "council" before giving his answer. Roman governors did not decide cases alone. Each traveled with a body of senior officials and trusted companions whose opinions he heard before pronouncing, and the word here names that group.
This is a smaller and looser thing than the ruling council in Jerusalem, which the New Testament calls by a different word (συνέδριον). The men around Festus held no authority of their own and passed no sentence. They were there so that a governor's ruling would be, and would look, considered rather than arbitrary. The step from the other use to this one is short: the word for the plan people reach together also served for the people who reach it.
in seven of its eight appearances the word is not a group of people at all but the plan they arrive atMat 22:15
Both
both can name a group convened to weigh a matter alongside the official who must decide itAct 25:12
Only council
"council" in English suggests a standing body with authority to govern or to judge, which the advisers around a Roman governor were not
“plan”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“conspired”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How sumboulion differs from similar Greek words
συνέδριονthe seated ruling council in Jerusalem, a standing court with power to judge, where this word names either a plan or a governor's informal panel of advisers
It names the plan itself, the agreement a group arrives at by talking things over, rather than the group doing the talking. People "take" or "hold" one, and what results is a settled course of action.Mat 12:14Mat 22:15Mrk 3:6
The plan is usually a plot. Its typical scene is a private huddle where opponents settle on how to trap a man in his words or get rid of him.Mat 22:15Mrk 3:6Mat 27:1
It also covers plain practical business rather than legal proceedings: deciding what to buy with returned blood money, and agreeing to pay soldiers to tell a different story.Mat 27:7Mat 28:12
It is not tied to Jewish institutions at all. A Roman governor talks his ruling over with his own circle of advisers before answering Paul's appeal to Caesar.Act 25:12
Both
Both belong to the same scene in the arrest and trial of Jesus, and one verse uses them side by side: the leaders reach their decision, and the assembly they all belong to hands Jesus to Pilate.Mrk 15:1Mat 27:1Mat 26:59
Both can describe a meeting that gets called and held, which is why English Bibles reach for "council" with either word: leaders gather one, and leaders take one.Jhn 11:47Mat 28:12
It names a standing body that exists whether or not it is in session. People are marched into it, sit inside it, are ordered out of it, and leave its presence, so it has members, a room, and a door.Act 4:15Act 6:15Act 5:41
It works as a court with legal power. Witnesses are produced before it, prisoners are made to stand and answer to it, and a person can be liable to it the way one is liable to a judge.Mat 26:59Act 24:20Mat 5:22
It turns up in the plural for local courts spread through the towns, so it is a kind of institution and not only the one high body in Jerusalem.Mat 10:17Mrk 13:9
βουλήpurpose or counsel as the settled intent of a mind, God's above all, where this word is the decision several people reach by conferring
It always names what comes out of people putting their heads together. The word carries the meeting itself, several parties agreeing on a course, not one mind's intent.Mat 27:7Mat 28:12Mrk 3:6
In the Gospels it is almost always a scheme against someone: how to trap him in his words, how to destroy him, how to hush up what happened.Mat 12:14Mat 22:15Mrk 15:1
It can also name the group of people itself, the standing panel of advisers a Roman governor turns to before he rules on a case.Act 25:12
Both
Both can name a decision that leaders reach together and then act on, so English Bibles render either one "counsel" or "plan" in these settings.Luk 23:51Mat 27:1
Both can name a plan whose whole aim is someone's death, formed deliberately and then either carried out or blocked.Act 27:42Mrk 3:6
This is the word used for God's own settled purpose behind events. People can push against it or refuse it for themselves, but it still stands and is carried out.Luk 7:30Act 2:23Act 4:28Eph 1:11Heb 6:17
It can point inside one person, naming the aims someone keeps hidden rather than anything worked out with others or said aloud.1Co 4:5
It can name a proposed course while it is still being weighed and argued over, a plan that may yet collapse or be talked down.Act 5:38Act 27:12
It also names a purpose that runs through a whole life or a whole message, something a person can serve or announce in full rather than decide in a single sitting.Act 13:36Act 20:27
συμβουλεύωthe verb of advising and scheming together, the activity that produces the decision this noun names
It names the settled plan a meeting produces, a thing people "take" or "make" and then carry out: having reached one, the priests bought the potter's field, and the leaders paid the soldiers a large sum of money.Mat 27:7Mat 28:12
It can name the body of advisers itself, the standing group an official turns to before he rules: Festus talks the case over with his council and only then answers Paul.Act 25:12
Both
Both describe people arriving at a decision together rather than one person making up their own mind, and in each case the group is named: the chief priests and elders, or the Pharisees with the Herodians.Mat 26:4Mat 27:1Mrk 3:6
Both usually carry a hostile aim in the Gospels and Acts, with a target named and a purpose stated: seizing Jesus by trickery and killing him, destroying him, trapping him in his own words, or doing away with Saul.Mat 26:4Act 9:23Mat 12:14Mat 22:15
It names the act of advising itself, so one person can do it to others: Caiaphas is identified as the man who advised the Jewish leaders that it was better for one man to die for the people.Jhn 18:14
It can be advice offered to a hearer for that hearer's own good, not a scheme aimed at someone else: the risen Christ tells the church in Laodicea to buy gold refined in fire from him so that it may be truly rich.Rev 3:18
sumboulion in the other biblical languages
עֵצָהHebrew“counsel”the Hebrew word for counsel or plan, covering both the advice given and the plan adopted, without the fixed "take a plan" phrasing of the Gospels
It can name the group of advisers itself, the men who sit with an official and are consulted before he gives his ruling. English Bibles switch from "counsel" to "council" at that point, because the word has stopped meaning the plan and started meaning the people.Act 25:12
Every New Testament use points to one meeting held at a particular moment, with the plan settled in that single session. It never stretches to advice a person carries through life or to a purpose held over generations.Mat 27:1Mat 28:12Mrk 15:1
Both
Both name the decision that comes out of people talking something over together, not the talking itself. A group meets, lands on a course of action, and then acts on it. Where the Old Testament word describes such a moment, the Greek word covers the same ground in the New Testament.Mat 27:72Sa 17:14
Both are used of a scheme worked out by a group against one person's life, so neither word carries any built in sense of wise or well meant advice.Mrk 3:6Jer 18:23
It names God's own settled purpose, the plan behind events that no rival scheme can overturn. Nothing like that appears on the Greek side, where the word stays at the level of what people decide in a room.Isa 46:10Psa 33:11Pro 21:30
It names advice as something one adviser hands over to another person, who then either takes it or throws it away. The drama of Israel's court stories turns on whose advice gets accepted.2Sa 16:231Ki 12:8Pro 19:20
It also names good judgment as a quality a person or a whole nation either has or lacks, apart from any particular plan on the table.Pro 8:14Isa 11:2Deu 32:28
מוֹעֵצָהHebrew“counsel”the Hebrew word for the plans or devices people come up with, often used of stubborn schemes that go against God, close to the plotting side of this word
Names a meeting that actually happens: people come together on a particular morning or evening, confer, and walk away with a decision. English Bibles catch this with the phrase "took counsel" or "held a consultation", and the wording keeps the session itself in view.Mrk 15:1Mat 28:12
Can also name the body of advisers rather than the plan they produce, so it is rendered "council": the standing group a Roman governor turns to before announcing a ruling.Act 25:12
The plan it names is typically a short-lived plot with one target and one purpose, worked out in a single sitting and acted on right away, whether that is destroying a man, trapping him in his own words, or quietly disposing of blood money.Mat 12:14Mat 22:15Mat 27:7
Both
Both name a plan that people deliberately settle on and then carry out, not advice merely offered and left on the table. In each case the text moves straight from the plan to the action it produces.Jer 7:24Mat 27:7
Both usually turn up with disapproval attached. The plan is the wrong one, formed against God or against an innocent person, and the writer expects the reader to see it that way.Psa 5:10Mat 12:14
Names the settled plans a person or a nation lives by, a whole course of conduct you keep walking in, not a decision reached at one meeting. The recurring picture is people walking in their own plans instead of listening to God.Psa 81:12Jer 7:24Mic 6:16
The plans themselves become the punishment. People fall by them, eat their fill of them like fruit off their own tree, and are destroyed because of them, so the word carries a sense of consequences ripening out of choices.Psa 5:10Pro 1:31Hos 11:6
It is not always a bad thing. Wisdom writing uses it for sound guidance worth setting down in writing and keeping beside knowledge, so the same word can mean advice a young person should want.Pro 22:20
What scholars say about sumboulion
BDAG divides the noun in two: (1) a plan or decision arrived at in consultation, carried by the stock phrases συμβούλιον λαμβάνειν (five times in Matthew), συμβούλιον ποιεῖν (Mark 15:1), and συμβούλιον διδόναι (Mark 3:6); and (2) a council or advisory body, the sole New Testament instance being Acts 25:12. LSJ documents both in wider Greek, where the neuter noun serves for a council of state as well as for the advice it renders, and Moulton and Milligan add documentary attestation from the papyri. The λαμβάνειν phrase is a standing exhibit in discussions of Latin influence on the Gospels (BDF §5), being a close calque of consilium capere, "to adopt a plan"; on that reading the idiom denotes reaching a resolution rather than deliberating, which suits Matthew's habit of narrating the resulting action immediately (12:14; 22:15; 27:1, 7; 28:12). Two textual notes bear on classification. At Mark 3:6 the witnesses vary between ἐδίδουν and ἐποίουν, with no semantic consequence for the plot against Jesus. At Mark 15:1 the choice between συμβούλιον ποιήσαντες and the well-attested variant συμβούλιον ἑτοιμάσαντες bears directly on whether Mark reports a second, formal morning session of the Sanhedrin, harmonizable with Matt 27:1, or merely the resolution issuing from the night hearing; commentators divide, and the noun by itself does not settle it. At Acts 25:12 the referent is the governor's consilium, the panel of comites and assessors accompanying a Roman provincial governor, whose advice he heard before pronouncing; Sherwin-White sets out the procedure and observes that Luke's usage matches ordinary provincial practice. Schrenk treats the βουλ- family as a whole in TDNT, where συμβούλιον stands nearest to βουλή but is distinguished by its corporate reference.