to eat: to chew and swallow food, with the working of the mouth in view
This is the blunt, physical word for eating. Greek had a general verb for taking a meal (ἐσθίω); this one pictures the mouth at work, the chewing and munching itself. Older Greek used it of animals cropping their food and of people eating raw things like fruit and nuts.
By the time the New Testament was written, everyday Greek had also begun using it as a plain present tense of "eat," with no special force. That is how it works in the scene of people eating and drinking in the days before the flood, and it is why the word eventually became the ordinary Greek verb for eating.
What makes it worth noticing is John's Gospel, which supplies five of its six appearances. In the bread of life discourse Jesus first says "eat" with the plain verb (φαγεῖν) and then repeats himself four times over with this one instead. The effect is that the language stays stubbornly physical at the very point where his hearers want it to soften into a picture. The same verb returns at the last supper, for the man who shares Jesus' bread and then betrays him.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the switch to this verb in the bread of life discourse is a deliberate stress on physical eating, or simply the ordinary present tense of "eat" in the Greek of the period.
- majorityThe switch is deliberate. The graphic verb presses the realism of feeding on Christ and blocks any attempt to reduce his words to a figure of speech.; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John, 2nd ed., on John 6:54; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St John, vol. 2, on John 6:51-58
- minorityThe switch carries little weight of its own. Koine Greek already used this verb as the normal present of "eat," suppletive with the aorist ἔφαγον, as the papyri show.; J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. τρώγω