StrongerBible

husterēma

ὑστέρημα

GreekG5303“lack, poverty, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Luk 21:41Co 16:172Co 8:14 (2×)2Co 9:122Co 11:9Php 2:30Col 1:241Th 3:10
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradehoo-STEH-ray-mahnoun

What husterēma means

a lack: something still missing from a required or expected whole, a shortfall waiting to be made up

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This is an ordinary, everyday word for a shortfall, the gap between what should be there and what actually is. In common Greek it named an unpaid balance on a bill or an empty spot in the pantry, a countable deficit. It carries no built-in religious weight of its own; it simply points to something that is missing from a total that ought to be complete.

Paul does something striking with this plain word. Again and again he pairs it with a verb meaning "to fill up," turning "shortfall" into a picture of how the people of God supply one another. What one person or church is short of, another makes up out of their surplus: money for the poor, a friend's presence in place of an absent congregation, teaching that was left unfinished. Every shortfall is treated as a gap that someone else is meant to close.

Because the core idea is so steady, the different uses are shades of one meaning rather than separate meanings. The context tells you what kind of gap is in view (empty pockets, a missed visit, an unfinished lesson), but in each case the word means the same thing: what is still lacking and needs to be supplied. Its single most debated appearance, in Colossians 1:24, belongs to this same family of "a gap that gets filled," even though what exactly is lacking there has been argued over for centuries.

Nuances

1aa shortage of money or of the necessities of life; poverty
Luk 21:42Co 8:14 (2×)2Co 9:122Co 11:9
1bthe gap left when a needed person cannot be present; someone's absence
1Co 16:17Php 2:30
1can unfinished part of something still being completed
1Th 3:10
1dthe still-missing measure in the sufferings of Christ that Paul says he fills up in his own body (Colossians 1:24)
Col 1:24
Col 1:24

What is "lacking" in the afflictions of Christ that Paul fills up in his own body, and in what sense.

  • contestedThe messianic woes: a fixed measure of end-time tribulation must be endured before the close of the age, and Paul absorbs an outsized share of that predetermined quota, sparing his fellow believers. The definite article and the intensive verb suggest a bounded, quantifiable amount.; Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon (Hermeneia, 1971); James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC, 1996); Peter T. O'Brien, Colossians, Philemon (WBC 44, 1982); Richard Bauckham, 'Colossians 1:24 Again: The Apocalyptic Motif,' EvQ 47 (1975): 168-70
  • contestedApostolic mission: what is lacking is not more suffering but the personal, physical carrying of Christ's already-finished work to peoples who have not yet heard it. Paul bears in his own body the ministry of the exalted Christ, who no longer suffers in person. This reading has become ascendant since about 2008.; Jacob Kremer, Was an den Leiden Christi noch mangelt (Bonn: Hanstein, 1956); Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Pillar, 2008); Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians (NICNT, 2018); G. K. Beale, Colossians and Philemon (BECNT, 2019)
  • minorityMystical union: the sufferings belong to Christ because his body the church suffers, and Paul, as one member, bears his share of what Christ still endures in his people. The oldest reading, retained in Catholic and some Reformed traditions.; John Calvin, Commentary on Colossians; Roy Yates, 'A Note on Colossians 1:24,' EvQ 42 (1970): 88-92

What scholars say about husterēma

The lexical meaning is essentially undisputed. The noun is formed from the verb hystereo ("come short, fall behind, be in need"), itself from hysteros ("later, coming after"); the result-forming suffix yields "the thing lacking," the deficit itself. BDAG, LSJ, Louw-Nida, and Wilckens (TDNT 8:592-601) all converge on "lack, shortfall, need, want, deficiency," with a secondary nuance of material poverty. Moulton-Milligan document the cognate verb in the papyri for being in arrears on rent, tax, or supplies, the fiscal register Paul draws on when he pairs the noun with verbs of "filling up." In the Septuagint the word is rare and always concrete, rendering Hebrew machsor and chesron for travel provisions, agricultural abundance, and a countable shortfall (Judges 18:10; Ecclesiastes 1:15; Psalm 34:10 English). The technical cosmological sense (Deficiency as antonym of Fullness) belongs to mid-second-century Valentinian Gnosticism, and commentators warn against retrojecting it into Paul. The interpretive storm is confined to Colossians 1:24: Kremer's 1956 monograph maps the history, and the field has shifted from the messianic-woes reading (dominant circa 1970-2010, defended by Lohse, Dunn, O'Brien, Wright, and Bauckham) toward an apostolic-mission or Isaianic-Servant reading (ascendant since 2008, argued by Moo, McKnight, Beale, and others), with Perriman's 1991 critique of the alleged Jewish quota background a turning point.

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, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed., 2000), s.v. ὑστέρημαlexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed.), s.v. ὑστέρημαlexicon
  • Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (UBS, 1989)lexicon
  • Ulrich Wilckens, 'ὕστερος κτλ.,' in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Friedrich, 8:592-601 (Eerdmans, 1972)theological dictionary
  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (Hodder & Stoughton, 1930)lexicon
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v.lexicon
  • Jacob Kremer, Was an den Leiden Christi noch mangelt (Bonn: Hanstein, 1956)monograph
  • James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC, 1996)commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Pillar, 2008)commentary
  • Andrew Perriman, 'The Pattern of Christ's Sufferings,' Tyndale Bulletin 42 (1991): 62-79journal article

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

All attested forms of ὑστέρημα

accusative n s

ὑστέρημα, ὑστέρημά

1Co 16:17, 2Co 8:14, 2Co 8:14, Php 2:30, 2Co 11:9

accusative n p

ὑστερήματα

2Co 9:12, Col 1:24, 1Th 3:10

genitive n s

ὑστερήματος

Luk 21:4