StrongerBible

phoneus

φονεύς

GreekG5406murderer

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 22:7Act 3:14Act 7:52Act 28:41Pe 4:15Rev 21:8Rev 22:15
Root family
Word studyfon-YOOSnoun

What phoneus means

a murderer: someone who has wrongfully taken another person's life, or who is charged with having done so

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Greek keeps three closely related words for murder: the deed itself (φόνος), the act of committing it (φονεύω), and this one, the person who has done it. This is the label, and in the New Testament it is always a label somebody is pinning on somebody else: a king on the guests who killed his servants, Peter and Stephen on the crowd in Jerusalem, a group of islanders on a stranger who has just been bitten by a snake.

That is worth noticing, because the label is a moral judgment rather than a legal finding. Nobody in these verses has stood trial. In Acts 28:4 the people of Malta decide Paul must be a murderer because a viper fastened on his hand, and they turn out to be wrong. In Acts 3:14 and Acts 7:52 the word is aimed at people who did not themselves strike the blow, because it fixes responsibility for a death rather than describing whose hands did the work.

The same word can also name a whole kind of person rather than one culprit. In Peter's letter and twice in Revelation it stands in a list beside thieves, liars, and idolaters, marking out those who have no place among God's people. Greek had narrower options available if a writer wanted them: a word for the political assassin with a dagger (σικάριος), and a compound that spells out that the victim is a human being (ἀνθρωποκτόνος), which John turns on the devil and on anyone who hates a fellow believer. This word stays the plain, general one.

Nuances

1aa particular person or group named as having killed someone
Mat 22:7Act 3:14Act 7:52Act 28:4
1bmurderers as a class of wrongdoer, named in a list of offenders
TranslatabilityDirect
1Pe 4:15Rev 21:8Rev 22:15

What scholars say about phoneus

φονεύς is the agent noun formed on the φον- root shared with φονεύω and φόνος, and the lexica give it one undivided sense. BDAG glosses it "murderer" for all seven New Testament occurrences; LSJ records the wider classical usage, in which the term could cover unintentional as well as deliberate homicide, a breadth Attic homicide law handled procedurally by trying the two before different courts. The New Testament retains none of that latitude: every occurrence presupposes culpable killing. Discussion therefore attaches to individual passages rather than to the sense, and two clusters are regularly noted. First, the accusation in the Acts speeches (3:14; 7:52), where the term is applied to the Jerusalem audience for an execution carried out under Roman authority; commentators read this as an assertion of corporate responsibility rather than a forensic charge. Second, the vice catalogues of Revelation 21:8 and 22:15 and the offender list of 1 Peter 4:15, whose sequences follow the pattern of Decalogue-shaped moral instruction in Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian paraenesis. Acts 28:4 is cited as evidence of the word in popular usage, the Maltese inference from the viper to an undetected crime reflecting the common assumption that Δίκη pursues a murderer who has escaped human justice.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. φονεύςlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. φονεύςlexicon
  • EDNT, s.v. φονεύςtheological-dictionary
  • C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles, ICC (on Acts 28:4)commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (on Revelation 21:8)commentary

All attested forms of φονεύς

nominative m p

φονεῖς

Act 7:52, Rev 22:15

nominative m s

φονεύς, φονεὺς

Act 28:4, 1Pe 4:15

accusative m p

φονεῖς

Mat 22:7

accusative m s

φονέα

Act 3:14

dative m p

φονεῦσιν

Rev 21:8