StrongerBible

chriō

χρίω

GreekG5548“anoint”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Luk 4:18Act 4:27Act 10:382Co 1:21Heb 1:9
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What chriō means

to anoint: to consecrate someone to a God-given office, in the New Testament always by God and by his Spirit

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

In ordinary Greek this was a plain, everyday word for smearing or rubbing something onto a surface: oil on the skin after a bath, paint on a wall, pitch on a ship, poison on an arrow. The Bible narrows it almost completely. All five of its New Testament uses have God as the one who anoints, and the one anointed is either Jesus or those who belong to him.

That narrowing came about through translation. When the Hebrew Scriptures were put into Greek, the translators reached for this verb to render the Hebrew word for anointing kings, priests, and sacred objects with oil (מָשַׁח). From that choice the title "Christ" (Χριστός), which simply means "anointed one," became the standard Greek word for the promised deliverer. So when a New Testament writer says God "anointed" Jesus, the reader is meant to hear the title inside the verb: he is called Christ precisely because God anointed him.

The action is less about the oil than about installation. To anoint a person was to hand them a role and the authority that came with it. In the New Testament that authority is the Holy Spirit: God anoints Jesus with the Spirit for his mission, and, once, anoints believers so that they come to share in what Jesus received.

Nuances

1aGod's anointing of Jesus as the Christ, marking him out and equipping him for his mission by the Holy Spirit
Luk 4:18Act 4:27Act 10:38Heb 1:9
Luk 4:18

What kind of anointing Jesus claims at Nazareth when he reads Isaiah 61:1.

  • contestedA prophetic anointing: Jesus takes up Isaiah's Spirit-filled herald and makes no claim to kingship in this text.; J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible, 1981), 529-30
  • contestedA prophetic anointing that also carries royal, messianic overtones, because Luke's baptism scene declares Jesus "Son."; I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC, 1978), 183-84; F. Bovon, Luke 1 (Hermeneia, 2002), 152-54
1bGod's anointing of believers, giving them a share in the anointing Jesus received
2Co 1:21

Disputed

Whether this verb carries an inherently sacred meaning, in contrast to the ordinary Greek word for anointing.

  • minorityIt is the sacred, religious word for anointing, deliberately distinct from the everyday verb used of grooming or medicine.; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (1854), sec. xxxviii
  • majorityThe two verbs overlap freely; the New Testament's exclusive use of this one for divine anointing reflects the theological interests of its authors and the habits of the Greek Old Testament, not a built-in sacred sense in the word itself.; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961); J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (1988); Moises Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning (rev. ed. 1994)

What scholars say about chriō

In classical and Hellenistic Greek, chrio is a mundane verb for smearing or rubbing a surface, attested from Homer onward across cosmetic, athletic, medical, and technical contexts (LSJ; Moulton-Milligan cite papyri such as a lotion for a sick horse). Its religious weight is a Septuagintal development: the LXX largely reserves chrio for the official, consecratory rendering of Hebrew mashach (kings, priests, sanctuary objects), preferring aleipho for cosmetic anointing, though the distinction is not absolute (chrio still appears for luxury oil in Amos 6:6 and for greasing shields in Isa 21:5). This translation choice fixed Christos as the standard Greek equivalent of mashiach, a personal-title use with no pagan precedent. The five NT tokens all have God as subject and Jesus or the believer as object. BDAG glosses the NT usage "consecrate, appoint, anoint" and notes the double-object construction in Heb 1:9 as a Septuagintism; Louw-Nida deliberately files the NT tokens under Domain 37E ("assign to a role or function"), apart from the domain for physical smearing, as a corrective to older word-study method. The most famous scholarly claim, R. C. Trench's rule that chrio is the sacred word and aleipho the profane one, is a real statistical pattern in the small NT corpus but has been dismantled by James Barr, Moises Silva, and D. A. Carson as a linguistic fallacy, since both verbs occur in sacred and mundane senses alike (aleipho of Aaron's priestly anointing and of James 5:14). On the background, Ernst Kutsch and Tryggve Mettinger frame Israelite anointing as a legal act of installation carrying both civil authority and endowment with the Spirit, and John J. Collins and Emile Puech document the plural, Spirit-empowered messianic expectation of Second Temple Judaism (notably 4Q521, echoing Isa 61:1) that stands behind Jesus' self-declaration. The referents of the individual anointings are debated: Luke 4:18 and Acts 10:38 are usually tied to the Jordan baptism (Fitzmyer, Marshall, Dunn's Spirit-Christology), Acts 4:27 glosses the Anointed of Psalm 2 (Barrett, Pervo, Keener), 2 Cor 1:21 turns on the wordplay of believers established "into Christ" and "anointed" (Thrall, Furnish, Harris), and Heb 1:9 is read as a royal, and perhaps priestly, enthronement anointing at the exaltation (Attridge, Ellingworth, Lane; Moore and Moffitt on the priestly reading).

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

  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. χρίωlexicon
  • BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. χρίωlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (1988), Domain 37Elexicon
  • W. Grundmann et al., "χρίω κτλ.," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 9 (1974), 493-580theological-dictionary
  • K. Seybold, "מָשַׁח," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 9 (1998), 43-54theological-dictionary
  • Moises Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed. (2014), s.v. χρίωtheological-dictionary
  • R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (1854), sec. xxxviiireference
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961)monograph
  • Ernst Kutsch, Salbung als Rechtsakt im Alten Testament und im Alten Orient (1963)monograph
  • T. N. D. Mettinger, King and Messiah (1976)monograph
  • John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 2nd ed. (2010)monograph
  • J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible, 1981), 529-30commentary
  • Margaret E. Thrall, 2 Corinthians (ICC, 1994), 154-57commentary
  • Harold W. Attridge, Hebrews (Hermeneia, 1989), 58-60commentary

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

All attested forms of χρίω

aorist active indicative 3s

ἔχρισέν, ἔχρισεν

Luk 4:18, Heb 1:9, Act 10:38

aorist active indicative 2s

ἔχρισας

Act 4:27

aorist active participle nominative m s

χρίσας

2Co 1:21