a sinner: a person, or a people, marked out as guilty of sin, and so counted among the wicked rather than the righteous.
This is the person-word in a family built on the idea of sin: not the act of sinning and not the sin itself, but the human being tagged as a sinner. And it is a strong label. It does not mean merely someone who once did wrong; it marks a settled, well-known guilt, the kind that defines a person's reputation.
Because of that force, a sinner in this sense stands as the opposite of the righteous, and the word keeps close company with רָשָׁע, the word for the wicked. Where the two appear side by side, the point is a hard line drawn between two kinds of people.
In practice the word shows up in two settings:
- as a moral type held up as a warning, the kind of person to avoid falling in with, especially in the Psalms and Proverbs;
- as a guilty community or nation singled out for punishment, from the men of Sodom to a whole kingdom under sentence.
In many of these places a shadow of coming judgment hangs over the word. To be named a sinner is often to be marked for destruction, not merely to be described.