Genesis 15:6 · Symbol · Faith
The Words Emunah and Pistis
The Hebrew noun emunah and the Greek noun pistis head two families of words for trusting God and for being worthy of trust.
The first time Scripture uses the Hebrew verb for believing, its subject is Abram under a sky full of stars.
Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
- The word
- אֱמוּנָה (emunah), H530
- First appears
- Exodus 17:12 “When Moses’ hands grew heavy, they took a…”
Summary
The Hebrew words for faith grow from one root, aman, whose sense is firmness, and a person who believes leans on God as on something firm. From the same root come emunah, steadiness, emet, truth, and the word Amen. The Greek translators of the Old Testament carried these words over with pistis and pisteuo, so the New Testament's faith speaks the Old Testament's language.
- Isaiah 7:9 and 2 Chronicles 20:20 join believing to being established with two stems of the one verb aman.
- Emunah names the steadiness of Moses' hands before it names the faithfulness of God in Deuteronomy 32:4.
- Pistis is the most common of the ten words, and pisteuo follows it.
- In John's Gospel and first letter, believing is most often believing into Christ, with the preposition eis.
Abram Believed the LORD
Abram's believing is told with the causative stem of aman and the preposition be.
Scripture commands, praises and promises faith in a small set of Hebrew and Greek words. In Greek the noun pistis, faith, stands with the verb pisteuo, to believe, and the adjective pistos, faithful.
The question is what the biblical writers meant when they spoke of faith, the value these words name. The study gives the ten words with their counts, the verb aman from Genesis to Chronicles, its Greek in both Testaments, two disputed readings and three errors in reading the words.
The verb is joined to the divine name as ba-Yahweh, in the LORD, and Brown, Driver and Briggs call this construction the usual one when God is the one believed.
Paul quotes the verse in Greek as "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:3), and his verb is episteusen, from pisteuo.
Ten Words in Two Languages
Batach, the one Hebrew word of the ten from another root, is the verb of Psalm 37:3 and Proverbs 3:5.
Six Hebrew words and four Greek words carry faith and faithfulness, and five of the Hebrew words share the root aman.
| Word | Sense | Uses | A verse and the form there |
|---|---|---|---|
| emet, אֱמֶת, H571 | truth, faithfulness | 127 | Genesis 24:27, va-amito, and His faithfulness |
| batach, בָּטַח, H982 | to trust | 120 | Psalm 37:3, betach, trust |
| aman, אָמַן, H539 | to be firm; in the causative stem, to believe | 106 | Genesis 15:6, ve-he'emin, and he believed |
| emunah, אֱמוּנָה, H530 | faithfulness, steadiness | 49 | Exodus 17:12, emunah, steady |
| amen, אָמֵן, H543 | surely, Amen | 30 | Nehemiah 8:6, amen amen |
| emun, אֵמוּן, H529 | faithful | 8 | Isaiah 26:2, emunim, faithful |
| pistis, πίστις, G4102 | faith; faithfulness | 242 | Hebrews 11:1, pistis, faith |
| pisteuo, πιστεύω, G4100 | to believe, to trust | 237 | John 14:1, pisteuete eis, believe in |
| amen, ἀμήν, G281 | Amen, truly | 127 | Revelation 3:14, the Amen |
| pistos, πιστός, G4103 | faithful, trustworthy; believing | 67 | 1 Corinthians 1:9, pistos, faithful |
pistis, πίστις, G4102, pisteuo, πιστεύω, G4100, amen, ἀμήν, G281, pistos, πιστός, G4103
Believe and You Will Stand
The root aman joins believing to standing firm in the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.
Emunah, emet, emun and Amen all grow from the verb aman.
The verb
- aman, H539to be firm; to believe
Words of the same root
- emunah, H530faithfulness
- emet, H571truth
- amen, H543surely
- emun, H529faithful
A tree of two generations, the verb aman and under it four words of its root.
When Israel saw the great power that the LORD had exercised over the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and believed in Him and in His servant Moses.After the crossing of the sea the people believed in the LORD and in Moses, with the same verb and preposition as Abram's believing.
Brown, Driver and Briggs list two uses of this causative stem. Used alone, as in Exodus 4:31, it means to trust or believe, and with a preposition it names the one believed.
The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all.’”The verse ends Isaiah's message to Ahaz about Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, and its last line turns on one verb used twice.
In the last line ta'aminu, you will believe, is the hiphil of aman, and te'amenu, you will be established, is its niphal, the passive. Brown, Driver and Briggs call the pair a word-play: if you do not believe, you will not be confirmed.
Early in the morning they got up and left for the Wilderness of Tekoa. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood up and said, “Hear me, O people of Judah and Jerusalem. Believe in the LORD your God, and you will be upheld; believe in His prophets, and you will succeed.”King Jehoshaphat repeats the wordplay before battle, with both forms of the verb in one command.
HANDS THAT STAYED STEADY
In its first use emunah is literal, for Aaron and Hur held up Moses' hands so that they stayed emunah, steady, until the sun went down.
A GOD OF FAITHFULNESS
Brown, Driver and Briggs file Deuteronomy 32:4, el emunah, under emunah as an attribute of God.
LOVING DEVOTION AND FAITHFULNESS
Abraham's servant blesses the LORD for His chesed and His emet, a pair that recurs through the Psalms.
AMEN, AMEN
When Ezra blessed the LORD, the people answered with amen twice and with their hands lifted.
TRUST AND FAITHFULNESS TOGETHER
One verse joins batach, trust, to emunah, faithfulness, in the Berean words cultivate faithfulness.
Loving devotion and faithfulness, Amen, Amen, Trust and faithfulness together
Three Cautions in Reading the Words
Three errors recur in reading the words for faith, and each is answered by how the words are used in Scripture.
One root and many meaningsH539, H530, H543 and H571
Aman, emunah, emet and amen share a root, and teachers sometimes define faith as saying Amen, or as firmness itself. Each word's meaning is set by how it is used. The family likeness is real, and each word still keeps the meaning its own uses give it.
Where a word came from and what it meansH539 and H982
Strong's gives aman the root sense to build up or support. Brown, Driver and Briggs show that the participle of its simple stem names one who brings up a child, a guardian or a nurse (Ruth 4:16). They compare batach with an Arabic word for lying stretched on the ground. These are notes on the history of each word. In the hiphil aman means to believe, and a verse with batach does not by itself picture anyone lying down.
Trust and faithfulness in one Greek wordG4102 and G4103
The Tyndale House lexicon of the Greek New Testament, based on Abbott-Smith (1922), gives pistis an active sense, faith and trust, and a passive sense, fidelity and faithfulness. It lists Romans 3:3 under the second. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of 1890 opens its entry on pistis with persuasion, credence, and gives pistos both sides, trustworthy and trustful. In Matthew 23:23 the Berean text renders pistis as faithfulness, and in Galatians 5:22 faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit. The context of each verse decides which side is meant.
Pistis and Pisteuo in Greek
In the New Testament the verb pisteuo takes constructions of its own.
The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, is the bridge between the two families. Thayer's Greek lexicon of 1889 records that the Septuagint renders emunah with pistis and the hiphil of aman with pisteuo. For the passive participle of aman, faithful, it mostly uses pistos. The New Testament writers use the same three Greek words.
What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?Paul uses apistia for people's unbelief and pistis for God's faithfulness in one question.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well.Jesus uses pisteuo twice with eis, into, once of God and once of Himself.
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.”Paul and Silas tell the jailer to believe with epi, upon, the Lord Jesus.
Counted in the STEP Bible's tagged Greek New Testament, the word standing directly after pisteuo is eis 43 times, and 37 of these are in John's Gospel and his first letter. Epi follows 10 times, and hoti, that, follows 23 times, where the believing is of a statement. En follows 6 times, but in most of these it marks where or how, as in "believe in your heart" (Romans 10:9); in Mark 1:15 it takes the object, "believe in the gospel". Thayer calls believing eis "very common" and explains it as believing "in faith to give oneself up to" Jesus.
God, who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.Paul opens his letter with pistos, faithful, said of God who called the Corinthians into fellowship with His Son.
Giotto's Faith in the Scrovegni ChapelGiotto, about 1306
Giotto, Faith, about 1306. Public domain, as Wikimedia Commons states its licence. Wikimedia Commons, File:Giotto_di_Bondone_-_No._44_The_Seven_Virtues_-_Faith_-_WGA09271.jpg.
Giotto painted Faith as a woman holding a cross and a scroll, one of the virtues on the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
Acts 16:31, 1 Corinthians 1:9
Two Readings in Dispute
Readers disagree about emunah in Habakkuk 2:4 and about pistis in Galatians 2:16.
Habakkuk 2:4 and the noun emunahH530 in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38
Look at the proud one; his soul is not upright—but the righteous will live by faith—The prophet's word for the way the righteous live is emunah, and the dispute turns on that noun.
Brown, Driver and Briggs file the clause under faithfulness in human conduct, so that the righteous man lives by his faithfulness, and they note that Luther, the Authorised Version and the Revised Version read faith. The interlinear gloss of the STEP Bible's tagged Hebrew text also reads by faithfulness. On the other side the Septuagint renders the noun with pistis, and Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38 quote the verse of faith. Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, reads the verse in its own setting of the Chaldeans besieging Jerusalem. The one who believes God's word about them, he writes, "shall make his escape from the place, and consequently shall save his life". He adds that the words in the New Testament "are accommodated to the salvation which believers in Christ shall possess".
Both readings take the word to mean firmness held under pressure, of trust toward God or of faithfulness in life. The debate and its history have their own study, The Just Shall Live by Faith.
Pistis Christou in Galatians 2:16G4102 with a genitive, also in Romans 3:22 and Philippians 3:9
know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.Paul writes pistis Iesou Christou and pistis Christou on either side of a clause in which the apostles believe.
The Greek phrase pistis Christou can mean faith in Christ or the faith, or faithfulness, of Christ. Thayer files Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 under faith with Christ as its object, and the Berean text gives both verses that way. The King James Version reads "by the faith of Jesus Christ" at Galatians 2:16, and Richard B. Hays argued in The Faith of Jesus Christ (1983) that Paul means Christ's own faithfulness. The strongest point against that reading is the clause between the two phrases, where Christ is plainly the one believed in. The strongest point for it is Romans 3:3, where the same noun names God's faithfulness.
Books to Read Next
Two standard lexicons a reader can open in full, one Hebrew and one Greek.
A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs · 1906
The entries for aman, emunah, emet, amen and batach give each sense with its verses, among them the word-play of Isaiah 7:9.
Read on archive.orgA Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
Joseph Henry Thayer · 1889
The entries for pistis, pisteuo and pistos name the Hebrew words the Septuagint renders with them and sort the uses by construction.
Read on archive.orgFaith on Firm Ground
In the English Bible the words believe, faith, faithful, faithfulness, truth and Amen often stand for words of one Hebrew root or one Greek stem. A study of any one of them leads to the others.
To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originator of God’s creation.Christ names Himself the Amen, the word Ezra's people answered with, and calls Himself the faithful Witness, with pistos.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), Galatians 2:16.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0), the Brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922), with the Strong's definitions (1890) the rows carry.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament and Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0), with Strong's numbers, morphology and interlinear glosses.
- Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), entries 539, 530, 571, 543 and 982.
- Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (New York, 1889), entries 4102, 4100 and 4103.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Habakkuk 2:4.
- Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, published at Chico by Scholars Press in 1983.
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