James 1:3 to 4 · Symbol · Perseverance
The Word Hypomone
Hypomone (G5281) is the Greek noun the Berean text renders endurance or perseverance, and hypomeno (G5278) is the verb beside it.
The verb that tells how Jesus bore the cross in Hebrews 12:2 is the verb Paul uses when he writes that love endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7).
Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
- The word
- ὑπομονή (hypomonḗ), G5281
- First appears
- Luke 8:15 “…good heart, who hear the word, cling to…”
Summary
Hypomone is the endurance of a person who stays under a hardship and keeps going until it has done its work. The New Testament uses it most often of believers under persecution or testing, and it names a faith that holds until the trial is over. God gives it to His people, and the saints are called to it.
- Hypomone (G5281) stands 32 times in 31 verses of 13 books, and the verb hypomeno (G5278) 17 times in 16 verses of 10 books.
- The STEP Bible lexicon glosses the noun as cheerful (or hopeful) endurance and constancy.
- Paul and James describe endurance as the fruit of trials and as the way to maturity (Romans 5:3 to 4; James 1:3 to 4).
- Richard Chenevix Trench (1871) set hypomone, endurance under things, beside makrothymia, patience with persons.
Hypomone and Hypomeno
In two verses the verb means only to remain, and the sense of bearing a trial comes from the verses where a trial stands.
Many of the New Testament's calls to endure use this one family of words. Paul's letters and Revelation use it most often, and Jesus uses it in His warnings to the disciples. Perseverance is the value it names.
The question this study answers is what the word meant in the verses where it stands, beyond what its parts suggest. It gives the counts and the books and the forms of the word in its key verses. It also gives the line Trench drew between it and makrothymia, the God who gives it and the words that stand near it.
The verb is built from hypo, under, and meno, to stay, and the STEP Bible lexicon defines it as "to stay under (behind), i.e. remain". Its fuller sense, in the same entry, is "to undergo, i.e. bear (trials), have fortitude, persevere".
A word's sense comes from its use in each verse.
When those days were over and they were returning home, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but His parents were unaware He had stayed.Luke uses the verb of the twelve-year-old Jesus staying in Jerusalem after the feast, where no trial is in view.
The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy remained in Berea.The verb again means to remain in a place, said of the two men left in Berea when Paul was sent on to the coast.
Where Hypomone and Hypomeno Stand
A count drawn from every verse that carries either word.
Revelation and Romans hold the most verses with the noun, and Hebrews holds the most with the verb.
| Book | Verses | A use in the Berean text |
|---|---|---|
| The noun | ||
| Revelation | 7 | "your love, your faith, your service, your perseverance" (Revelation 2:19) |
| Romans | 6 | "through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures" (Romans 15:4) |
| 2 Corinthians | 3 | "in great endurance" (2 Corinthians 6:4) |
| James | 3 | the testing of faith and the work endurance does |
| Luke | 2 | "by persevering produce a crop" (Luke 8:15) |
| 2 Thessalonians | 2 | "we boast among God's churches about your perseverance" (2 Thessalonians 1:4) |
| Hebrews | 2 | "run with endurance the race" (Hebrews 12:1) |
| Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and 2 Peter | 6 | "to self-control, perseverance" (2 Peter 1:6) |
| The verb | ||
| Hebrews | 4 | "Endure suffering as discipline" (Hebrews 12:7) |
| Matthew | 2 | "the one who perseveres to the end" (Matthew 10:22) |
| 2 Timothy | 2 | "if we endure" (2 Timothy 2:12) |
| James | 2 | "who perseveres under trial" (James 1:12) |
| Romans, Mark, Luke, Acts, 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter | 6 | "patient in affliction" (Romans 12:12) |
2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and 2 Peter, The verb, Hebrews, Matthew, 2 Timothy, James and 1 more
The counts are those of the STEP Bible tagging of the Greek New Testament. The noun stands twice in 2 Peter 1:6, and the verb twice in 1 Peter 2:20.
The Word in Its Key Verses
Romans, James, Hebrews, Matthew and Luke show the noun and the verb in use.
Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.Paul sets endurance between suffering and character, so the word names one stage of growth that hands on to the next.
because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.James writes to believers who meet trials of many kinds (James 1:2), and he names their testing as the thing that develops endurance.
Hebrews uses the verb of Jesus twice. He "endured the cross" (Hebrews 12:2), where the form is the aorist hypemeinen.
The reader is then told, "Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners" (Hebrews 12:3), and here the form is the perfect participle hypomemenekota.
Matthew 10:22 and Matthew 24:13 use the aorist participle hypomeinas, the one who has endured, with telos, the end.
By your patient endurance you will gain your souls.Jesus says this after warning the disciples of prisons, betrayal and hatred, so the endurance He asks for is endurance under persecution.
Hypomone and Makrothymia
The New Testament uses hypomone beside makrothymia, a second Greek word for patience.
The STEP Bible lexicon lists patience among the King James renderings of hypomone and of makrothymia (G3115). The second noun stands in 14 verses, and its verb makrothymeo (G3114) 10 times.
being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfullyPaul asks for both words in one prayer, hypomonen and makrothymian, which shows that he counted them as two gifts.
James uses both families in one passage, makrothymeo for the farmer who waits for the rains (James 5:7) and hypomone in James 5:11.
Trench reports that John Chrysostom called hypomone the queen of the virtues, βασιλὶς τῶν ἀρετῶν. He also quotes Ellicott on 1 Thessalonians 1:3 for "the brave patience with which the Christian contends against the various hindrances, persecutions, and temptations".
Words Beside Hypomone
Four other Greek words of holding on stand in the New Testament.
Proskarteresis (G4343), persistence, stands once, in Ephesians 6:18, where the Berean text reads "with all perseverance in your prayers". Its verb proskartereo (G4342), to continue in or with, stands 10 times.
Kartereo (G2594), to endure, stands once, in Hebrews 11:27, where Moses "persevered because he saw Him who is invisible".
Hypophero (G5297), to bear from underneath, stands three times, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Timothy 3:11 and 1 Peter 2:19.
Meno (G3306), to stay, the verb without its prefix, stands 118 times.
The God Who Gives Endurance
Romans 15:5 and 2 Thessalonians 3:5 trace endurance to God and to Christ.
Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you harmony with one another in Christ Jesus,Paul names endurance as God's gift, given to a church he wants to see living in harmony.
Trench held that "only μακροθυμία is an attribute of God", so that the phrase in Romans 15:5 means "God who gives ὑπομονή to his servants and saints".
Paul also prayed, "May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance" (2 Thessalonians 3:5), and the noun there means steadfastness.
Voices on the Word
A bishop of the early fourth century read the word in the letter to Ephesus.
died 304 · Victorinus of Pettau
Victorinus heard comfort for a church that endures in Christ's praise of Ephesus.
Read the page on Victorinus of Pettau
“‘I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience.’ In the first epistle He speaks thus: I know that thou sufferest and workest, I see that thou art patient; think not that I am staying long from thee. ‘And that thou canst not bear them that are evil, and who say that they are Jews and are not, and thou has found them liars, and thou hast patience for My name's sake.’”
Victorinus of Pettau · Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John · on Revelation 2:2Patristic
Victorinus joins the word to waiting, for the endurance Christ praises at Ephesus is kept while He seems slow to come. In his reading the church endures its labour and its trouble while it looks for the Lord.
What Sets the Two Words Apart
Chrysostom and Trench drew the line between hypomone and makrothymia in two places.
Persons and thingsRichard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (1871)
Trench wrote that "μακροθυμία will be found to express patience in respect of persons, ὑπομονή in respect of things". The enduring man, "under a great siege of trials, bears up, and does not lose heart or courage".
Where one could avenge and where one could notJohn Chrysostom, as Trench reports him
Trench reports Chrysostom's rule, that makrothymia is the patience of one who could avenge himself and hypomone the endurance of one who could not.
The objection is Trench's own, from Hebrews 12:2 to 3, where hypomone is ascribed to Christ, who "might have summoned to his aid twelve legions of angels".
A Call for Endurance
Revelation joins endurance to obedience and to faith.
Here is a call for the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.The noun's final appearance in the canon names the saints by what they keep.
The word belongs to people who hold on while the trial lasts, from the disciples Jesus warned in Luke 21 to the end of Revelation.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0), based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
- James Strong, A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament (1890), the numbers and definitions the lexicon rows carry.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, seventh edition, revised and enlarged (London: Macmillan, 1871), section liii, pages 184 to 188.
- Victorinus of Pettau, Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John, on Revelation 2:2, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 7 (1886)
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