ἑβδομηκοντάκις

From the study of Matthew 18:22

Range of meaning

Literally "seventy-times seven." Greek can combine an adverb ending in -kis ("...times") with a following number in two ways: as a compound number ("seventy-seven times") or as a multiplication ("seventy times seven," 490). The words alone allow either reading.

Against the English

KJV, WEB, YLT and the older tradition (Tyndale, RSV, NASB 1995) give "seventy times seven," which English readers hear as 490. BSB, NIV, ESV and NRSV give "seventy-seven times," usually with a footnote giving the alternative.

How it drifted

Tyndale and the KJV rendered the words literally in their Greek order. In English "seventy times seven" can only mean multiplication, so the 490 reading became fixed in popular memory. The link to Genesis 4:24, which the Greek-speaking first readers could have caught, was lost on English readers.

Used elsewhere in the period

The exact phrase ἑβδομηκοντάκις ἑπτά appears in the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament, used by Greek-speaking Jews and by Matthew) at Genesis 4:24: "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold." There the Hebrew (shiv'im v'shiv'ah, "seventy and seven") clearly means 77. That is the only other biblical use of the phrase. Many church fathers and the Latin Vulgate (septuagies septies) were read as multiplication, though the Latin is ambiguous too.