Greek word · G1517
εἰρηνοποιέω
eirēnopoieō
to make peace
"To make peace": to end a war or feud and establish an ordered, secure peace. Behind Greek εἰρήνη in Jewish usage stands Hebrew shalom, which means wholeness, right order and well-being, not only the absence of fighting.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament.
What it means
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Colossians 1:20
- Range of meaning
"To make peace": to end a war or feud and establish an ordered, secure peace. Behind Greek εἰρήνη in Jewish usage stands Hebrew shalom, which means wholeness, right order and well-being, not only the absence of fighting.
- Against the English
"Making peace" (all versions) is accurate. A modern reader may still hear inner calm. The Greek is the language of ending hostilities and settling public order.
- How it drifted
Modern English "peace" leans toward private feelings ("peace of mind"). In the first century the word was political and cosmic.
- Used elsewhere in the period
NT hapax (it occurs only here in the NT). The related noun is "peacemakers" in Matt 5:9. LXX Prov 10:10 uses the verb of someone whose frank rebuke "makes peace." Philo calls God the eirēnopoios, "peacemaker," who ends strife among the parts of the universe (Special Laws 2.192), a close conceptual parallel to cosmic peace-making. In Roman ideology pax was won by conquest: Augustus boasts that peace was "secured by victories" across the empire (Res Gestae 13), and later emperors took titles such as pacator orbis, "pacifier of the world."
Similar words
Where it appears
Colossians · 1
-
Colossians 1:20 εἰρηνοποιήσας having made peace
and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross.
Here: An aorist participle telling how the reconciling was done: by an act of peace-making that is complete. It is masculine, so its implied subject is God rather than the neuter word "fullness." Appears only here in the NT.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.