Greek word · G2053

ἔριον

erion

wool

Wool, especially sheep's wool as a raw or worked material. Clean, undyed wool was a common standard of whiteness, often paired with snow.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

ἔριον, -ου, τό

[in LXX for צֶמֶר, Leviticus 13:47, Isaiah 1:18, al. ;]

wool: Hebrews 9:19, Revelation 1:14.†

(AS)

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 Revelation 1:14

Range of meaning

Wool, especially sheep's wool as a raw or worked material. Clean, undyed wool was a common standard of whiteness, often paired with snow.

Against the English

English readers sometimes take "like wool" as describing hair texture (woolly, tightly curled). In Greek the comparison is plainly about colour: "white as white wool". The adjective is repeated to make sure of it.

How it drifted

In modern debates about Jesus' ethnicity, "wool" has been read as a texture word. That reading comes from English associations, not from the Greek sentence, where the shared feature is named outright: white.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isaiah 1:18 LXX pairs the two: "as snow... as wool" (ὡς χιόνα... ὡς ἔριον), both for whiteness after cleansing. Psalm 147:16 (LXX 147:5) says God "gives snow like wool". Daniel 7:9 Old Greek: "like white, pure wool". 1 Enoch 46:1; 71:10.

Where it appears

Hebrews · 1

  1. Hebrews 9:19 ἐρίου wool

    For when Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people,

    Here: Wool, here a dyed thread or tuft, probably what bound the hyssop into a sprinkler.

Revelation · 1

  1. Revelation 1:14 ἔριον wool

    The hair of His head was white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like a blazing fire.

    Here: Wool, here clean undyed wool, which was the everyday standard of whiteness. It comes straight from Daniel 7:9, where the Ancient of Days has hair "like pure wool".

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.