Greek word · G3605
ὄζω
ozō
to stink
To give off a smell, good or bad. Without a qualifier, and in contexts of decay, it means to stink.
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
- Range of meaning
To give off a smell, good or bad. Without a qualifier, and in contexts of decay, it means to stink.
- Against the English
KJV "stinketh" and BSB "stinks" keep the bluntness. WEB "there is a stench" is accurate but impersonal. Several modern versions turn it into a future ("there will be an odor") or a polite "bad odor", which makes Martha's words gentler and more hesitant than the Greek.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Classical Greek uses it for both fragrance and stench. In the Septuagint, Exodus 8:14 (8:10 in the Greek numbering) uses it of the land of Egypt after the frog plague: the heaped-up dead frogs made "the land stink." It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.
Where it appears
John · 1
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John 11:39 ὄζει· he stinks;
“Take away the stone,” Jesus said. “Lord, by now he stinks,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man. “It has already been four days.”
Here: The verb appears only here in the New Testament. Used alone in a context like this it means a bad smell: "he stinks." It is present tense, but Martha is most likely inferring from the time elapsed rather than reporting something she can smell through the stone.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.