παρίημι

From the study of Sirach 25:23

Range of meaning

Pariēmi: to let go, let fall, slacken, so 'slack, drooping'. Paralyō: to loosen, undo, disable, so 'paralysed, weakened'. Together they form a fixed idiom for losing the strength and nerve to act.

Against the English

Brenton's 'weak hands and feeble knees' and WEB's 'hands that hang down, and weak knees' keep the image. Few readers recognise it as a stock biblical phrase for despair and loss of courage.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isaiah 35:3 (Hebrew 'slack hands… stumbling knees'; LXX 'loosened hands and paralysed knees'). Also Job 4:3–4, Ezek 7:17 and 21:7, Zeph 3:16. Hebrews 12:12 quotes the phrase in exactly Sirach's Greek form ('the drooping hands and the paralysed knees'). That suggests the wording was traditional in Jewish Greek, though Hebrews need not depend on Sirach directly.

From the study of Hebrews 12:12

Range of meaning

Literally 'let go alongside, let fall, slacken.' It is used of loosening a bowstring or rope, of letting something pass, of neglecting a duty (Luke 11:42, 'without neglecting the others'). In the passive (being acted on) it describes limbs or bodies that are slack, relaxed, enfeebled, worn out. Greek medical writers used it of limbs that had lost their tone.

Against the English

KJV/WEB 'hang down' and ESV 'drooping' keep the visual picture. BSB 'limp' and NIV 'feeble' keep the weakness but lose the sense of a condition someone has sunk into. The perfect participle (a verb form describing a state that results from something past) means 'have gone slack and are staying that way.'

Used elsewhere in the period

Sirach 25:23 (Greek) uses exactly the same pair, 'slack hands (cheires pareimenai) and loosened knees (gonata paralelymena),' for a husband worn down by an unhappy marriage. That shows it was a stock Jewish-Greek expression for dejection. Zephaniah 3:16 LXX: 'let not your hands grow slack' (mē pareisthōsan). In the Hebrew Bible the matching idiom is rāphâ yādayim, 'the hands go slack' (2 Samuel 4:1; Isaiah 13:7; Jeremiah 6:24; Ezekiel 21:7), always meaning lost nerve. Isaiah 35:3 LXX, which Hebrews is echoing, uses a near-synonym, aneimenai ('slackened').