Greek word · G5159
τροποφορέω
tropophoreō
to put up with
A rare compound of tropos ('way, manner, character, habits') and phoreō ('carry, bear habitually'). It means to put up with someone's ways, to tolerate their temper or behaviour, to bear patiently with a difficult person. BDAG glosses it 'bear or put up with (someone's) moods, manner'.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
τροπο-φορέω, -ῶ
[in LXX: Deuteronomy 1:31 B.l (נָשָׂא) * ;]
1. to bear another's manners (R, txt., suffered he their manners): with accusative of person(s), Acts 13:18 (Rec., WH, R, txt.; ἐτροφο-, T, R, mg.).
2. = τροφοφορέω (which see), (see Kühner3, I, 276): Ac, l.with†
(AS)
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
A rare compound of tropos ('way, manner, character, habits') and phoreō ('carry, bear habitually'). It means to put up with someone's ways, to tolerate their temper or behaviour, to bear patiently with a difficult person. BDAG glosses it 'bear or put up with (someone's) moods, manner'.
- Against the English
BSB 'endured their conduct', WEB 'put up with them' and KJV/YLT 'suffered their manners' all give the tolerance sense. 'Endured' can sound grim and passive. The Greek pictures someone carrying a burden of character: God shouldered Israel's ways for a whole generation.
- How it drifted
In KJV, 'suffered' meant 'allowed, tolerated' and 'manners' meant 'customs, habitual behaviour'. Modern readers hear 'suffered' as 'felt pain' and 'manners' as etiquette. The Greek has neither of those meanings.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Very rare outside the Bible. A well-known example is Cicero, who drops the Greek word into a Latin letter to Atticus (Ad Atticum 13.29) for putting up with someone's moods. In the Greek Old Testament it appears as a manuscript reading at Deuteronomy 1:31. Some copies there read tropophoreō, but many editors prefer trophophoreō ('carry like a nurse'), the reading that best fits the Hebrew 'as a man carries his son'. Later Christian writers (e.g. Apostolic Constitutions) use tropophoreō in the tolerance sense.
Where it appears
Acts · 1
-
Acts 13:18 ἐτροποφόρησεν He endured the ways
He endured their conduct for about forty years in the wilderness.
Here: Made from 'ways, character' and 'carry, bear': God carried the burden of Israel's moods and behaviour. The verb sums up the whole forty years as a single act. It quietly assumes those ways were hard to bear. One letter different in some manuscripts gives 'carried them like a nurse' (see variants).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.