ἀρά

From the study of Romans 3:14

Range of meaning

In classical Greek ἀρά could mean a prayer, but most often a prayer against someone: an imprecation, a curse. It can also mean the ruin a curse brings, or the personified curse itself (in tragedy the Ἀραί are curse-spirits, linked with the Furies). In biblical Greek it is overwhelmingly "curse": words spoken to bring harm on someone, or a curse attached to an oath. BDAG: "curse, imprecation".

Against the English

Every major English version says "cursing". That is accurate in older English, but today "cursing" or "cussing" mostly means swearing or using obscene words. Ara means something heavier and more specific: wishing ruin on someone and calling it down on them, often by invoking God or gods.

How it drifted

In English, "curse" and "swear" both moved from their religious senses (calling down damnation; taking an oath) to mean using offensive words. That shift was well advanced by the 1800s. Hearing "cursing" now, a reader thinks of vocabulary rather than hostile intent.

Used elsewhere in the period

In the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament), ἀρά translates Hebrew ʾālāh, an oath backed by a self-curse or a curse on others (Num 5:21–23, the curse in the ordeal of the suspected wife; Deut 29:19–20 [LXX 29:18–19], the covenant curses), and sometimes qᵉlālāh, "curse". The source here, Psalm 10:7 (LXX 9:28), reads ʾālāh pîhû mālēʾ, "his mouth is full of oath/curse", and the LXX renders it ἀρᾶς τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ γέμει. The only other New Testament use is Paul's own line about the law's curse in Galatians? No: Galatians uses κατάρα. Ἀρά occurs only here in the NT. Outside the Bible, Greek curse tablets (defixiones, lead sheets buried to bind a rival or enemy) show how seriously spoken and written curses were taken across the Roman world.