ἀφανισμός

From the study of 1 Enoch 12:5

Range of meaning

The verb ἀφανίζω means to make unseen or make disappear. From there it comes to mean to destroy, obliterate, or lay waste, and it is used for ruined cities and land left empty. The noun ἀφανισμός is the result: destruction, desolation, disappearance.

Against the English

Charles's "great destruction" is accurate but loses two things. It loses the repetition of the same root ("you destroyed a great destruction"), and it loses the Greek picture of the earth itself as what was destroyed. Some modern translators use "desolation," which keeps the sense of a land emptied out.

Used elsewhere in the period

In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) these words are common for land laid desolate under judgment, for example in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In the New Testament ἀφανισμός appears only in Heb 8:13, of the old covenant "near to disappearing." In 1 Enoch the charge picks up 7:3–6 and 9:1, 9:9, where the giants devour everything and the earth "brings accusation" and is "filled with blood and injustice."

From the study of Hebrews 8:13

Range of meaning

Literally "a making-invisible": disappearance or vanishing. In practice it often means removal, destruction, ruin, desolation.

Against the English

"Disappear" (BSB, NIV, NASB, NLT) and "vanish away" (KJV, ESV, WEB) are accurate to the root. They can sound like a gentle fading out, while the word's usage in the Greek Old Testament usually leans toward ruin and desolation. The Latin Vulgate's interitum ("destruction, ruin, death") brings out that side.

How it drifted

Not a drift so much as a narrowing. English "vanish" brings to mind quiet fading. The Greek word can carry that sense, but its common biblical use is for destruction.

Used elsewhere in the period

A New Testament hapax, meaning a word that occurs only once in the New Testament. It is frequent in the Septuagint, especially in Jeremiah, for the desolation of land and city, as in Jeremiah 12:11 and 51:6 in the numbering of English Bibles. Deuteronomy 7:2 has "you shall utterly destroy" (aphanismō aphanieis). The related verb aphanizō is used both of destroying ("moth and rust destroy", Matthew 6:19) and of vanishing ("a mist that vanishes", James 4:14).