ἄψινθος

From the study of Revelation 8:11

Range of meaning

The plant wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and related bitter Artemisia species. It was proverbial for bitterness. Doctors used it as a medicine and to expel worms, which is where the English name comes from. As a metaphor it meant a bitter fate, bitter grief or bitter judgment. On its own it was not known as a deadly poison.

Against the English

Most English versions keep "Wormwood" as the name and "wormwood" for what the waters become. That is accurate, but most modern readers have never tasted the plant, so the point (bitterness) gets lost and the capital letter makes it sound like a mysterious code name. Some versions turn it into a plain meaning, such as "Bitterness". The BSB adds "oil", which the Greek does not have.

How it drifted

The word itself has not changed meaning. Readers have simply lost touch with the plant. That gap has been filled by guesses: the absinthe liqueur, the idea that it is a deadly poison, or a modern place name (see popular_drift).

Used elsewhere in the period

In the New Testament the word appears only in this verse, twice. Greek writers and doctors such as Theophrastus and Dioscorides describe it as a bitter medicinal plant. The Latin poet Lucretius (1.936–942) has the famous picture of doctors smearing honey on the rim of a cup so children will drink bitter wormwood. In the Hebrew Bible the matching word is la'anah, paired with rosh ("gall" or "poison"): Deut 29:18 (idolatry as a root bearing gall and wormwood), Jer 9:15 and 23:15 ("I will feed them wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink"), Lam 3:15, 19, Amos 5:7 and 6:12 (justice turned into wormwood), and Prov 5:4. The Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) usually translates la'anah with words for "gall" or "bitterness". The plant-name itself (ἀψίνθιον) appears in later Jewish Greek revisions such as Aquila's.