Greek word · G927
βαρύτιμος
barytimos
expensive
'Of great value, extremely costly'. It is a compound of barys ('heavy') and timē ('price, value'). It occurs only here in the New Testament. In the Greek of the period it described luxury goods and treasures.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Matthew 26:7
- Range of meaning
'Of great value, extremely costly'. It is a compound of barys ('heavy') and timē ('price, value'). It occurs only here in the New Testament. In the Greek of the period it described luxury goods and treasures.
- Against the English
KJV 'very precious', WEB 'very expensive', ESV 'very expensive', NASB 'very costly'. BSB has just 'expensive' and NLT 'expensive', which drop some of the intensity.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Used in Hellenistic Greek for costly goods (see BDAG, LSJ). Mark 14:3 uses polytelēs ('very costly') at this point and John 12:3 polytimos ('very valuable'). Mark 14:5 and John 12:5 put the value at around 300 denarii. Matthew 20:2 shows a denarius was a day's wage for a labourer, so this was roughly a year's earnings.
Where it appears
Matthew · 1
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Matthew 26:7 βαρυτίμου very costly
a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, which she poured on His head as He reclined at the table.
Here: Literally 'heavy in price'. It occurs only here in the New Testament, and it is an intensive word: extremely expensive, not just pricey. It sets up the disciples' complaint in the next verse.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.