0
0
Greek Word for Fear of the Lord: What Does “Phobos” Really Mean?
Quick answer: Phobos (φόβος, Strong’s G5401, pronounced FOH-bos) is the Greek noun standing behind “fear” in New Testament phrases like “walking in the fear of the Lord” (Acts 9:31) and “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). English borrowed it whole — every -phobia word comes from it — and kept only the running-away half. That is closer to the original than most people expect. Before phobos ever named an emotion, it named a movement: flight, the rout, the moment a battle line breaks and runs. Which makes what the New Testament does with it genuinely strange. It takes the word for running away, aims it at God, and then attaches walking to it.
Word Study: Where It Comes From
Phobos is built on the old verb φέβομαι (phebomai), “to flee, to be put to flight.” And in the earliest Greek we have, the noun means exactly that — not the feeling, but the running. In Homer, phobos is the rout. Warriors do not sit and feel it; they are seized by it and driven, and the emotion is inferred from the direction of their feet. Phobos is even a figure in the old stories — a son of Ares who rides in the war god’s company alongside Deimos (Dread), the pair of them set on shields to break the nerve of whoever is looking.
So the word starts life as something you inflict on an enemy line. It is a tactical word before it is an emotional one. By the time of ordinary Koine Greek — the Greek of the New Testament — phobos had long since settled into meaning fear itself, the way we use it. But a word does not shed its history so much as carry it quietly. Phobos still has a direction folded inside it, and the direction is away.
Then something happened that the word was not built for. Two centuries or so before Christ, Jewish translators in Alexandria set about putting the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and they hit the phrase yir’at YHWH — the fear of the LORD. The Hebrew word there, yirah, has no fleeing in it at all; it is the ordinary word for being afraid, and its range stretches all the way to honouring your parents. The translators needed a Greek equivalent, and they chose phobos. So Proverbs 9:10 became archē sophias phobos kyriou. A word whose root means run was made to carry a phrase about staying.
The New Testament writers inherit that Greek Old Testament and its vocabulary wholesale, which is why phobos is the word waiting for them when they want to talk about the fear of God. And it is why the phrase sits so awkwardly in English. We inherited phobos too, but we only kept the half that runs. Every English word built from it — claustrophobia, agoraphobia, xenophobia — names a fear a person is trying to be cured of. That is the register English ears hear “the fear of the Lord” in, and it is the wrong one. Not because the word has been softened somewhere along the way, but because Scripture uses the other half of it.
If this word is finally about which direction you face when God comes near, then the practical question is how a person actually notices God on an ordinary Tuesday — close enough to have a direction to face at all. The Beginner’s Guide to Feeling God’s Presence Every Day is a free guide to a simple 3-step rhythm that turns a normal routine into something you can meet God inside of, especially when life is loud and God feels far off.
Where This Word Appears in the Bible
Phobos turns up around four dozen times across the New Testament, and its verb φοβέομαι (phobeomai, G5399) far more often than that. Much of the time it is plain fright — shepherds in a field, disciples in a boat, a jailer at Philippi. But a strand of it is aimed deliberately at God, and that strand runs like this:
| Reference | Text (KJV) | What phobos is doing here |
|---|---|---|
| Acts 9:31 | “…and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” | The one place it is a settled way of life |
| 2 Corinthians 7:1 | “…let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” | The climate holiness is finished in |
| Philippians 2:12 | “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” | Welded to tromos, the physical shake |
| Romans 3:18 | “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” | Its absence named as the diagnosis |
| 1 Peter 2:17 | “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” | Fear reserved for one recipient only |
One more is worth knowing about, because it is the strangest. Ephesians 5:21 tells believers to submit to one another “in the fear of God” — and in the earliest manuscripts the phrase reads en phobō Christou, in the fear of Christ. It is the only place in the New Testament where this word is attached to Jesus by name, and it is attached not to a throne-room scene but to the ordinary business of yielding to the person next to you.
Verse Deep Dive: Acts 9:31 — Walking in It
“Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” — Acts 9:31
This is a small verse doing quiet work. Luke has just spent a chapter on the conversion of Saul — the man who had been dragging believers out of their houses is now the man preaching in Damascus — and then the narrative stops for a single summary sentence about what the churches were like afterwards. It is the closest thing the New Testament has to a description of the fear of the Lord as a normal, daily condition rather than a reaction to something terrifying.
1. Luke attaches a travel word to it. “Walking” is πορευόμεναι (poreuomai) — to journey, to go along a road, the same verb behind “Go ye therefore” in the Great Commission. Set that against the root of phobos, which means to be put to flight, and the sentence quietly reverses the word. Fear is no longer the thing that moves you off the road. It is the road.
2. The grammar makes it a climate, not a possession. The Greek is τῷ φόβῳ τοῦ κυρίου — a dative, “by” or “in” the fear of the Lord. These churches are not described as having fear, the way you might have a headache. They are walking in it, the way you walk in daylight. It is the medium they move through, and it is the same construction in the very next phrase.
3. Fear and comfort are joined by “and,” not “but.” This is the line that should stop a reader. Walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. That second word is παράκλησις (paraklesis, G3874) — comfort, encouragement, coming alongside — from the same root as Paraclete, the name Jesus gives the Spirit in John 14:16. Luke puts phobos and paraklesis in one sentence, describing one church, in one season, and feels no need to explain the combination. He does not write “fearful, but comforted.” If those two words fight in your head, that is a fact about our vocabulary, not about the thing Luke is describing.
4. And the result clause is growth. The sentence ends ἐπληθύνοντο — “were multiplied.” Take that seriously for a moment. Fear in the phobia sense makes a group smaller: it makes people cautious, quiet, defensive, gone. This one produced rest, edification, and numerical increase in three regions at once. Whatever the churches of Judaea and Galilee and Samaria were walking in, it did not shrink them. That is a testable claim about what this word means, and Luke offers it as a result rather than a definition.
A small textual footnote, since it is visible in the KJV: “churches” here is plural in the manuscript tradition the KJV followed, while the earliest copies read the singular, “the church” — which would make this the first moment Luke calls the scattered congregations of three whole regions one single thing. The phrase we are studying is untouched either way.
Not All “Fear” Is the Same: Phobos, Deilia, Eulabeia and Tromos
Here is something the Hebrew half of this study could not say. Biblical Hebrew has no separate word for reverence — the fear of the LORD simply had to be carried by the ordinary fear-word, because there was no gentler one to reach for. Greek is not in that position. Greek has a reverence word. The New Testament mostly declines to use it.
- Phobos (φόβος, G5401) — the fear that has a direction. The broad word, from a root meaning flight. It covers everything from a shepherd’s terror to the settled walk of Acts 9:31, and it is the word Scripture actually commands: “Fear God” (1 Peter 2:17).
- Deilia (δειλία, G1167) — cowardice. Not fear but the failure of nerve. It appears exactly once: 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” That verse gets quoted constantly to prove that God never wants a believer afraid — and the word in it is not phobos. It is deilia. Its adjective is what Jesus calls the disciples in the storm (“Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” — Matthew 8:26) and what heads the list in Revelation 21:8. Paul is not cancelling the fear of God in that verse; two lines later he is telling Timothy not to be ashamed of the testimony. He is cancelling the shrinking.
- Eulabeia (εὐλάβεια, G2124) — reverence, godly caution. Literally something like “taking hold well” — care, circumspection, handling a thing properly. This is the polite word, and Hebrews uses it magnificently: “let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28), and, of Jesus in Gethsemane, that He “was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7). The word exists. It was available to every New Testament writer. And when Paul wants to describe the atmosphere in which holiness gets finished, he does not write eulabeia. He writes phobos.
- Tromos (τρόμος, G5156) — trembling. The body rather than the mind; the shake itself. In Paul it never stands alone — every time he uses it, it is bolted to phobos: “fear and trembling” in Philippians 2:12, 1 Corinthians 2:3, 2 Corinthians 7:15 and Ephesians 6:5. Greek keeps the emotion and its physical evidence in two separate words, which is why “fear and trembling” is not a poetic doubling. It is a description with two parts.
That is the shape of the evidence, and it points one way. The New Testament had a softer option sitting in the drawer and chose the hard word — the one with running in its roots — nearly every time it spoke about how a person stands before God.
Why the Original Word Changes the Meaning
1. “Reverence” is a description of it, not a translation of it. The common move is to say that the Bible’s fear-of-God language does not really mean fear, it means reverence — and the Greek will not underwrite that as a claim about vocabulary, because eulabeia was right there and largely went unused. Reverence is a fair account of what phobos turns into once it is pointed at God. It is not what the word says. The difference matters, because the softened version quietly removes the part where God is genuinely overwhelming, and that part is load-bearing.
2. Its absence, not its presence, is the diagnosis. Paul closes his long chain of Old Testament quotations about human ruin with a single line from Psalm 36:1: “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18). That is the summary charge — the last and most damning item on the list. Notice what it is not: the problem in Romans 3 is not that people are frightened of God. It is that nothing about God is in their field of vision at all. And notice where the phrase puts it — ἀπέναντι τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν, “before their eyes,” which is the same spatial picture Moses used at Sinai when he said God had come so that this fear would be “before your faces.” Across a thousand years and two languages, the fear of God keeps getting described as a matter of what is in front of you.
3. It is what Peter refuses to give Caesar. 1 Peter 2:17 is four short commands, and Peter is exact with them: “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” The emperor gets τιμάω (timaō), honour — the same verb given to everybody else in the street. God alone gets phobeomai. Peter seems to be reworking Proverbs 24:21, which had put the two side by side under one verb (“fear thou the LORD and the king”), and pulling them deliberately apart. Written to believers living under a Roman state that was starting to want rather more than honour, that is a whole act of resistance conducted in the choice of a verb. Fear goes to one address. The man on the throne is not it.
4. Perfect love casts out one specific kind of it. 1 John 4:18 — “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment” — is the verse most often set against everything above, and John uses phobos in it. But he also tells you which phobos he means, in the clause people skip. The fear he is expelling “hath torment,” and the Greek word is κόλασις (kolasis, G2851): punishment, penalty, the same noun as “everlasting punishment” in Matthew 25:46. John is not abolishing the fear of the Lord. He is naming one particular fear — the fear of what God is going to do to you — and saying that love shows it the door. Which leaves standing precisely the phobos of Acts 9:31: the kind you can walk in, be comforted in, and grow.
Living It Out
Because this word carries a direction, the practical test attached to it is not “do you feel enough awe.” It is simpler and more embarrassing than that: which way do you move.
Watch for it this week in a very ordinary form. There will be a moment — reading, praying, listening, lying awake — when something about God, or about yourself in front of God, becomes uncomfortable. And you will feel the pull to change the subject. Reach for the phone. Move to the next verse. Decide to think about it properly another time. That pull is phobos doing its oldest job, the Homeric one: breaking the line and moving you off the field.
Acts 9:31 is the alternative, and it is not more intense — it is just facing the other way. So when you notice the pull, don’t manufacture reverence and don’t scold yourself for flinching. Just stay one more minute than is comfortable. Keep the uncomfortable thing in front of your eyes, where Romans 3 says it belongs, and see what God does with the minute.
That minute is the entire distance between the word’s two directions. Same fear. Same word. One of them is a rout, and one of them is a road.
Journal Prompts
- Before phobos was a feeling it was a rout — the moment a line breaks and runs. Where is your line currently breaking? Name the one subject about God, or about yourself before God, that you reliably move away from. Don’t write the answer to it. Just get the subject onto the page.
- Luke describes one church walking “in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost” — two words joined by “and,” not “but.” Write your own honest version of that sentence for this season: what have you actually been walking in? If your two words can’t sit next to each other in one sentence, that tension is worth a paragraph of its own.
- 2 Timothy 1:7 turns out to be about deilia — cowardice — not phobos. So where have you used “God doesn’t want me to be afraid” as cover for something that was really just avoidance? Be specific about the thing you avoided, and about what it cost.
Prayer
Lord, the oldest meaning of this word is running, and I know that route by heart. I have got very good at leaving the room politely — changing the subject, staying busy, calling my retreat a season. I am not asking to feel less. I am asking to face a different way. Give me the phobos of Acts 9:31, the kind a person can walk in and still be comforted, the kind that made a frightened, scattered church grow instead of shrink. Cast out the fear that is really only fear of punishment; I don’t need that one, and Your love has already dealt with it. Keep what’s left in front of my eyes. And thank You that Jesus, in the garden, was heard because of His own reverent fear — He stayed where I would have run, and He stayed for me. Amen.
Share This
The Greek behind “the fear of the Lord” is phobos — and before it ever meant an emotion it meant a movement: flight, the rout, an army breaking and running. Then Acts 9:31 attaches walking to it. Same word. Opposite direction. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/articles/greek-word-for-fear-of-the-lord/
“God hath not given us the spirit of fear” — the Greek word in 2 Timothy 1:7 isn’t phobos. It’s deilia: cowardice. Paul isn’t cancelling the fear of God there. He’s cancelling the shrinking. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/articles/greek-word-for-fear-of-the-lord/
FAQ
What does the Greek word phobos mean?
Phobos (φόβος, Strong’s G5401) is a masculine noun meaning fear, terror, or reverence, with the verb φοβέομαι (phobeomai, G5399) alongside it. It is built on φέβομαι, “to flee,” and in the oldest Greek it names flight itself rather than the feeling behind it. It appears around four dozen times in the New Testament, covering everything from ordinary fright to the settled “fear of the Lord” of Acts 9:31 — and it is the word the Septuagint had already chosen to translate the Hebrew yirah.
Does “the fear of the Lord” appear in the New Testament, or only the Old?
It appears, and one detail is worth knowing. The exact Greek phrase ton phobon tou kyriou shows up in Acts 9:31, where the KJV renders it “the fear of the Lord,” and again in 2 Corinthians 5:11, where the same translators rendered it “the terror of the Lord” — “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” Identical Greek, two very different English words, and most readers never connect the verses. The idea is also carried by 2 Corinthians 7:1, Ephesians 5:21, Colossians 3:22 and 1 Peter 2:17.
Doesn’t 2 Timothy 1:7 say God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear?
It does, but not with this word. The term there is deilia (G1167), which means cowardice or timidity — the failure of nerve, not fear as such. It is the only time it appears in the New Testament, and its adjective is what Jesus calls the disciples panicking in the boat. Read in context the verse is an encouragement to a young leader not to shrink back, which is why Paul follows it immediately with “be not thou therefore ashamed.” It is not a statement that the fear of God has been abolished.
What is the difference between phobos and eulabeia?
Eulabeia (G2124) is the genuine Greek word for reverence — careful, circumspect regard, “taking hold well” of something. Phobos is the harder word, with flight in its roots. The significance is in the choosing: unlike Hebrew, which had no separate reverence word available, Greek offered both, and the New Testament reaches for phobos far more often. Hebrews does use eulabeia, and beautifully — including of Jesus praying in Gethsemane (Hebrews 5:7) — but it is the exception rather than the pattern.
The whole word turns on whether God feels near enough to have a direction to face.
That is the honest difficulty underneath all of this: it is hard to walk in the fear of the Lord if God mostly feels theoretical. The Beginner’s Guide to Feeling God’s Presence Every Day is a free, simple guide to a 3-step rhythm for noticing God in ordinary moments — even when everything is chaotic and nothing feels close.
