Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
dikaioo
To justify. A courtroom verb meaning to declare in the right, not to make good.
Romans 3:24, in every translation this tool compares.
Justify your answer. The court found in his favour. The second is the sense. The first is what English drifted into.
Because the English word justify now mostly means to excuse something, and the Greek verb is a verdict.
Every version reads justify or declare righteous. No major version departs.
δικαιόω dikaioo · G1344
Dikaioo is built on the same root as dikaiosune and belongs in legal vocabulary: to pronounce someone in the right. It is a statement about standing, not a description of character improvement.
English justify moved toward offering an excuse, which is nearly the opposite of a verdict handed down by someone else.
Verbs ending in this Greek shape are usually declarative rather than causative. The verdict language is in the grammar, not just in the theology built on it.
Justify is the settled majority rendering. Declare righteous appears where a translator wants the verdict sense to be unmissable.
- Luke 7:29, the people justified God, which cannot mean made him righteous
- Romans 4:5; 8:33
- Same root as dikaios, righteous, and dike, justice
