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.
elpis
Hope. Confident expectation, not wishing.
Romans 8:24, in every translation this tool compares.
I hope it doesn't rain. The train is due at six. The first is a wish. The second is an expectation. English uses the same word for the first and a different construction for the second.
Because English hope means uncertainty, and the Greek noun is about something settled that has not arrived yet. The difference changes every verse it appears in.
Every version reads hope.
ἐλπίς elpis · G1680
Elpis is expectation, and in the New Testament it is expectation grounded in a promise. Classical Greek could use it neutrally of expecting something bad, which shows the word itself is about expectation rather than optimism.
English hope has drifted almost entirely toward the uncertain wish, so a word about confidence reads as a word about doubt.
When a word reads as weaker in English than the argument around it requires, the English word has probably weakened.
Hope is universal in English versions.
- elpis at Romans 5:5; 8:24-25; Hebrews 6:19
- Classical elpis of expecting evil: Euripides and elsewhere
- Hebrews 11:1 defines it by substance rather than feeling
