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.
John 6:27
Him hath God the Father sealed. A commercial and legal word for marking ownership.
John 6:27, in every translation this tool compares.
Stamped and signed. A stamp says who stands behind this. It does not say the thing is shut.
Because sealed in English sounds like closing something, and the Greek verb is about stamping a mark of ownership or authentication on goods and documents.
Versions read sealed, set his seal on, or placed his seal of approval on.
σφραγίζω sphragizo · G4972
Sphragizo is to affix a seal: to authenticate a document, to mark goods as owned, to certify. Paul uses it of believers being sealed with the Spirit. The sense is certification, not closure.
English seal kept the closure sense and largely lost the authentication one outside legal language.
When an English word has narrowed to one of two senses, check which sense the ancient world used more. Commercial vocabulary usually survives in papyri.
Most modern versions print set his seal on; the King James reads sealed.
- sphragizo of believers: 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30
- Commercial use on goods and documents in the papyri
- Revelation 7:3-8 uses it of marking
