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.
kurios
Lord. Also sir, and also the Septuagint's replacement for the divine name.
Romans 10:9, in every translation this tool compares.
Yes, sir. He is lord of the manor. The Lord. English has the same word doing three jobs and separates them with a capital letter.
Because when a New Testament writer quotes an Old Testament verse containing the divine name and applies it to Jesus, the whole move runs through this one word, and English cannot show it.
Every version reads Lord, with lowercase lord or sir where a human is addressed.
κύριος kurios · G2962
Kurios covers a polite sir, a master or owner, and in the Septuagint it stands in for YHWH wherever the name occurs. So a quotation like Joel 2:32 arriving in Romans 10:13 carries the divine name inside an ordinary Greek noun.
English uses capitalisation to mark the difference, a device Greek manuscripts do not have and speech cannot carry.
If a quotation hinges on the word Lord, look up whether the underlying Hebrew had the divine name there. That's usually the whole argument.
Lord is the universal rendering; sir appears where a stranger is addressed, as at John 4:11.
- kurios for YHWH throughout the Septuagint
- Joel 2:32 quoted at Romans 10:13
- kurios as sir: John 4:11; 20:15
