English Standard Version, Luke 7:
ἐχαρίσατο (echarisato) Verb - Aorist Indicative Middle - 3rd Person Singular Strong's 5483: (a) To show favor to, (b) To pardon, forgive, (c) To show kindness.
BDAG χαρίζομαι:
① to give freely as a favor, give graciously (a common term)
② to cancel a sum of money that is owed, cancel
③ to show oneself gracious by forgiving wrongdoing, forgive, pardon
Strong's Greek: 5483. χαρίζομαι (charizomai) — 23 Occurrences
Amplified Bible:
There was another Greek word for meaning #1. New International Version, Luke 1:
English Standard Version:
Strong's Greek: 5487. χαριτόω (charitoó) — 2 Occurrences
G5487 was not used as commonly as G5483. Both verbs had the prefix χαρί, meaning grace and favor.
BDAG χαριτόω:
Luke continued:
G5485 noun: χάρις, grace, favor.
With respect to the virgin birth, Mary was highly and uniquely favored by God.
G5487 also appeared in (NIV) Ephesians 1:
Christians are G5487-highly-favored.
Was Mary highly favored (G5487) by God or just regularly favored (G5483)?
With respect to the virgin birth, God uniquely and highly favored (G5487) Mary. With respect to sonship adoption, predestined Christians are also highly favored (G5487).
A messenger from God, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, a small town country girl, greeting her like a noble woman, “Hail” with the word, “
kecharitomene”. Mary is being identified as this thing, “
kecharitomene” The Greek word is most often translated as “most favored or highly favored” and from the traditional Latin translation of “full of grace“or in Latin “gratia plena”. What it means however is the woman being hailed is “
completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace." [Blass and DeBrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature]. Gabriel continues asking Mary if she will miraculously conceive a child who becomes the King of Israel, the house of Jacob, and is the Son of God. We hear Mary accept, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word." [Luke 1:38]. Later she meets with Elizabeth, a relative, exuberantly proclaimed, “My soul doth magnify the Lord." [Luke 1:46]. Thus Mary becomes the Ark of the New Covenant. A thing both literally and figuratively that is full of grace is without sin, has never sinned, and never would have sinned in her earthly and heavenly existence.
Kecharitomene, Full of grace:
Kecharitomene is the perfect passive participle (feminine) of charitoo, a late Hellenistic verb. Like other verbs ending in oo (such as thaumatoo, fill with wonder; spodoomai, burn to ashes; haimatoo, turn into blood ; karoo, plunge into deep sleep ; ommatoo, furnish with eyes ;’ it expresses the full intensity of an action. In this case the action—as any dictionary will reveal—is one of “favoring” or “gracing.” There is but one other instance of its use in the New Testament, in Eph. 1:6. The verse reads: eis epainon doxes tes charitos autou, hes echaritosen hemas en to egapemeno. Such a mode of expression is very emphatic and finds frequent parallels in St. Paul. A few examples are: “on account of His great love with which He has loved us,”(7) “of the calling with which you are called,”(8) “by means of the consolations with which we our-selves are consoled.”!° A possible translation of the Greek phrase above would be: “to the praise of the glory of His grace with which He has thoroughly graced us.”24 In other words, God is shown to have completely exhausted His favor and grace upon mankind through the redemption of His beloved Son.
Divine favor is likewise expressed by charitoo in The Testament of The Twelve Patriarchs: “When I was in chains, the Savior showered His favor upon me and set me free (ho soter echaritose me en desmois, kai eluse me).”!* Again, we read in Hermes the Pastor: “The Lord then seeing their simplicity and entire child- liness made them abound in the labors of their hands, and thor- oughly favored them in all their undertakings (ho oun kurios idon ten aploteta auton kai pasan nepioteta eplethunen autous en tois kopois ton cheiron auton kai echaritosen autous en pase praxei auton).”(18) In these instances of the verb the emphasis is upon the exhaustiveness of the action. Charitoo seems to have been the best expression of God’s ineffable beneficence to man.
With these preliminary observations we may logically deduce a general meaning for the word kecharitomene. Its reference is obvi- ously to a woman who has been thoroughly favored or graced by God. Michael J. Gruenthaner, S.J., in his article “Mary in the New Testament,” sums up the grammatico-etymological signifi- cance of the word very nicely: “It denotes one who has been and still is the object of divine benevolence, one who has been favored and continues to be favored by God, one who has been granted supernatural grace and remains in this state.’’(14)
This is perfectly true. For the perfect passive participle of every Greek verb conveys the notion of having received something in the past and of possessing it now in a stable fashion. Thus, it is distinguished from the present passive participle which emphasizes the reception of some action hic et nunc. Now, these and like considerations lie behind most of the translations of the word as found in versions of the Bible made during the last few centuries. Translators have felt that as long as they suggest some idea of God’s favor to Mary and her possession of that favor at the time of the Annunciation, and as long as they include a certain intensity of that action, their renderings must be deemed legitimate.15 And with nothing more than syntax and a dictionary to go by we would have to admit that kecharitomene might mean as little as “one who has been especially favored by her destiny to be Mother of Christ.” Yes, this would be a possible interpretation, and we could have no quarrel with Protestants where they keep to this minimum. However, we have the best possible assurance that the word means more than this. I refer to the assurance that the usage of kechari-tomenos affords us. For, after all, it is usage that reveals to us all those subtle overtones of a word—overtones that a cold grammatico- etymological analysis can never hope to capture. It is the “life” of a word that tells us most about it. We must therefore inquire into that life.
7 Ommatomenos, the perf. pas. part. of this verb, was employed by the poets to describe the Argus as “all-eyes.”
8 The New Testament, op. cit., Eph 2, 4. Ibid., 4, 1.
10 [bid., 2 Cor 1, 4.
11 The Peshitto has: “. . . grace which He has poured out (Sephah) upon us.”
12 The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, PG, II, 1125.
14 Michael J. Gruenthaner, S.J., “Mary in the New Testament,” Mariology, edited by Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M. (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1954), I, 85.
15 Certain English translations, however, appear to be wholly uninfluenced by these considerations, e.g., the Revised Standard Version, the translations of James Moffat, J. B. Phillips, Edgar J. Goodspeed, etc., obstinately hold to “favored one.” The Authorized King James Version reads, more honestly, “highly favored one.”
Source:
The American Ecclesiastical Review 1958-10: Vol 139 Iss 4 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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