Bromileys Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume.
ὕπνος hýpnos [sleep] <G5258>,
ἀφυπνόω aphypnóō [to fall asleep] <G879>,
ἐνύπνιον enýpnion [dream] <G1798>,
ἐνυπνιάζομαι enypniázomai [to dream] <G1797>,
ἔξυπνος éxypnos [awake] <G1853>,
ἔξυπνίζω exypnízō [to wake up] <G1852>
A. The Greeks.
1. Origin, Meaning, and Use of the Stem hypn-. Deriving from a basic supnos, this word means “sleep,” and the phrase en hýpnō (“during sleep”) produces enýpnion as a term for “dream.” agrypnéō means “to sleep in the open,” then “to watch.”2. Sleep as a Natural Process. Natural sleep is described as sweet, kindly, etc. It rules over all, is taken as a gift, overpowers people, especially when fired with wine, and is enjoyed. Phrases are “at the time of the first sleep” and “shortly after going to sleep.” Dreams during sleep are a locus of revelation. A special mixture of wine induces sleep.
3. The Scientific View. At first sleep is explained as a relaxing of energy, as a loss of warmth, or as a withdrawing of blood, and hence as a transitional stage to death. Later observation refutes the last theory. Light or heavy sleep during sickness determines the severity of the sickness. Too much sleep is bad. Aristotle perceives a basic phenomenon of animal life in the alternation of waking and sleep.
4. Disparagement of Sleep. Disparagement of sleep appears early. Sleep is a metaphor for the conduct of fools. In it the noús loses contact with the world and the individual is shut up in the self. Sleep impairs thought and signifies weakness. Sleepers are as good as dead. We should cut down on sleep. It robs us of half of life on the Stoic view, and it belongs to the material world.
5. Sleep and Death. Philosophy stresses the nearness of sleep to death, although only rarely is sleep a euphemism for death prior to the Hellenistic period. Later we often read of the sleep of death. This sleep is sweet. It means end and dissolution, but the belief is also present that it brings redemption from the body, enabling the true self to mount up to heaven.
6. The God Hypnos. There is a god Hypnos as well as a god Thanatos, although often with a link between them, e.g., as twins. This god can put even Zeus to sleep. Sailors invoke him, and he imparts revelations in sleep. He is a rival of Hermes, who brings sleep but is not sleep personified.
B. The LXX and Judaism.
1. The group occurs fairly frequently in the LXX, mainly for the root yšn. The Hebrew differentiates the dream more sharply from sleep than does the Greek. hýpnos is a euphemism for coitus in Wis. 4:6. Revelatory sleep occurs in Gen. 28:10ff.; 1 Kgs. 3:5. Dreams may carry a divine message (Gen. 20:3; 40:9, etc.), but they may also be equated with false prophecy (Jer. 23:25). The stem is linked to sloth in Prov. 6:4 and to sin in Judg. 16:14. It depicts eschatological destruction in Isa. 29:7-8 (and cf. the sleep of death in Jer. 51:39). The fool is in large measure a sleeper (Sirach 22:9).
2. The spirit of sleep in Test. Reub. 3:1, 7 may be the spirit of creation or possibly the spirit of death or error. The idea of the eschatological sleep of death occurs in Eth. En. 49:3. The state between death and the eschaton is sleep, and resurrection is a waking from sleep. Sleep is also a figure for the time of this aeon. Dreams convey revelation during sleep.
3. Philo finds in sleep a natural process, but it also characterizes those who are far from knowledge. One must repel it as an enemy; faith resembles waking out of a deep sleep. Philo never uses sleep for death, but the two are close.
4. Josephus refers to natural sleep. He accepts the dream revelations of the OT. The soul parts from the body in sleep. Sleep is a prototype of death.
C. The NT.
1. The stem hypn- refers to the natural process or state of sleep in Matt. 1:24; Luke 8:23 (Jesus asleep in the boat); Acts 16:27 (the jailor is jolted awake out of sleep).
2. The NT finds no great place for dreams, so that enýpnion and enypniázomai occur only in Acts 2:17 (quoting Joel 2:28) and Jude 8 (which briefly denounces opponents as dreamers, i.e., not as visionaries, but as blind to the truth).
3. In Luke 9:32 the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration are heavy with sleep. This phrase stresses the contrast between Jesus and the disciples, explains their confusion after the experience, and anticipates what happens in Gethsemane. The sleep motif is prominent in Acts 20:9ff. Rom. 13:11-12 uses awaking from sleep as a metaphor for casting off bondage to the old aeon (cf. the parallels in Judaism and Hellenism). As in 1 Th. 5:4ff., the call is not merely to watch but to renounce attachment to the world. The command to watch (with agrypnéō) occurs in Mark 13:33; Luke 21:36; Eph. 6:18. In 2 Cor. 6:5; 11:27 Paul’s watchings are his unremitting labors.
4. The sleep of death figures in Jn. 11:11ff. The illness of Lazarus will not lead to death (v. 4). Implied in v. 11 is the deeper background of actual death which is only an apparent reality face to face with Jesus. When the disciples fail to understand (v. 12), distinction is made between the sleep of death and “the rest which is sleep” (v. 13). The verses proclaim the basic impotence of death in the light of the resurrection.
D. The Early Church and Gnosticism.
The noun does not occur in the apostolic fathers, and the verb only in 1 Clem. 26:2 (quoting Ps. 3:3: the sleep of death). The images of sleep and awaking occur relative to the resurrection. Among compounds we find agrypnía (watchful care) in Barn. 21.7. Apocryphal works refer to Jesus’ steering of the boat during sleep, to drunkenness with sleep, and to the sleep of death. In Gnosticism sleep is ignorance and oblivion. It symbolizes bondage to the world. To sleep is to be in the sphere of death. More generally we also find the idea that in view of the resurrection death is merely sleep during the time up to the resurrection.
→ egeírō, katheúdō, ónar, hórama
[H. BALZ, VIII, 545–56]-[1]
κοιμάω [See Stg: <G2837>]
koimáō; contracted koimó, fut. koimésō, related to keímai <G2749>, to lie outstretched, to lie down. To cause to lie down to sleep. In the NT, generally in the mid. koimáomai or koimómai, with the fut. mid. koimésomai, to fall asleep, to sleep. Used intrans. (Matt. 28:13; Luke 22:45; John 11:12; Acts 12:6; Sept.: Ruth 3:8; 1 Sam. 3:15; Isa. 5:27). Spoken of the sleep of death, to die, be dead (Matt. 27:52; John 11:11; Acts 7:60; 13:36; 1 Cor. 7:39; 11:30; 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thess. 4:13-15; 2 Pet. 3:4; Sept.: 1 Kings 2:10; 11:43; Isa. 43:17).
Deriv.: koímēsis <G2838>, the act of sleeping.
Syn.: katheúdō <G2518>, to go to sleep; aphupnóō <G879>, to fall asleep.
Ant.: anístēmi <G450>, to rise; exanístēmi <G1817>, to raise up out of; egeírō <G1453>, to raise.[2]
Mounce's
Asleep
New Testament
Verb: κοιμάω (koimao), GK 3121 (S <G2837>), 18x. koimao refers to the act of falling sleeping, or, euphemistically, to death. See fall asleep.Fall Asleep
New Testament
Verb: κοιμάω (koimao), GK 3121 (S <G2837>), 18x. koimao refers to the act of falling sleeping, or, euphemistically, to death. Examples of the former include sleeping guards (Mt. 28:13), the disciples’ sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lk. 22:45), the disciples’ misunderstanding Jesus’ euphemistic use of the term (Jn. 11:12), and Peter’s sleeping in prison (Acts 12:6).
When biblical authors want to focus on death as an entrance into the intermediate state and therefore as something temporary, they use koimao. After the tragic stoning of Stephen, Luke tells us that he simply “fell asleep” (Acts 7:60); physical death is not the true end for Stephen. Paul likely has a pastoral motive when he uses koimao in 1 Cor. 7:39; 11:30, where he touches on the “sensitive” topics of the death of a spouse and death as a result of judgment. The bodies of the saints who have “fallen asleep” were raised at the death of Jesus (Mt. 27:52). Jesus says that “our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him,” before he raises him from the dead (Jn. 11:11).
Paul uses the word extensively in his letters to the Corinthians and Thessalonians concerning the resurrection. In his Corinthian correspondence, Paul argues that if the resurrection of the dead does not exist, “then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:18-20, ESV). In this passage, “fallen asleep” pictures death as sleep against the hopeful backdrop of the resurrection. Indeed, many will “fall asleep” before all will be changed at that glorious final trumpet (1 Cor. 15:51). In 1 Thess. 4:13-15 Paul echoes much the same understanding of koimao, still against the backdrop of the resurrection, with the added encouragement to that particular church that those who have “fallen asleep” will precede all the remaining saints in the glorious resurrection day. See NIDNTT-A, 279-80.
[3121] κοιμάω koimao 18x to lull to sleep; pass. to fall asleep, be asleep, Mt. 28:13; Lk. 22:45; met. to sleep in death, Acts 7:60; 13:36; 2 Pet. 3:4 [<G2837>] See asleep; fall asleep.
Vines
2. koimaomai (κοιμάω, 2837) is used of natural “sleep,” Matt. 28:13; Luke 22:45; John 11:12; Acts 12:6; of the death of the body, but only of such as are Christ’s; yet never of Christ Himself, though He is “the firstfruits of them that have fallen asleep,” 1 Cor. 15:20, of saints who departed before Christ came, Matt. 27:52; Acts 13:36; of Lazarus, while Christ was yet upon the earth, John 11:11; of believers since the Ascension, 1 Thess. 4:13–15, and Acts 7:60; 1 Cor. 7:39; 11:30; 15:6, 18, 51; 2 Pet. 3:4.¶
Note: “This metaphorical use of the word sleep is appropriate, because of the similarity in appearance between a sleeping body and a dead body; restfulness and peace normally characterize both. The object of the metaphor is to suggest that, as the sleeper does not cease to exist while his body sleeps, so the dead person continues to exist despite his absence from the region in which those who remain can communicate with him, and that, as sleep is known to be temporary, so the death of the body will be found to be.…
“That the body alone is in view in this metaphor is evident, (a) from the derivation of the word koimaomai, from keimai, to lie down (cf. anastasis, resurrection, from ana, ‘up,’ and histemi to cause to stand); cf. Isa. 14:8, where for “laid down,’ the Sept. has ‘fallen asleep’; (b) from the fact that in the NT the word resurrection is used of the body alone; (c) from Dan. 12:2, where the physically dead are described as ‘them that sleep (Sept. katheudo, as at 1 Thess. 5:6) in the dust of the earth,’ language inapplicable to the spiritual part of man; moreover, when the body returns whence it came, Gen. 3:19, the spirit returns to God who gave it, Eccl. 12:7.
“When the physical frame of the Christian (the earthly house of our tabernacle, 2 Cor. 5:1) is dissolved and returns to the dust, the spiritual part of his highly complex being, the seat of personality, departs to be with Christ, Phil. 1:23. And since that state in which the believer, absent from the body, is at home with the Lord, 2 Cor. 5:6–9, is described as ‘very far better’ than the present state of joy in communion with God and of happy activity in His service, everywhere reflected in Paul’s writings, it is evident the word ‘sleep,’ where applied to the departed Christians, is not intended to convey the idea that the spirit is unconscious.…
“The early Christians adopted the word koimeterion (which was used by the Greeks of a rest-house for strangers) for the place of interment of the bodies of their departed; thence the English word ‘cemetery,’ ‘the sleeping place,’ is derived.”*[4]
Rick Livermore's Remarks
The Theological Dictionary was not the only one that worked up something for "hypnos."G5258
The problem was with me, I saw how it was not the main word for sleep as defined in Spiros Zodhiates, Mounce or Vines so I left it out of this blog post. I looked and looked for G2837 in the Abridged Theological Dictionary since it was the main word for sleep in Spiros Zodhiates Mounce and Vines and I was unable to locate it because the edition of the work is the Abridged and the table of contents with the numerical order of the greek words skipped G2837. What we are left with because of this error on my part, is four sources which seem to be ignorant of each others common word for sleep, G5258 "hypnos." Sorry for this mixup.
Appendix / Bibliography
[1] Bromiley, Geoffrey W., trans., Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, ed. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003. WORDsearch CROSS e-book
[2] Spiros Zodhiates, New Testament, (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1993), WORDsearch CROSS e-book
[3] Mounce, William D., ed. Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words: Expository Dictionary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. WORDsearch CROSS e-book.
Appendix / Bibliography
[2] Spiros Zodhiates, New Testament, (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1993), WORDsearch CROSS e-book
[3] Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words: Hebrew/Greek-English Dictionary.
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. WORDsearch CROSS e-book.
[4]Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Vol. 2, p. 41). Nashville, TN: T. Nelson.
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