Evil/bad
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πονηρός is derived from ponos (labor, pain, toil) and carries the basic sense of that which produces harm, pain, or trouble — evil in its active, malicious dimension. It is distinguished from kakos (another NT word for evil, G2556) in that poneros tends toward active harm-doing, while kakos tends toward the absence of good.
Reader summary
Full entry for πονηρός (G4190) · Open the biblical lexicon
πονηρός is derived from ponos (labor, pain, toil) and carries the basic sense of that which produces harm, pain, or trouble — evil in its active, malicious dimension. It is distinguished from kakos (another NT word for evil, G2556) in that poneros tends toward active harm-doing, while kakos tends toward the absence of good.
The BSB source-word alignment has 78 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include evil (30), evil [one] (10), bad (5), A wicked (3), wicked (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 5:11. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (26), Luke (13), Acts (8), 1 John (6).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
πονηρός is derived from ponos (labor, pain, toil) and carries the basic sense of that which produces harm, pain, or trouble — evil in its active, malicious dimension. It is distinguished from kakos (another NT word for evil, G2556) in that poneros tends toward active harm-doing, while kakos tends toward the absence of good. Poneros is evil that is on the move, that seeks to damage and corrupt. The NT uses it for evil persons, evil actions, evil spiritual powers, and for 'the evil one' — the personal title for the devil.
In the Lord's Prayer, 'deliver us from the evil one' (apo tou ponerou — Mat 6:13) uses the masculine form, suggesting a personal referent: the devil rather than abstract evil. This is significant: the prayer does not merely ask for deliverance from evil as a moral category but from the evil one as a personal agent whose domain is the present age (Gal 1:4 — 'this present evil age').
The Sermon on the Mount uses poneros in a cluster of contexts that together sketch the word's range: the evil eye (6:23 — the grasping, envious eye that corrupts perception), the evil man who brings evil out of his evil treasury (12:35), the evil generation that seeks signs (12:39). In each case, poneros names something that is actively corrupting rather than merely lacking in good. The corruption comes from within — out of the heart comes evil (Mat 15:19).
First John consistently uses ho poneros (the evil one) as a title for the devil — and describes the community as those who have 'overcome the evil one' (1 Jn 2:13-14) and who are 'from God' rather than 'from the evil one' (1 Jn 3:12; 5:19). The NT picture of the present age is one in which the evil one has genuine influence — 'the whole world lies in the power of the evil one' (1 Jn 5:19) — and in which the community of Christ is the place where that influence is overcome.
For the preacher, πονηρός is the word that refuses to reduce evil to impersonal forces or social structures alone. The NT holds both dimensions: evil as a quality of human choices and actions, and evil as a personal power that works behind and through those choices.
The local Greek index currently counts about 78 New Testament occurrences of πονηρός. It is used as an adjective for evil persons, evil things, and evil actions; as a substantive for evil in general; and as a title for the evil one. The selected witnesses span the Gospels, Paul, Hebrews, James, and especially 1 John, where evil-one language is concentrated.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
The Lord's Prayer's final petition: deliverance from ho poneros — the evil one. The masculine article in Greek makes a personal referent most likely. The prayer acknowledges both the ongoing reality of the evil one's presence in the world and the disciples' dependence on God's protection against him. Deliverance is not passive exemption but active protection — like a guard keeping watch over the one in his care.
But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
The evil eye: in the context of Sermon on the Mount teaching about money and anxiety, the 'evil eye' (ophthalmos poneros) names the greedy, grasping orientation that refuses to be generous. The eye was understood in the ancient world as the window of perception — the poneros eye sees the world through the lens of scarcity and self-protection. The whole body fills with darkness when the fundamental perception of reality is corrupted by this orientation.
We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one.
The cosmic frame: the whole world system (ho kosmos) is under the influence of the evil one. This is John's way of explaining why the present age is structured the way it is — why opposition to Christ is not an anomaly but the expected environment for the community. 'Lying in' suggests passive domination rather than active cooperation; the world is under the evil one's sway without necessarily knowing it. The community of believers is the exception — 'we are of God.'
When anyone hears the message of the kingdom but does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
The evil one as the agent who removes the word from uncomprehending hearts. In the Parable of the Sower, the roadside represents the person who hears without understanding, and the evil one snatches the seed before it can take root. This is one of the most explicit NT passages about the evil one's strategy: he targets the moment of hearing, when the word is most vulnerable to being dismissed without taking root.
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
The spiritual warfare frame: the evil one fires burning arrows that faith (as a shield) extinguishes. The 'fiery darts' are not generic spiritual attack but the specific enticements and accusations that the evil one deploys against believers. Faith — trust in God's character and promises — is the protection because the darts are fundamentally distortions of reality: lies about God, about the world, about the person's situation. Faith oriented toward truth quenches what distortion inflames.
Who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
'This present evil age' (aionos ponerou) names the entire present cosmic period as evil in character. Christ's self-giving is purposive: He gave Himself 'to deliver us out of' this present evil age. Salvation is not only from personal sin but from the entire age-structure dominated by evil. The contrast implied is the 'age to come' — the new creation — which will not be poneros. The present age's evil character is the context that makes the gospel's rescue necessarily cosmic, not only individual.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. Moral or physical badness; notably used for Satan as "the evil one" in spiritual warfare contexts.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 78 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
evil, bad, wicked
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 10 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 7 selected witnesses from 78 lexical occurrence verses.
πονηρός is built from this root:
Indicates escalation of spiritual corruption. 1 John 2:12-14
Identifies personal spiritual opposition that believers overcome through divine empowerment. 1 John 5:18-21
Identifies the personal power influencing the fallen world. Luke 11:24–26
Spiritual growth occurs in the context of real conflict, yet victory is assured in Christ.
John frames spiritual life in terms of real spiritual opposition and divine protection.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
πονηρός is the NT's word for the active, malicious dimension of evil — evil that works, that corrupts, that snatches, that fires arrows. The NT's use of it for both the abstract quality (evil actions, evil persons) and the personal agent (the evil one) is not a confusion but a coherence: evil is not a force or a structure that is self-perpetuating; it has a source, a director, a personal will behind it.
First John's claim that 'the whole world lies in the power of the evil one' (5:19) is not paranoia — it is the NT's explanation for why the world consistently opposes what God calls good and pursues what God calls destructive. The preacher who names the evil one seriously is not being primitive or superstitious; they are reading the NT's own diagnosis of the present situation.
And the preacher who names the evil one must also name the gospel's answer: Christ came to 'deliver us from this present evil age' (Gal 1:4), the evil one's power has been broken in principle at the cross (Jhn 12:31), and the believer has 'overcome the evil one' (1 Jn 2:13). The victory is real, and the resistance is ongoing, and both must be named together.
Mat.6.13
πονηρός derives from ponos (labor, pain, hardship) — it originally meant 'causing toil, troublesome, bad.' In classical Greek it could refer to physical badness (useless, inferior) or moral badness (vicious, malicious). In the NT, the moral sense dominates, and within that the active sense — poneros evil does damage. The distinction from kakos (G2556) is not absolute but directional: kakos tends to name evil as moral failure or wickedness in the abstract; poneros tends to name evil as active, harmful malice.
The title 'the evil one' (ho poneros, masculine) is used consistently for the devil in Matthew 13:19, Ephesians 6:16, 1 John 2:13-14, 3:12, 5:18-19, and likely in the Lord's Prayer. This personal use gives poneros a scope that abstract translations like 'evil' can miss.
The OT language of evil (ra' in Hebrew) covers much of the same range as poneros: moral wickedness, physical harm, misfortune. The OT does not have a single personal title for 'the evil one' equivalent to the NT's use of ho poneros, but the figure of the satan (the adversary) in Job 1-2 and Zechariah 3 provides the OT background for the personal dimension. The serpent of Genesis 3 — identified in Revelation 12:9 with the devil — is the OT's most developed picture of the evil one's deceptive work.
Proverbs' sustained analysis of the 'evil man' (ish ra') and the 'evil woman' in the wisdom vocabulary parallels the NT's use of poneros for persons who actively cause harm. Psalms' laments about the enemies ('those who do evil') and Isaiah's critique of the wicked nation prepare the field for the NT's poneros. Jesus' quote of Psalm 41:9 about the betrayer (Jhn 13:18) and His categorization of the Pharisees as poneros (Mat 12:34) show the OT prophetic indictment of wickedness finding its NT application.
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