Bless or Praise?
In these linked locations, the Greek word is a variant of ευλογια (eulogia). Most translations will say ‘bless’ or ‘blessing’, but we usually say ‘praise’ or ‘praised’. Why?
Notice that the first part of the word eu-, is Greek for ‘good’, and the last part of the word, -logia means ‘words’, ‘knowledge’ (or ‘expression’). So a literal translation of eulogetos could be ‘good words’ or to say ‘good things’.
So, we must ask: Is this all that a blessing amounts to? To say good words and good things about someone? That doesn’t seem to fit the context in many places. It usually appears to carry the nuance of wishing that good things will happen to somebody.
Well, that may be true when blessing humans, but then how can humans bless God? It’s not really possible for us to make good things happen to Him! All humans can do is praise God with good words! So, we’ve concluded that ‘praise’ is a better translation of eulogetos when talking about God.
We have a similar situation in English. That same Greek word is where we derive the English word eulogy (the kind words that are said of the deceased at a funeral). In this case, we couldn’t say that a eulogy is said as a blessing, because it’s a bit late for that. So really, all we can do is speak in praise of the dead person.
So it seems to us that:
- For humans, eulogetos may be best translated as ‘praise’ or ‘bless’, depending on the context, because it often implies they wish good things to happen to someone.
- For God, eulogetos is always best translated as ‘praise’, because humans can’t make good things happen to God.
Maybe we’ll change our minds one day, but for now, that’s our reasoning.
Not ‘blest’
Note that this is not the same Greek word we translated as blest in other places (e.g. Matthew 5:5). That word is makarios, which is translated as ‘blessed’ and as ‘happy’ in other Bibles. See our note on that word.