One Greek Prefix, Three Words

English has small pieces that change a word from the front. Put “un” before “tie” and you get the opposite; put “re” before “build” and you do it again. We hardly notice them, because they are small and we learned them as children.

Greek has pieces of the same kind, and one of them is para παρά par-ah'. On its own, para is a common small word in the New Testament, used some two hundred times as a preposition meaning beside, alongside, near, or past. Most of the time it does nothing surprising. When it is fastened onto certain words, however, something striking happens: the word turns around and faces the other way.

We saw this happen once in the last chapter. This chapter follows a study of three words in which the pattern is easiest to see: paratereo παρατηρέω par-at-ay-reh'-o, parabaino παραβαίνω par-ab-ah'-ee-no, and parakletos παράκλητος par-ak'-lay-tos. To see what para does, we first need the words without it.

Three Base Words

The first is tereo τηρέω tay-reh'-o, to keep. We met it in the last chapter, in Yeshua’s words, “If you agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Throughout the New Testament it is the word for keeping and holding to the Word of God, the obedience that comes from love.

The second is baino βαίνω bas'-ece, to walk or to go along a set path. It never appears on its own in the New Testament, but the words built from it keep the sense of walking and doing. It describes walking the road one was given.

The third is kletos κλητός klay-tos', called. It describes a person on the receiving end of a call: God is the one who calls, and the person simply receives the call. Paul uses the word for believers:

Romans 1:6-7 among whom you also are called ones of Yeshua Messiah — to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called holy ones: charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) to you and eirene εἰρήνη i-ray'-nay(peace) from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua Messiah.

The believers in Rome did not call themselves; they were called.

That gives us three pictures: tereo, the one who keeps; baino, the one who walks; and kletos, the one who receives. Now add para.

Keeping Becomes Spying

Paratereo is para joined to tereo. We have already traced all six places where it appears in the Robinson–Pierpont 2018 Greek text. In five of them enemies watch Yeshua or Paul in order to accuse, trap, or kill. The sixth is Galatians 4:10, where the Galatians were watching God’s appointed times with that same hostility.

Set side by side, the two words show what the prefix has done. Tereo is the keeping of someone who loves the commandments. Paratereo is the watching of someone who stands beside them looking for a fault. The root is the same, and the heart is the opposite.

Walking Becomes Stepping Across

Parabaino (παραβαίνω) is para joined to baino. Walking the path becomes stepping off it, crossing the boundary and pressing on past it. The word appears four times in the Robinson–Pierpont 2018 New Testament, and the first two belong to a single exchange:

Matthew 15:2-3 "Why do Your disciples parabaino(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread." And He answered and said to them: "Why do you also parabaino(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

The Pharisees aim the word at Yeshua’s disciples, asking why they parabaino the tradition of the elders, and Yeshua sends the same word straight back. The word they used to attack becomes the word of His answer. They were the ones stepping past a boundary, and the boundary they crossed was God’s commandment.

The third is Judas:

Acts 1:25 to take the share of this ministry and apostleship from which Judas parabaino(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) to go to his own place."

Judas did not simply stumble. He left the place he had been given and went “to his own place.”

The fourth is a warning about teaching:

2 John 1:9 Everyone who parabaino(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) and does not abide in the teaching of Messiah does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching of Messiah has both the Father and the Son.

This describes not someone who slipped once but someone who walks past the teaching of Messiah and keeps going, who “does not abide in” it. The verse concerns more than a failure to obey. It warns the one who goes beyond the teaching of Messiah, pressing ahead of what was given. Any teaching that runs out past what Scripture says belongs in this verse.

Picture a runner on a track, where each runner has a lane. Running hard in one’s own lane is baino. Drifting across the line into the next lane and carrying on as though nothing had happened is parabaino. The runner is still moving and still sweating, and he may even be fast, but he has left the lane, and the race does not count it.

The noun from this word appeared in Chapter 30. When Paul said that rebuilding the way of works would prove him a “transgressor,” the Greek was parabates παραβάτης par-ab-at'-ace, one who steps across.

The Called One Who Comes Alongside

The third word turns in a different direction. Parakletos (παράκλητος) is para joined to kletos, the one called to come alongside. The one who is called becomes the one who comes.

The word appears five times in the New Testament, four times in John’s Gospel and once in his first letter. This is the first:

John 14:16 I will ask the Father and He will give you another Parakletos(the One who comes alongside to call), so that He may be with you forever;

The YLV gives the sense in its note: “the One who comes alongside to call.” Yeshua uses the word again when He says that the Parakletos, the holy Spirit, “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). He will “testify about Me” (John 15:26). And “if I do not go away, the Parakletos(the One who comes alongside to call) will not come to you” (John 16:7).

The fifth speaks of Yeshua Himself:

1 John 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have a Parakletos(the One who comes alongside to call) with the Father — Yeshua Messiah the righteous.

This time para has done something different. In paratereo and parabaino it turned something good into its opposite. Here it turns something passive into something active. Kletos is the one who is called and receives the call; the parakletos is the one called to stand beside you, and in John He is the One who comes, teaches, and testifies. The movement is the same reversal, and only the result differs.

The Pattern

Para carries a sense of beside, alongside, and past, a movement that leaves an appointed position. When it meets a word of obedience, the result is hostility or transgression. When it meets a word of passive receiving, the result is active presence.

What the Pattern Shows

Three things follow from this.

The first concerns Galatians 4:10. The opposite of keeping is not forgetting but hostile watching. What Paul warned against was not the observing of God’s appointed times. It was the question of how a person stands toward them, whether as one who keeps them in obedience to God or as a spy. Paul himself, as we saw, told Corinth, “let us celebrate the feast.”

The second concerns transgression. Parabaino is not a careless slip but a deliberate stepping over a line and pushing on. That is why 2 John 9 is so serious. It is aimed at the one who goes beyond the teaching of Messiah, and every teaching that runs out ahead of Scripture stands under it.

The third concerns the Spirit. When English Bibles render parakletos as “Helper,” they say something true but small, and the word itself says more. The Spirit is not only someone who helps when asked. He is the One called to come alongside, and who comes. The full weight of that truth rests in a single word, and para carries it.

One small prefix can turn obedience into suspicion, walking into trespass, and a passive word into the name of the Spirit who comes to us.

The Spirit is also where Galatians turns next. “Having begun by the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit),” Paul asks, “are you now being perfected by sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh)?” Many hear in that question a warning against keeping the law, which raises the question of what Paul meant by the flesh.