Sin Is Not an Archery Term That Means “To Miss the Mark”

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It has become almost a cliche to give the etymology and “literal” meaning of the word “sin” as an archery term, meaning “to miss the mark.” You can hear it mentioned so much I’d consider it to be fairly common knowledge amongst Christians. This way of defining sin, however, is a linguistic fallacy. It is poor etymology, confuses words and concepts, and can lead to a flawed understanding of what sin is. 

The Words Under Consideration

Sin

The first issue we must deal with is the word “sin” has nothing to do with either archery or missing the mark. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives the following etymology for the word:

Old English syn(n, for original *sunjō, related to continental forms with extended stem, viz. Old Frisian sende, Middle Dutch sonde (Dutch zonde), Old Saxon sundea, sundia, Old High German sunt(e)a, sund(e)a (German sünde), Old Norse synð, synd (Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish synd). The stem may be related to that of Latin sons, sontis guilty. In Old English there are examples of the original general sense, ‘offence, wrongdoing, misdeed’.

As an English word, “sin” has never been used in archery contexts or as a word meaning “to miss the mark.” The OED provides the history of the usage of the word “sin” in the English language back through the Middle Ages. The basic definition of the noun is 1a. “An act which is regarded as a transgression of the divine law and an offence against God; a violation (esp. wilful or deliberate) of some religious or moral principle,” with a related meaning of “A violation of some standard of taste or propriety.” Most usages of the word “sin” involve these different concepts of offending against, committing sin, committing fornication, or violating a standard. We recognize these meanings and usages today; the English word has not undergone too much change in meaning.

There are some obsolete or rare meanings of the word “sin.” In the late Middle Ages, it carried the meaning of “A fear of doing wrong.” One could use “sin” in the sense of “To bring (oneself) into a state, or beyond something, by sinning” or “To drive or force away (also hence) by sinning.”1 These usages of the word sin may seem strange to us today, but there are no usages that have anything to do with archery or “missing the mark.” 

Khata’ (חטא)

When people say sin really is an archery term meaning “to miss the mark,” they are not saying this in reference to the English word. They are referring to the words that “sin” is used to translate. The first of these is the Hebrew word khata’. The word can mean “to miss” something, as in a goal, target, or path. We can see this usage in Judges 20:16 where it refers to the slingers of Benjamin who could “sling a stone at a hair and not miss.” It is used in Proverbs 8:36 as “he who fails to find me injures himself,” or in Proverbs 19:2: “whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.” It is never used in an archery context in the Old Testament, but could conceivably fit into one given its usage.

While khata’ may be used in these ways, these are by far in the minority. The most common usage of the word is in contexts where we normally think of sin. Sinning against God, sinning against man, violating God’s law. The idea of going astray or missing the right way to go might help inform how the word came to be used, but it does not give us the true meaning of it. This is only determined by how the word is actually used in context, which for the most part is just typical of how we think of sin: as violating God’s standards.

Hamartia (ἁμαρτία)

I believe the idea that “sin” is really an archery term derives from the Strong’s Concordance definition of hamartia:  “prop: missing the mark; hence: (a) guilt, sin, (b) a fault, failure (in an ethical sense), sinful deed.”2 Is this meaning of “missing the mark” really the most basic sense of hamartia and its verb equivalent hamartano? 

The standard Greek lexicon known as BDAG provides the following broad definitions for hamartano from usages in classical Greek and elsewhere:

to commit a wrong, to sin (in the sense ‘transgress’ against divinity custom, or law since Hom., esp. LXX, also pseudepigra., Philo, Joseph., Herm. Wr., Just., Ath.; in gen. sense ‘miss the mark, err, do wrong’ Hom. et al;3

So the verb form can carry the connotation of missing, just as khata’ can. A related word is used in the Greek translation (the LXX) of Judges 20:16. But it never had an exclusive archery context. We see hamartia used by Aristotle in his Poetics to describe the downfall of a character through some “error or frailty,”4 what is termed a “tragic flaw” in literary criticism.

But as with khata’, the primary usage of hamartia and hamartano in the New Testament is the one in which we must speak of transgressing or violating divine statutes. What matters in how we understand the meaning of hamartia and hamartano in the New Testament is not how it had been used by Aristotle or Homer or other writers in classical Greek, but how the New Testament writers used the term. This type of and range of usage is given in BDAG: “a departure fr. either human or divine standards of uprightness,” “a state of being sinful,” “a destructive evil power.”5 It is this usage that should inform how we understand what sin is.

Not an Archery Term

A cursory overview of the usage of the English word “sin,” the Hebrew word khata’, and the Greek word hamartia should show that referring to “sin” as an archery term is misguided and inaccurate. The best case can be made that hamartia once may have been used in such a context (though I am at a loss as to finding original sources that use it in such a context), but such a meaning would have been long obsolete by the time of the New Testament, and thus irrelevant.

Both khata’ and hamartia/hamartano could mean “to miss” or “to err,” but they are not the “literal” meanings. All words have what is known as a semantic range, meaning they can mean different things at different times depending on the context in which they are used. Just because these words could be understood in such a way in the proper context does not mean that it is the root or true meaning hiding behind what they mean when we understand them as “sin.”

Now why make a big deal about sin not really being an archery term? Because this flawed etymology and usage of possible meanings leads to an incorrect way of understanding sin. What kind of picture does saying “sin” is an archery term conjure up? It gives us the picture of an archer doing his very level best to hit the target, but one who just missed. He had the very best intentions and was trying to achieve the goal, but failed. This is not the way that sin is described in the Bible, and so the flawed image leads us astray.

Part of what contributes to this error is a confusion between words and concepts. Words are what we use to describe concepts, but they are not the concepts themselves. Concepts are things that we must use words to describe, though those words can be somewhat arbitrary and are always subject to change. We can say arbitrary because many languages use many different words to describe the same or similar concepts. Always subject to change because language is always on the move (we don’t speak like the KJV anymore). Furthermore, we can use multiple words to describe the same concept or various aspects of it. 

The “literal” meaning of a word or its etymology very often has no bearing on its actual usage or the concept it is communicating. When we focus on the “literal” meaning of words, we may end up obscuring the concept that the word is referencing, even more so when we have illegitimately restricted the “literal” meaning to only one of a possible range of contextually determined meanings.

Some Concrete Examples

Now the subject to this point in time may seem somewhat abstract. Allow me to provide some thought experiments that should be more concrete that make the same basic point.

Miss

What does the word “miss” mean? Imagine that someone in the future who speaks a language other than English tells his listeners that the word “miss” was really an archery or shooting term and literally involved “missing a target.” If this is the true meaning of the word, what do we do with phrases like “she missed her flight” or “I miss my brother” or “he missed some errors while proofreading”? Could we apply the logic that these words are really carrying the connotation of shooting and missing a target? Obviously not, because the word “miss” has multiple meanings that are all determined by context. There is no “literal” meaning of “miss,” but the meaning that best fits the context. 

Transgression

This example hits much closer to home since it is a synonym for “sin.” The verbal form “to transgress” carries the meaning of going beyond the limits or boundaries of something, of crossing a line. Now “transgression” as a noun fits very well with the picture of crossing the boundaries of God’s law, but we have to ask, when we say the word “transgression,” are we literally conjuring up the idea of crossing some line? Most likely not. We are most likely thinking in the same conceptual territory as the word “sin” without any conscious thought for other possible meanings of the word. In this case, looking at the meaning of “transgression” might help us with a conceptual understanding of what transgressing against God might look like, but the actual image of crossing a boundary is almost certainly not present in our minds. 

Idioms

All languages use idioms that do not “literally” mean what they appear to mean. Our language is so peppered with idioms (see what I did with peppered?) that we probably hardly notice the many non-literal phrases that we use. Just to beat a dead horse, allow me to highlight two idioms to drive the point home:

The term “par for the course” is a golf term. But when I say, “I got a B on my test; about par for the course,” I am not referring to golf in the least. I am just saying my performance was normal and as expected. Know that the idiom comes from golf might help in understanding why the phrase is used as it is, but it does not give us the true meaning of the idiom’s usage.

The term “caught a lot of flak” is a military term specifically associated with aviation. It is commonly used in contexts like “he caught a lot of flak for his opinions.” We use this idiom to speak of someone receiving criticism or opposition. We are not conceptually visualizing aircraft from World War II flying over Germany receiving heavy anti-aircraft flak. While the phrase may have originated in a specific context, its actual meaning is divorced quite far from its literal meaning.

A Better Way Forward

The common adage that the word “sin” is an archery term that means “to miss the mark” is a well intentioned attempt to clarify what we mean by sin, however it falls short on multiple counts.

  1. The English word “sin” has nothing to do with archery or missing marks. If we were to say this accurately, we would have to say the words that “sin” is used to translate are archery terms which mean “to miss the mark.” 
  2. The idea that khata’ or hamartia are literally archery terms meaning “to miss the mark” is erroneous. While both can carry the meaning of “erring” or “missing” in the proper contexts, they are not terms specifically used in an archery context. The semantic range of the words is broader than a “literal” meaning, and the context must determine the meaning.
  3. Even if we were to grant that these words really were archery terms (which they are not), that would still not prove the point that the real meaning of “sin” is “to miss the mark.” As we demonstrated with the idioms “par for the course” and “caught a lot of flak,” the original context for the phrases plays very little into their meaning. What matters more than their origin is how they are used, namely to describe something average or expected or to receive heavy criticism.
  4. Even if “sin” really did originate as an archery term meaning “to miss the mark,” this results in an erroneous definition of sin. It gives the picture of an archer who is aiming to hit the target, but one who misses it. It may communicate that sin is simply the result of good intentions gone awry, which is hardly the biblical picture of violating God’s law or offending against him. While accidental sin is a biblical concept, it is not one derived from the image of the well intentioned archer who misses his mark.

So what is a better way forward? I make two proposals:

  1. We need to recognize that usage determines meaning. Relying upon etymologies will often lead us astray, because it is not what a word “literally” means or what it used to mean that is determinative, but how it is used in the context under consideration. We see this most clearly when we think of our own English idioms. We must look at how “sin” is used in context to understand most clearly what is meant by it.
  2. We must not confine ourselves to a single word when we attempt to understand the concept of sin. Multiple words may be used to capture elements of the same concept. When we are seeking to define “sin,” we should also look at synonyms like “transgression,” “trespass,” “wrongdoing,” or “offense,” among others. When we understand how these words are used in context, we will understand what sin is and the different shades of nuance that can legitimately be applied to it.

I would never want to downplay the importance of the original languages (especially since I am a large advocate of more people learning them), but I would also never want to downplay the ability to understand Scripture in our own language. We need to stop using erroneous methods to define words and concepts, because these erroneous methods lead to erroneous interpretation. Our English translations give us all of the appropriate tools to understand the meaning of the concept of sin by reading passages in context. There is no secret meaning hidden in the etymology or in the original languages. You as an English speaker are capable of understanding what sin is without any appeal to the original languages. 

  1. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “sin, n.”, September 2023. <https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1248825411&gt;;  Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “sin, v.”, September 2023. <https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8023928483&gt; ↩︎
  2. Strong’s Concordance, #266 ἁμαρτία, https://biblehub.com/greek/266.htm ↩︎
  3. BDAG, 49. ↩︎
  4. Aristotle, Poetics XIII https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1974/1974-h/1974-h.htm ↩︎
  5. BDAG, 50-51. ↩︎

Do you want to learn more about the history of the Bible? I have published a freely available book, entitled God Spoke: The Story of How We Came to Have the Bible as We Know It Today.