Few phrases in the Bible are as common, or as easily misheard, as “the fear of the LORD”. It is the motto of the book of Proverbs. It is said of Abraham at his greatest test, promised to the coming king in Isaiah, and still used of the church in Acts. Yet the First Letter of John says that “perfect love casts out fear”. A reader today can fairly ask whether God wants to be feared or not, and what kind of fear is meant.
One word, many shades
The Hebrew noun is יִרְאָה, yirʾah, from the verb yareʾ, “to fear”. Like the English word, it covers a range. It can mean plain fright, the fear of a person facing danger. It can mean awe before something great. And in the phrase “the fear of the LORD” it comes to mean something close to what we would call religion: a life ordered around God, taking him seriously as God.
Proverbs puts it at the start of the book:
The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and discipline fools despise.
The Hebrew opens with יִרְאַ֣ת יְ֭הוָה, “the fear of the LORD”. Our meaning decision for this verse defines it as “reverent awe that trusts and obeys”, and lists “terror” and “religion” as alternatives it does not adopt. It gives its reasons from Proverbs itself. The fear of the LORD is not dread that runs from God but awe that turns from evil (3:7; 8:13) and trusts him: in the fear of the LORD, says 14:26, one has strong confidence.
A second decision concerns the word “beginning”. It can mean the first of something or the best of it. Proverbs 9:10 repeats the saying with a different word that means only the starting point, so the record takes that as the main sense: knowledge does not begin anywhere else. A footnote gives the other sense, “the chief part”. Psalm 111:10 and Job 28:28 say much the same, which is why the record for Psalm 111 calls it “the motto of the wisdom books”.
“Do not fear”, so that you will fear
The clearest window on the phrase is Exodus 20. The people have heard God speak from the mountain, with thunder and lightning and the sound of the trumpet, and they are terrified. Moses answers them:
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, and to put the fear of him before your eyes, so that you will not sin.”
In Hebrew the same root appears twice. “Do not fear” uses the verb, תִּירָאוּ֒; “the fear of him” uses the noun, יִרְאָת֛וֹ. Our meaning decision calls this “terror set against reverence”. The people need not be terrified that God will kill them. But they are to keep the fear of God, the awe that keeps a person from sin. One fear is to go; the other is to stay.
Deuteronomy shows what the second kind looks like in a life:
And now, Israel, what is it that the LORD your God asks of you? Just this: that you fear the LORD your God, follow all his ways and love him, and that you serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
Here fear stands in a list with walking in God’s ways, loving him and serving him with all one’s heart. The record notes that it stands “beside love and service, not against them”. To fear the LORD, it says, is to take him seriously as God: to honor him, to trust him and to do what he says.
The same holds for Abraham. When the angel stops his hand on Mount Moriah, the words are “now I know that you fear God” (Genesis 22:12). The record defines that fear as “reverent trust that obeys”, a reverence that puts God first and holds nothing back.
The king who delights in it
Isaiah’s picture of the coming king from David’s line makes the fear of the LORD part of the Spirit’s gift:
The Spirit of the LORD will settle on him: the Spirit who gives wisdom and insight, the Spirit of counsel and power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
And the next verse says that fearing the LORD “will be his delight” (11:3). The verb there is unusual. Our record notes that it comes from the word for scent, and is used of God enjoying the smell of an offering. The king will take pleasure in revering the LORD. That is hard to fit with fear as terror. No one delights in being frightened.
A footnote on Isaiah 11:2 adds a piece of history. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, renders this “fear” as “godliness” and then adds “the spirit of the fear of God” from verse 3, giving seven gifts. The traditional Christian list of the seven gifts of the Spirit comes from that Greek wording. The Hebrew lists six, in three pairs.
In the New Testament
The phrase carries straight on into the New Testament, now often as “the fear of the Lord”, with the Lord Jesus in view. After Paul’s conversion, Luke reports that the church had peace and “walked in the fear of the Lord”, growing with the Holy Spirit’s encouragement (Acts 9:31). Paul writes that “because we know the fear of the Lord, we set out to persuade people” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Our record there links the fear to the judgment seat of Christ in the verse before, and to Proverbs 1:7: it is “reverent awe before Christ, who will judge”.
Philippians 2:12 tells the church to work out its salvation “with fear and trembling”. The record treats this as a stock phrase for serious, humble reverence, which Paul also uses of his own arrival in Corinth (1 Corinthians 2:3). It rejects the readings “in terror of God” and “anxiously, unsure of being saved”, and gives the reason from the next verse: they work because God is at work in them.
Jesus himself joins fear and trust in one breath. “Fear the one who, after the killing is done, has the right to throw you into hell,” he says in Luke 12:5, and then at once speaks of the sparrows that God does not forget. Our record notes that the one to fear is the same God who cares, and that fearing God frees a person from the fear of people.
“Perfect love casts out fear”
Then comes 1 John 4:18, which seems to say the opposite:
Love has no room for fear; instead, complete love throws fear out, because fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been brought to completion in love.
The Greek word is φόβος, phobos, the ordinary word for fear. Our meaning decision says which fear is meant, and puts it in a footnote. The context is the day of judgment (4:17). The fear that love drives out is the dread of someone who expects to be condemned, “not the reverent fear of God that Scripture commends elsewhere”. The verse itself names that fear’s object: it “has to do with punishment”.
So the Bible’s two ways of speaking agree. Exodus 20 said the same thing in its own way: do not be terrified, but keep the fear of God. John’s readers need not dread judgment, because God’s love has been made complete in them. That does not leave them without reverence.
How the levels word it
Here is where translation comes in. In modern English, “fear” alone usually means being afraid. Our records keep the meaning the same at every level, reverent awe, and change only the wording to suit the reader.
Literal and Balanced keep “the fear of the LORD” throughout. It is the phrase readers know and the one the Bible repeats, and keeping it lets the echoes between Proverbs, Isaiah, Acts and 2 Corinthians stay visible.
Readable says what the fear is. In Proverbs 1:7 it reads:
Real knowledge starts with honoring the LORD with awe. Fools look down on wisdom and correction.
The rendering decision gives the reason: “In modern English ‘fear’ alone suggests being afraid. Readable says what the fear of the LORD is.” Other Readable verses use other phrases for the same sense: “you honor God above all else” for Abraham, “fear and respect him” in Exodus 20:20, “deep respect for the LORD” in Isaiah 11, “lived with deep respect for the Lord” in Acts 9:31, “with deep awe and respect for God” in Philippians 2:12. Where the Bible itself sets terror against reverence, as in Exodus 20:20, Readable says “Do not be afraid” for the first and “fear and respect” for the second.
This is a choice of wording, not of meaning. Readers who want the traditional phrase find it at Balanced. Readers who would hear “fear” as fright find the sense spelled out at Readable. All three point to the same thing: the awe of people who know who God is, which leads to obedience and trust, and which love does not remove but fulfills. (See Three levels, one meaning for how the levels work.)
The verses about whom to fear in Luke 12 and Matthew 10 also speak of Gehenna; on that word, see Sheol, Hades and Gehenna.
Open Proverbs 1, Exodus 20 or 1 John 4 and tap a verse to see the full records.