Bible Dictionary

HIRE

Agriculture & Daily Life • Both

Hire may mean to employ someone for wages or the payment received for labor, rent, or service. Scripture also uses the term figuratively for gifts given to a harlot or to idols, and for the support due kingdom laborers.

Definition

Hire may mean employing someone for wages, the wage paid for labor, or the rent paid for use of a thing or animal. In another Old Testament usage it means a gift rather than earned wages, especially a gift given to a harlot or to idols.

Biblical Usage

Scripture uses hire for ordinary laborers, soldiers, craftsmen, prophets, and others engaged for payment. The New Testament applies it to field laborers and to the stipend due those laboring in the spiritual work of God’s kingdom. It also describes gifts associated with harlotry and idolatry.

Historical Background

The Old Testament distinguishes the common word for wages or hiring from another term used in a bad sense for gifts made to a harlot or by a harlot nation. Hire could consist of money or something else, including rent or an agreed privilege.

Historical Bible Dictionaries

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

hir: Two entirely different words are translated "hire" in the Old Testament:(1) The most frequent one is sakhar, verb sakhar, and verbal adjective sakhir.(a) As a verb it means "to hire" for a wage, either money or something else; in this sense it is used with regard to ordinary laborers (1Sa 2:5; 2Ch 24:12), or mercenary soldiers (2Sa 10:6; 2Ki 7:6; 1Ch 19:6; 2Ch 25:6), or a goldsmith (Isa 46:6), or a band of loose followers (Jud 9:4), or a false priest (Jud 18:4), or Balaam (De 23:4; Ne 13:2), or hostile counselors (Ezr 4:5), or false prophets (Ne 6:12 f). As a verbal adjective it refers to things (Ex 22:15; Isa 7:20)or men (Le 19:13; Jer 46:21).(b) As a noun it denotes the wage in money, or something else, paid to workmen for their services (Ge 30:32 f; 31:8; De 24:15; 1Ki 5:6; Zec 8:10), or the rent or hire paid for a thing (Ex 22:15), or a work-beast (Zec 8:10). In Ge 30:16 Leah hires from Rachel the privilege of having Jacob with her again, and her conception and the subsequent birth of a son, she calls her hire or wage from the Lord for the gift of her slave girl to Jacob as a concubine (Ge 30:18).(2) The other word translated hire is 'ethnan, once 'ethnan. It is rather a gift (from root nathan, "to give") than a wage earned by labor, and is used uniformly in a bad sense. It is the gift made to a harlot (De 23:18), or, reversing the usual custom, made by the harlot nation (Eze 16:31,41). It was also used metaphorically of the gifts made by Israelites to idols, since this was regarded as spiritual harlotry (Isa 23:17 f; Mic 1:7; compare also Ho 8:9 f).In the English New Testament the word occurs once as a verb and 3 times as a noun as the translation of misthos, and its verbal form. In Mt 20:1,8 and Jas 5:4 it refers to the hiring of ordinary field laborers for a daily wage. In Lu 10:7 it signifies the stipend which is due the laborer in the spiritual work of the kingdom of God. It is a wage, earned by toil, as that of other laborers. The word is very significant here and absolutely negatives the idea, all too prevalent, that money received by the spiritual toiler is a gift. It is rather a wage, the reward of real toil.William Joseph McGlothlin

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