In older English, purchase could mean to acquire by any means, not only by paying money. Later translations often render the biblical terms as obtain, gain, or acquire.
Definition
In older English, purchase could mean to acquire or obtain by any means, not merely to acquire by paying money. Biblical translations use the word for several Hebrew and Greek terms meaning to get, obtain, gain, or acquire. These terms do not necessarily imply the payment of a price.
Biblical Usage
The King James Version uses purchase for Hebrew terms translated in other places as gotten, and for Greek verbs occurring in Acts and 1 Timothy. The Revised Version generally changes the word to obtain or gain, while retaining it in Acts 20:28 with acquire in the margin.
Historical Background
The meaning of purchase changed between Elizabethan and modern English. This difference explains why older translations may say purchase where modern translations use acquire, obtain, gain, or redeem.
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>pur'-chats: In modern English, "to acquire by payment," in Elizabethan English, "to acquire" by any means. In the Old Testament, the King James Version has used "purchase" to represent qanah, and its derivatives (verb and noun), except in Le 25:33, where the word is ga'al (the Revised Version (British and American) "redeem"). In the New Testament the noun does not occur and the verb is used for ktaomai, in Ac 1:18; 8:20, and peripoieo, in Ac 20:28; 1Ti 3:13. But none of these words connotes the payment of a price, so that the Revised Version (British and American) has kept the word only in Ac 20:28 (margin "acquired"), changing it into "obtain" in Ac 1:18; 8:20, and "gain" in 1Ti 3:13. In the Old Testament, the Revised Version margin has "gotten" in Ex 15:16 and the American Standard Revised Version has (very properly) introduced the same word into the text of Ps 74:2; 78:54.</p><p>Burton Scott Easton</p>
