to buy, purchase
At its most literal, ἀγοράζω means to buy something in the marketplace. The word carries the smell of the agora, the open-air market at the center of every Greek city. Merchants called out prices. Buyers haggled. Coins changed hands. Goods moved from one owner to another through a transaction that was public, legal, and final. The purchase transferred both the item and the rights over it.
But the New Testament authors reach for this word in contexts far heavier than commerce. Paul uses ἀγοράζω to describe what Christ accomplished at the cross, and suddenly the marketplace imagery presses hard against the institution of slavery. In the Roman world, slaves were bought and sold in the agora like any other commodity. Everyone who heard Paul use this word knew exactly what a purchase looked like. They had seen it. Some of them had lived it.
When God purchases his people, the transaction follows the same logic. There is a price paid. There is an owner who gives up claim. There is a new owner who now holds full rights. The purchased one belongs completely to the buyer. Paul is not being metaphorical in a soft sense. He is being precise. You were on the block. A price was named. Christ paid it. You are no longer your own.
The finality embedded in ἀγοράζω matters. This is not a layaway arrangement. It is not provisional. A completed purchase in the ancient world could not simply be undone. The transaction stands. The belonging is settled.
Most of us read 'you were bought with a price' and nod at the theology without feeling the weight of the transaction. I spent years treating it as a warm metaphor for God's love, something like a parent paying a high price for a special gift. But ἀγοράζω is not warm and fuzzy. It is a bill of sale. Paul's original readers knew what it meant to watch a human being purchased in a public square. They knew the moment the coins landed, the question of ownership was settled completely. When Paul says Christ bought you, he means you stood in that square. He means a price was named for you specifically. He means the transaction closed. The life you call your own is not actually your own. That is not a threat. It is the most stabilizing truth a human being can hold.
ἀγοράζω derives directly from ἀγορά, the Greek word for the public marketplace or assembly place. That same root gives us the verb ἀγορεύω, to speak publicly or address an assembly, and compounds like κατηγορέω, to bring charges in public, which gives us our English word 'categorize.' The -άζω suffix marks the verb as the activity performed in or at the agora. To ἀγοράζω is literally to do agora-business, to transact in the market.
Where agorazō appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Paul grounds his entire ethical argument about bodily holiness in the completed transaction of ἀγοράζω. The purchase is the reason, not just the background.
You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.
The purchase by Christ becomes the very basis for resisting human ownership. Because ἀγοράζω has already settled who you belong to, no other claim of ownership holds.
and they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,'
The heavenly worship scene reaches for the same commercial-redemption imagery. The Lamb's worthiness is tied directly to the completed purchase of people out of every nation.
and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb,
Here ἀγοράζω describes the 144,000 as those purchased from the earth, framing their entire identity and calling around the fact of their transaction.
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
Peter uses ἀγοράζω to heighten the horror of apostasy. To deny the Master is to deny the one who paid the purchase price, making the betrayal a direct repudiation of an already-completed transaction.
Words in the same semantic family.
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.