μετανοέω metanoeō — to change one's mind, to think differently

The word

μετανοέω (metanoeō) is the standard Greek verb translated “repent” in the New Testament. It is the verb in John the Baptist’s preaching (“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” Matthew 3:2), Jesus’s opening proclamation (“Repent and believe in the gospel,” Mark 1:15), and Peter’s Pentecost sermon (“Repent and be baptized,” Acts 2:38). It occurs about 34 times in the New Testament; the cognate noun μετάνοια (metanoia) appears about 22 times.

The verb is a compound of two parts:

• μετά (meta) — “after,” “with,” or in compounds often “change of”
• νοέω (noeō) — “to perceive, understand, think”

The basic sense is to change one’s mind — to think differently, to reconsider. BDAG s.v. metanoeō documents the lexical range from this neutral cognitive sense (“reconsider”) through to the fuller religious sense that the word develops in Jewish-Greek and early Christian usage.

Mark 1:15 — the verse and its tense

Mark 1:15, the inaugural saying of Jesus’s public ministry in the second Gospel, reads in Greek (Nestle-Aland 28):

καὶ λέγων ὅτι Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ.

Literally: “And saying that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near; change your minds (or be changing your minds) and believe (or be believing) in the gospel.”

Both imperatives — metanoeite and pisteuete — are in the present tense. Greek imperative tense usually indicates aspect (kind of action) rather than time. The aorist imperative is punctiliar (“change your mind once”); the present imperative is durative (“be changing your mind, keep reorienting”). Mark 1:15 uses the present imperative, indicating ongoing rather than one-time action. Most English translations do not preserve this aspectual distinction — “repent” reads the same in English whether the underlying Greek is aorist or present.

What is and is not in the Greek

The English word “repent” carries strong connotations that the Greek does not necessarily carry on its own:

• Sorrow or regret — these belong more naturally to a different Greek verb, metamelomai (μεταμέλομαι). Matthew 27:3 says of Judas that he metamelētheis — “having changed his mind / felt regret” — and returned the silver. The two verbs overlap but are not identical.
• Contrition or penitence as the lexical core — penitential interior posture is not the dictionary definition of metanoeō. The word describes a change of mind or direction. This does not mean emotion or moral feeling are absent from the original meaning — the word describes the nature of the turning, not its emotional content. Greek users of metanoeō could and did include emotional dimensions; the lexical centre is the change itself, and the English “repentance” tradition has filled out the emotional and moral content in ways that extend, but do not contradict, the Greek.
• Specific behaviour change — the Greek verb names a change of mind. Any change of behaviour follows from the change of mind, but the verb itself does not specify it.

The English “repent” — coming from Latin re-paenitere via Old French — has historically carried the penitential and emotional charge, largely through the translation history traced in the next section.

From Greek to Latin to English

The Latin Vulgate (Jerome’s translation, late fourth century AD) renders metanoeō in different ways at different points:

• paenitēminī — “be sorry,” the imperative of paenitere (to feel regret); this is the rendering at Mark 1:15 (paenitemini et credite evangelio)
• paenitentiam agite — “do penance,” literally “do an act of repentance” (Matthew 3:2, 4:17)

The first rendering names an emotional state; the second names an active practice. Either way, the Vulgate’s Latin emphasizes emotional and active components more than the Greek requires, and paenitentiam agite became the textual anchor for the medieval Latin church’s sacrament of penance — confession, penitential acts, and absolution. The underlying Greek does not require that development, but the Latin translation made it available.

In 1516, Erasmus published his Greek New Testament alongside a Latin translation that departed from the Vulgate at several key points. At Matthew 4:17, Erasmus rendered metanoeite not as paenitentiam agite but as resipiscite — “come back to your senses” — arguing in his annotations that “do penance” did not capture the cognitive sense of the Greek verb.

Martin Luther read Erasmus’s annotation. The first of Luther’s 95 Theses (1517) is, in part, a translation argument:

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Matthew 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Luther’s point — that metanoeite is a present-tense imperative indicating ongoing change of mind, not a punctiliar sacramental act — was a translation argument with theological consequences. His later German translation used “Bessert euch,” prioritizing the cognitive shift.

How translations render Mark 1:15

• KJV: “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” The KJV preserves the conventional rendering; the verb “repent” had a wider range in early modern English than today, closer to “reconsider, turn from a course.”
• BSB: “Repent and believe in the gospel!” The standard English rendering.
• Disciples’ Literal New Testament: “be reconsidering and be believing in the good news” — a translation that prioritizes preserving Greek tense and aspect, rendering the present-tense imperative as ongoing action.
• Latin Vulgate: paenitemini et credite evangelio — “be sorry and believe the gospel.”

Each rendering captures something the others lose: “repent” is conventional, “be reconsidering” preserves the cognitive and durative senses, “do penance” (at Matthew 3:2 and 4:17) preserves the active component. The Greek permits all of them within its range; this site does not adjudicate which is best.

The Hebrew layer: shuv and nicham

In the Old Testament, “repent” in English usually translates one of two Hebrew verbs:

• שׁוּב (shuv) — the most common verb, occurring more than 1,050 times in the Hebrew Bible. Its basic sense is “to turn” or “to return.” When Israel “repents” in the prophets, the verb is most often shuv — turning back to the LORD, returning from a wrong path. The image is directional rather than cognitive: “Return [shuv] to Me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Hosts” (Malachi 3:7, BSB). The action is concrete — turning, returning — not interior or emotional in the first place.
• נָחַם (nicham) — in the Niphal stem, “to be sorry, to be moved, to relent.” This is the verb used when the text says God “repents” of an action (Genesis 6:6, Exodus 32:14). The English translation “repent” is awkward here; modern translations often render it “relent” or “regret” instead.

The Septuagint uses metanoeō and metamelomai to render both shuv and nicham in different contexts, which has produced the layered English vocabulary that uses the single word “repent” for several distinct underlying ideas.

Why this matters in reading the Gospels

When John the Baptist or Jesus says “repent” in the Gospels, the underlying Greek is metanoeō — change your mind, think differently. The English word imports a register of sorrow and contrition that the Greek does not necessarily carry. Some readings of the Gospel emphasise the emotional aspect; others emphasise the cognitive shift. Both are within the range of how the word has been understood across Christian history. The Greek itself does not adjudicate.

The present-tense imperatives also bear on where repentance is located in time. Read with the modern English emotional charge, “repent” can suggest a single tearful crisis or a particular conversion event. The Greek present imperative in Mark 1:15 indicates ongoing reorientation rather than a one-time event. Emotional elements are present in some biblical narratives of repentance (David’s psalms, for example), and directional and cognitive elements in others; metanoeō and shuv together describe a sustained reorientation of mind and direction in which cognitive, behavioral, and emotional elements are all permitted but not all required at every moment.