Fear not and the fear of the LORD are the same word

The prohibition and the command in one verse

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

Exodus 20:18-20

The people have just heard the voice from the mountain and beg for a mediator, because distance feels safer than the voice. Moses answers both halves at once. In the Hebrew, the prohibition and the command carry the same root: al-tira’u (אַל־תִּירָאוּ , “fear not”) and yirato (יִרְאָתוֹ , “his fear”). Moses reassigns the fear to its object and states its function: the fear of God stands before their faces as a guardrail, so that they do not sin.

The vocabulary of fear

The Hebrew and the Greek each use their ordinary fear word for both directions of the command:

One anomaly in the table proves that the text distinguishes two kinds of fear by vocabulary. When Paul denies that God gave “the spirit of fear” in 2 Timothy 1:7, he does not reach for phobos but for deilia, cowardice: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Cowardice toward the world and the fear of the LORD are two different words in the Greek, two postures that English renders with one word.

The “beginning” that the fear of the LORD occupies is reshit (רֵאשִׁית , “beginning, first”) in Psalm 111:10 and tehillah (תְּחִלָּה , “beginning”) in Proverbs 9:10: first in order, the starting position of wisdom. Ecclesiastes closes the wisdom line with the same priority: “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13 ).

The first “fear not” of the Bible is spoken to Abram after the battle of the kings, and it is grounded in identity: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (Genesis 15:1; on first mentions, see the law of first mention). The word pachad from the table is the “terror” of Psalm 91:5, where the psalm treats the night terror among the named entities (see Psalm 91 and the desert temptation).

Collapse first, then “Fear not”

The encounter scenes run one sequence: the manifestation, the collapse, and then the “fear not,” grounded in who God is or why he came.

The comfort never denies the terror; it names identity or purpose. John’s collapse has its cause in the verses before it: the glorified Christ has eyes as a flame of fire, feet as brass burning in a furnace, a sharp twoedged sword going out of his mouth, and a countenance as the sun shining in its strength (Revelation 1:14-16 ). This is the man at whose bosom John had leaned at the supper (John 13:23 ). The disciple who knew the Galilean teacher most intimately falls like a corpse in front of the glorified one.

The fear the text records

A common teaching renders “the fear of the LORD” as reverence, respect, or awe at most. The encounter record shows what the word family covers:

• Jacob at Bethel: “And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place!” (Genesis 28:17). Both words are the same root in the Hebrew: vayyira (וַיִּירָא , “and he was afraid”) and nora (נוֹרָא , “dreadful”).
• Moses at the bush: “And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exodus 3:6 ). The same Moses says at Sinai: “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Hebrews 12:21 ).
• Manoah, after the angel of the LORD ascends in the flame of the altar: “We shall surely die, because we have seen God” (Judges 13:22 ). On the death expectation in these scenes, see the angel of the LORD.
• Isaiah in the throne room: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips … for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5 ).
• Peter after the catch of fish: “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8 ). Holiness at close range produces a request for distance.
• God himself states the limit: “there shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20 ).

Reverence exists in the vocabulary (eulabeia), yet the scenes above carry the ordinary words for fear, and the people in them react the way frightened people react.

The throne room in 1 Enoch

1 Enoch is Second Temple literature, directly quoted by Jude (Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9), and it preserves how the period read the encounter scenes. Its throne-room account is the most detailed fear record of the era:

And I entered into that house, and it was hot as fire and cold as ice: there were no delights of life therein: fear covered me, and trembling gat hold upon me. And as I quaked and trembled, I fell upon my face.

1 Enoch 14:13-14

And until then I had been prostrate on my face, trembling: and the Lord called me with His own mouth, and said to me: ‘Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.’ … ‘Fear not, Enoch, thou righteous man and scribe of righteousness: approach hither and hear my voice.’

1 Enoch 14:24; 15:1

The sequence matches the canonical scenes exactly: collapse, then the Lord himself calls Enoch by name and rank, and only then the approach. The fear extends past humans. The book opens with “all shall be smitten with fear, And the Watchers shall quake” (1 Enoch 1:5), and when Enoch delivers the verdict to the fallen angels, “they were all afraid, and fear and trembling seized them” (1 Enoch 13:3). In the later Parables the same happens to Enoch again: “a great trembling seized me, And fear took hold of me … And I fell upon my face” (1 Enoch 60:3). The Watchers themselves quake.

The redirect: whom to fear

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28

But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

Luke 12:5

Jesus assigns fear its object. The Greek runs the same verb (phobeō) through both halves of Matthew 10:28, the prohibition and the command, and Luke’s parallel stacks the imperative three times. The destination named in both verses is Gehenna (γέεννα ), the final fire (see Sheol, Hades, hell, and Gehenna). Isaiah had given the same instruction centuries earlier: “Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:13), where the Hebrew has mora for “fear,” the word Malachi puts into God’s own question: “if I be a master, where is my fear?”

The fear of God after the cross

The framing that the Old Testament has a fearsome God and the New Testament a gentle one fails on the New Testament’s own text:

• Ananias and Sapphira die inside the Spirit-filled church, “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things” (Acts 5:11 ).
• The churches multiply “walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:31 ). Fear and comfort stand in one verse without tension.
• “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
• “Perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1 ).
• “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31 ).
• “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king” (1 Peter 2:17 ).
• The angel who carries “the everlasting gospel” opens its proclamation with “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come” (Revelation 14:6-7 ).

The standing objection is 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18 ). John names the kind of fear that love removes: the fear that “hath torment,” kolasin (κόλασιν , “punishment”). Punishment-fear is exactly the fear that Matthew 10:28 redirects toward God. The psalm states the same mechanism in the opposite direction: “But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Psalm 130:4 ). Forgiveness is what produces the fear of God.

Our God is a consuming fire

For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.

Deuteronomy 4:24

Hebrews lifts Deuteronomy’s Sinai sentence and applies it to the church’s God without adjustment: “let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29). The same fire tests what every believer builds: “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble … it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is … he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Corinthians 3:12-15 ). Malachi gives the fire its day: “the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven … all that do wickedly, shall be stubble … that it shall leave them neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1 ). Nahum asks the question that Revelation answers: “Who can stand before his indignation? … his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him” (Nahum 1:6 ).

The answer arrives with the sixth seal. The mighty of the earth hide in the rocks and beg them: “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17). The phrase “the wrath of the Lamb” holds the whole correction of the sentimental picture of Jesus in three words: the Lamb is the one the kings of the earth fear most. The torment of the beast’s worshipers runs “in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb” (Revelation 14:10 ); the rider of Revelation 19 “treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:15 ); the last plagues are “golden vials full of the wrath of God” (Revelation 15:7; 16:1); Paul writes the return of the same Christ as “flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God” (2 Thessalonians 1:8 ).

The father whom the sons fear

The text itself draws the family picture: “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 1:6). Hebrews quotes Proverbs and argues from the household: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth … we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” (Hebrews 12:6-9 , quoting Proverbs 3:11-12 ). The love and the chastening stand in the same verse, and reverence is the son’s documented response to a correcting father. The outcome is stated as well: “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11).

The fear also tracks conduct, the way it does in a household. David “was afraid of the LORD that day” (2 Samuel 6:9 ), the day Uzzah died for touching the ark. The first recorded human fear runs on the same mechanism: “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10 ). The first fear in the Bible is the fear of the misbehaving child.

By the numbers

Counted per verse in the KJV text; a verse that carries two of the phrases counts in both families. The direct prohibition families sum to about 105 verses.

A widely repeated devotional claim says the Bible contains “fear not” 365 times, one for every day of the year. The count fails by every method: the prohibition families reach about 105 verses, and even the word “fear” in every form reaches 502. The origin of the claim is unknown.

References

1. 1 Enoch, ch. 1, 13-15, 60 (R.H. Charles translation, 1912): the throne-room collapse of Enoch, the trembling of the Watchers, and the “Fear not, Enoch” pattern of 1 Enoch 15:1.