The verb αρω (aro) means to fit, join or fasten together, although it isn't really clear that it ever was a verb. It's not used as such in the classics, but there are a handful of words that look like derivations from a verb αρω (aro), including the verb αραρισκω (ararisko), which doubles the root and means the same: to fit, join or fasten. This latter verb is also not used in the New Testament.

Although our mystery verb looks similar to the familiar verb αιρω (airo), to lift up (hence our word air), the two are thought to stem from separate Proto-Indo-European roots. It's commonly assumed that our verb αρω (aro) belongs to the Proto-Indo-European root "her-", also meaning to join or fit together, from which the Latin got the familiar ars, artis, and hence English words like art, artisan, article, and (back to Latin) arma, armorum, tools, weapons, and thus the English words armor, arms and armistice.

Significantly, the same PIE root "her-", to join or fit, also yielded the adverb αρτι (arti), just or exactly, and the verb αρτυω (artuo), to arrange in perfect order. The noun αρτος (artos), which is the common word for bread, may have been imported into Greek, but appears to have been adopted into this word group, for the poets to treat it like a native member.

Here at Abarim Publications we contrarily surmise that the PIE root of our verb may actually be Semitic, and imported into the Hellene language basin along with the alphabet (see our article on the name Hellas for more on this; see κολοσσος, kolossos, for more Greek words of suspected Semitic origin). That would relate our (non-attested) verb αρω (aro) instead to the Hebrew verb ארה ('ara), from which in turn come the nouns ארי ('ari), lion, and אריה ('urya), crib or manger. And there's a fun trick to these words: the word for lion is masculine, and the word for manger is feminine. The feminine noun דברה (deborah) means bee, and its masculine equivalent דבר (dabar) means Word. That means that the image of Samson's bees in the lion (Judges 14:8) is the gender-inverted equivalent of the Word in the crib (Luke 2:7).

Fitting and assembling is of course a huge deal in the Bible, since the outer darkness is one of primitivity, chaos and lawlessness, whereas mankind's slow accustomization to Law — any kind of law, from language standards to legal codes — resulted in more compact and complex societies, then cities, then global trade and the Internet and finally the New Jerusalem at the blazing heart of a much larger world. The New Jerusalem is marked by ελευθερια (eleutheria), or freedom-by-law (comparable to freedom of speech, which is only possible when all speakers submit themselves willingly to the rules that govern their language).

Another Hebrew verb that means to join is לוה (lawa), from which comes the name Levi — and Moses and Aaron, Zacharias and Elizabeth and thus John the Baptist, Mary and thus Jesus, were all Levites (Jesus was a Levite-by-blood and a Jew-by-law because his legal but unrelated father Joseph was from Judah). Another PIE root that means to assemble (or to weave, rather) is "teks-", hence English words like architect, technology, textile and text, and Greek words like the verb τικτω (tikto), to beget, and the noun τεκτων (tekton), assembler, the earthly profession of both Jesus and Joseph (because, no, they weren't carpenters).

As said, the verb αρω (aro), to fit or join together, isn't used in the New Testament (or anywhere else), but from it come:

The noun αρμα (arma) describes a chariot and most specifically a war-chariot. This word comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root "her-", to join or fit together, as the above and thus relates to words like armor, arms and armistice, but also to words like harmony and art.

This word is used 4 times, see full concordance, three of which occur in the scene of Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer. Of course, this man traveled in a military vehicle because he was transporting valuable goods (it's been often suggested that he had chosen to bring a copy of Isaiah to Candace because that was the largest and thus the most expensive scroll), but Luke's use of our noun αρμα (arma) also implies that the man was not merely casually reading a foreign Scripture, but rather was seated in a carefully assembled understanding of things whilst trying to insert the words of Isaiah somewhere in there.

Luke's report of Philip first joining the man within his chariot, then riding with him, and finally stepping out of it and onto water for baptism, ties into what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:20-22: "To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it."

And elsewhere he writes: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:5-8).

All these things seem to imply that the gospel does not call us to forge great creeds and statements of faith to which we should make all men bow (Exodus 20:4-5), but rather to step into the reality models of any of our neighbors, and walk the proverbial mile with them to see where they encounter problems, to then offer our solutions, should we indeed be blessed to have them.

The verb αροω (aroo) means to plow and stems from the same PIE root "herh-" that gave Latin the verb aro, to plow, and which resulted in English words like arable (aro plus bilis, able to) and, via Norse, the noun ard (a primitive plow or big hoe). A cultivated land was known as a αρουρα (aroura), which may have reminded some creative Koine speakers of the noun αρα (ara), a curse, or even the Hebrew verb ארר ('arar), to curse or bind (hence the pun in Genesis 3:17: ארורה האדמה, arora ha'adama: cursed the land will be, or, bound the man will be).

Simple hoes and sickles, like pottery and weaving, have been known since the Stone Age. A cow-pulled plough, however, was quite another matter, as this required a miraculously complex combination of animal husbandry, mechanical technology and innovations in government. Ploughs were invented when technology was beginning to become complex, around the sixth millennium BC, when pottery ovens became increasingly hot (ultimately so hot as to melt bronze), and domesticated sheep caused the wool and weaving culture to boom, which in turn allowed artistic expressions to proliferate. The invention of the plow changed everything for mankind. It made lands more productive, which allowed for greater sedentary communities, which made them stronger and more culturally diverse. But it also required the development of laws based on property rights and territories and a military to enforce these laws. And this required the development of a wisdom class and specifically information technology: a writing system and materials to write on.

In the Biblical tradition, there is a well-established correlation between fruit-bearing lands and fruit-bearing minds (see our article on γη, ge, earth), and thus between seeds and words: see our article on the verb σπειρω (speiro), to sow or scatter. This verb's Hebrew equivalent, namely זרע (zara'), may have helped the formation of the name Nazareth, or Diaspora (also see our article on YHWH or "the Alphabet" as the "Father of the Word").

The Hebrew word for to plough, namely חרש (harash) also means to engrave, not merely in the sense of compromising whatever surface (by straight lines) but rather in the sense of deposing meaning within symbols that may grow into fruit-bearing plants.

Our verb αροω (aroo), to plow, is not used in the New Testament, but from it derive: