The noun βροντη (bronte) means both thunder (the rumble that comes after lightning) and the state of one struck with sudden insight: astonishment, or in the words of Maimonides: perplexity (Guide For The Perplexed, 1190). It stems from the Proto-Indo-European root "brem-", to make noise (hence also the ever useful Dutch verb brommen).

Thunder, and thus being thunder-struck, is widely associated with the divine: the primary attributes of gods like Thor (hence our Thursday), Zeus and Hadad were thunder and lightning (αστραπη, astrape, lightning). Julius Caesar's pet legion was Legio XII Fulminata, Legion Twelve Thunderstruck. The Brontë family (Emily, Wuthering Heights, 1847) derived their name from our noun, and neither ACDC nor Imagine Dragons sang of physical thunder.

As part of the cache unearthed in Nag Hammadi in 1945, the poem The Thunder, Perfect Mind demonstrates that, at least to the Gnostic tradition, thunder was closely associated to the intellectual mind of humanity. Or in the words of Jesus through Luke: "For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other" (Luke 17:24).

In the Bible, thunder is most associated with the קול (qol), or Voice from Heaven (John 12:29). As the Psalmist says: "The Voice of YHWH twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry, "Glory!" " (Psalm 29:9). Although our noun βροντη (bronte) does not occur in the scene that describes Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, thunder and lightning are obviously implied (Acts 9:3-7).

Significantly, the New Testament depicts the Logos as divine, eternal and unchanging, but the Word in the Flesh (the human incarnation of the Logos) as an emergent property of society — hence the Virgin Birth (see our article on παρθενος, parthenos, virgin) and the waxing Child (Isaiah 7:14-16, Luke 2:40, 2:52). Since the incarnated Logos is an emergent property of society, and society consists of individuals that approach each other in discourse and negotiation, the incarnated Word also appears on clouds — that is: clouds of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1); see our article on the noun νεφελη (nephele), cloud. Hence the word thunder not only applies to the sound of lightning coming out of clouds of suspended water vapor, also of roaring rivers (see our article on Tigris) and cheering crowds (Revelation 19:6).

The familiar term Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17) appears to have been a generic term, but see our article on the name Boanerges for more on this. Our noun βροντη (bronte) appears 12 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.

The verb εμβριμαομαι (embrimaomai) means to express deep indignation or to utter out of inner turmoil. In the classics this rare verb solely describes the sound that agitated but bridled horses make — to snort within or inwardly or from deep within — which immediately reminds of the name Nahor, of the father of Terah and grandfather of Abraham. Otherwise, this verb occurs, beside the New Testament, only in the Septuagint's version of Daniel 11:30. A derived noun (lamely translated with "indignation") appears only in Lamentations 2:6.

Our verb is formed from the familiar preposition εν (en), meaning in, on, at, plus the rare verb βριμαομαι (brimaomai), to snort with anger, which in turn stems from the noun βριμη (brime), strength or might, or rather an expression of that: a bellowing or roaring (these latter two words don't occur in the New Testament and are somewhat rare in the classics). But the term Βριμω, Brimo, was an epithet of the goddesses Hecate, Persephone and Demeter, the Furies in general and the Queen of the Dead, taken to mean Angry or Terrifying, and obviously linked to the Underworld, and perhaps by extension the sub-conscious.

Where the noun βριμη (brime) comes from isn't wholly clear. It obviously reminds of words like the rare βριαρος (briaros), strength, and the more common βαρυς (barus), meaning heavy or burdensome, but experts have deemed a formal etymological link unlikely (but obviously cannot rule out that these unrelated words may have converged upon each other because in the mind of creative poets, they meant similar things). Then there is the word οβριμος (obrimos), also meaning strong or mighty, which is obviously similar to βριμη (brime), but whose leading "o" suggests an origin or perhaps a prodigal-son kind of detour through a pre-Greek or extra-Greek language basin: again more probable a case of convergent evolution than a shared root. The term Obrimos was among the great many epithets of Ares, the vilified Greek god of war.

Here at Abarim Publications we don't know either, of course, but if we were to venture a guess, we'd probably bet on the PIE root "brem-", to make noise, as mentioned above. That would give our verb εμβριμαομαι (embrimaomai) the meaning of to rumble within (rather than to become strong within). Our verb occurs 5 times in the New Testament; in four of these, Jesus is the subject, which is remarkable since to the Greeks, the epithet Brimo was applied solely to female underworld deities: see full concordance.