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Ashamed

a-shamd’: Almost exclusively moral in significance; confusion or abashment through consciousness of guilt or of its exposure. Often including also a sense of terror or fear because of the disgrace connected with the performance of some action. Capacity for shame indicates that moral sense (conscience) is not extinct. "Ashamed" occurs 96 out of 118 times in the Old Testament. Hebrew bosh, "to feel shame" (Latin, pudere), with derivatives occurs 80 times; kalam, "to shame," including the thought of "disgrace," "reproach"; chapher, "to blush": hence shame because of frustrated plans (uniformly in the Revised Version (British and American) "confounded"); Greek aischunomai, "suffused with shame," passive only and its compounds. Uses:

(1) A few times, of actual embarrassment, as of Hazael before the steadfast look of Elisha (2Ki 8:11; see also 2Sa 10:5; 2Ki 2:17; Ezr 8:22).

(4) Repentance causes shame for sin (Jer 31:19; Ro 6:21).

(5) Calamities also, and judgments (Jer 14:3,4; 15:9; 20:11).

(6) Capacity for shame may be lost through long-continued sin (Jer 6:15; 8:12; compare Jer 3:3), exceptionally striking passages on the deadening power of immorality, suggestive of 1Ti 4:2; Titus 1:15.

(7) The grace of Christ delivers from the shame of moral timidity (Ro 1:1; 2Ti 1:18,12,16;1Pe 4:16).

(8) At Christ’s second coming His followers will "not be ashamed before him" (1Joh 2:28); at the final judgment He will be ashamed of all who have been ashamed of Him (Mr 8:38; Lu 9:26; compare Mt 10:33; Heb 11:16).

(9) The word lends itself to rich poetic use, e.g. Lebanon, with faded and falling foliage, "is ashamed" (the Revised Version (British and American) "confounded") at the desolations of the land under Sennacherib (Isa 33:9); so great is God’s glory in the new Jerusalem that "the sun (is) ashamed" in His presence (Isa 24:23), explaining the glorious figure in Re 21:23; 22:5. (The references in this article are from the King James Version; the Revised Version (British and American) frequently replaces `ashamed’ by `put to shame.’) See Shame.

Dwight M. Pratt