Acts 7:8

διαθήκην, fœdus (Grimm, Blass), the same word is used in LXX, Genesis 17:10, and with two or three exceptions uniformly in LXX for “covenant,” so too in the Apocrypha with apparently two exceptions. The ordinary word for “covenant,” συνθήκη, is very rare in LXX (though used by the later translators, Aquila, Sym., Theod., for בְּרִית, but see also Ramsay, Expositor, ii., pp. 322, 323 (1898)). But the word διαθ. would be suitably employed to express a divine covenant, because it could not be said that in such a case the contractors are in any degree of equal standing (συνθήκη). In the N.T. the sense of “covenant” is correct (except in Galatians 3:15 and Hebrews 9:16). But in classical writers from the time of Plato διαθήκη generally has the meaning of a will, a testament, a disposition of property, and in the Latin renderings of the word in the N.T. we find uniformly testamentum in cases where the sense of “covenant” is beyond dispute (Luke 1:72; Acts 3:25 d. dispositionis; and here d. has dispositionem, also in Romans 11:27), cf., e.g., in this verse, Vulgate and Par. No doubt the early translators would render διαθήκη by its ordinary equivalent, although in the common language it is quite possible that testamentum had a wider meaning than the classical sense of will, see Westcott, Hebrews, additional note on Acts 9:16; Lightfoot on Galatians 3:15; A. B. Davidson, Hebrews, p. 161; and “Covenant” in Hastings' B.D. and Grimm-Thayer, sub v.; Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, pp. 47, 48; and more recently Ramsay, Expositor, ii., pp. 300 and 321 ff. (1898).