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The word translated "wages" is opsonion, and is derived from opsarion which
originally meant anything that is eaten with bread, and then, in particular, fish
(Numb. 11: 22; John 6: 9, 11; 21: 9, 10, 13). We must, however, be careful not to limit
ourselves to etymology. Take, for instance, the word "pecuniary". If a commentator in
English literature followed the idea of arriving at the truth by etymology alone, we should
get some strange results. "Pecuniary" to-day signifies anything relating to or consisting
of money. Yet it comes from the Latin pecus, meaning "cattle". While, therefore, it is
interesting to know that bartering by means of cattle has left its mark, when bartering
itself has practically ceased, it would be quite false to intrude the idea of cattle into the
present-day meaning of the word "pecuniary". So with the related words "bank",
"finance", and "cash"; these have ceased to have any real connection with "a table",
"finish" or "case".
To return to the word "wages". It originally meant food of some kind, and then,
because the Roman soldiers received some of their wages in the form of food, it lost its
primary meaning and took on the meaning of wages. Josephus uses the word in his
Antiquities:--
"He gave order, that when they paid the soldiers their wages, they should lay down
twenty drachmę for every one of the slaves" (Ant. 12: 2: 3).
Opsonion is also included in the list of words that the recently discovered papyrus of
Egypt has illuminated.
The "wages" of sin (sin is personified here, and throughout the argument, as the
master) is death. That is the "end" and "fruit" of sin. In contrast with these "wages" is
the "grace gift" (charisma) of God (cf. "free gift", Rom. 5: 15, 16).
In a sense, the apostle has but developed in the argument of Rom. 6: what is latent in
Rom. 5: 21:--
"That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness
unto aionion life by Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5: 21).
In the first clause--"That as sin hath reigned unto death"--we get the close
association of sin and death that is expressed in the words of Rom. 6:, "The wages of
sin is death". Also the use of the word "reign" covers the references to "dominion" in the
argument of chapter 6::--
"Even so might grace reign through righteousness unto aionion life by Jesus Christ
our Lord" (Rom. 5: 21).
This second clause shews that grace, though free from law, is allied to righteousness
and leads to life.
We must now devote attention to the intervening argument of verses 16-22, and this
we reserve for another article.