Understanding the Significance of Bounos in Greek

βουνός means “hill” and appears in two Lukan sayings that picture dramatic changes in the landscape. In one, hills are lowered as part of a sweeping leveling of the earth; in the other, hills are addressed as a place of cover in a moment of dread.

Occurrences

“Every valley will be filled. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth.” (Luke 3:5)

Here βουνός stands alongside “mountain” within a chain of paired contrasts: valley/mountain, crooked/straight, rough/smooth. The scene is not a travel note about ordinary terrain but an announced transformation of the land’s contours—valleys rise, elevations drop, and irregular paths are changed. Within that patterned list, “hill” helps complete the image of everything that stands up above the common level being reduced: not only the highest heights (“mountain”) but also lesser rises (“hill”). In the sequence, “hill” functions as part of a total landscape makeover in which no elevation, large or small, remains as it was. The wording “will be brought low” frames the hill as something that can be lowered, pressed down, or made less prominent, matching the broader theme of making a route fit for straightforward passage: “The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth.” βουνός contributes a concrete piece of that terrain—an ordinary rise in the ground—so the picture is complete: both deep places and raised places are acted upon.

“Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’” (Luke 23:30)

In this saying, βουνός appears in direct address: the hills are spoken to, as if capable of responding. The parallelism again pairs “mountains” with “hills,” but the action is different: instead of being reshaped, the heights are invoked for protection. The petition, “Cover us,” assigns the hill a role as a physical sheltering mass—something that can hide, bury, or conceal those who call on it. The line’s force comes from urgency: people “begin to tell” the mountains and hills to act, indicating a sudden turn to the landscape as the only imaginable refuge. By placing “hills” in the second clause, the saying includes not only the most imposing heights but also the nearer, more common features of the land. βουνός therefore contributes to a picture of desperate appeal to the solid, immovable parts of creation, not for guidance or travel but for concealment.

Sense and Usage

Across these two occurrences, βουνός keeps a consistent, literal reference to a raised feature of the ground. Yet the word’s literary role shifts with the scene: in Luke 3:5 the hill is an obstacle or irregularity that is removed as part of a leveling that produces straightness and smoothness; in Luke 23:30 the hill is not something to traverse but something to hide under. In both contexts, βουνός belongs to a common pair with “mountain,” where “hill” widens the image by including elevations that are not the greatest heights. That pairing creates a spectrum of high ground, from the largest peaks to more modest rises, so that the statement touches the whole category of “things that stand above.”

The first passage treats the landscape as a corridor being made passable: valleys are “filled,” mountains and hills “brought low,” and the resulting route is described in terms of straightness and smoothness. In that environment, a hill is part of what makes a way rough or uneven. The hill, as a smaller rise, is a familiar kind of impediment, so its inclusion makes the leveling imagery comprehensive. The second passage treats the landscape as a place of cover: hills are asked to “cover,” implying concealment by earth and rock. In that environment, a hill is not an impediment but a heavy presence that can hide a person from what they fear. The word’s plain sense remains the same, but the imagined relationship between people and terrain changes from travel and preparation to panic and seeking shelter.

Both sayings also share a striking feature: the hills are involved in actions that exceed everyday expectation. Hills do not ordinarily “be brought low” by declaration, nor do they ordinarily “cover” people at command. The statements draw power from that mismatch between ordinary geography and extraordinary speech. βουνός thereby serves as a vivid, accessible element—common high ground that listeners know—through which the sayings portray sweeping reversal and intense distress. Because a hill is a stable part of the landscape, it can carry strong rhetorical weight when pictured as altered (lowered) or recruited (to cover).

Imagery

Together, these two Lukan uses place βουνός at the intersection of movement and fear: one scene imagines a world reshaped into a straight, smooth way, and the other imagines people turning toward the heights to be hidden. The hill is thus a familiar piece of earth that can be pictured either as something leveled for a clear path or as something looming overhead as a last resort for cover, depending on the crisis described in the saying.

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).