מָשִׁיחַ · Χριστός mashiach · christos — anointed one

The two words

מָשִׁיחַ (mashiach) is the Hebrew word for “anointed one.” Χριστός (Christos) is the Greek word for the same thing. The Greek is a direct translation of the Hebrew — the Septuagint translators used christos to render mashiach throughout the Hebrew Bible.

Both words derive from verbs of the same meaning:

• The Hebrew verb מָשַׁח (mashach) — “to anoint, to smear with oil”
• The Greek verb χρίω (chriō) — “to anoint, to rub with oil”

The basic image is concrete: pouring olive oil over someone’s head at the moment of their consecration to office. The word mashiach identifies someone as the recipient of that act — “the one who has been anointed.”

Anointing in the Hebrew Bible

In the Hebrew Bible, anointing with oil is the public act by which someone is consecrated to a particular office. Three categories of person are anointed:

• Kings — Saul (1 Samuel 10:1), David (1 Samuel 16:13), Solomon (1 Kings 1:39), and successive Davidic kings.
• Priests — Aaron and his sons at their consecration (Exodus 29:7, Leviticus 8:12).
• Prophets — at least one explicit case (Elijah is told to anoint Elisha as prophet, 1 Kings 19:16), though anointing was less commonly the standard mode of prophetic commissioning.

The anointing oil is itself a specific recipe given in Exodus 30:22–33: a blend of olive oil with myrrh, cinnamon, fragrant cane, and cassia. The same chapter prohibits its use for any non-consecrated purpose.

When the Hebrew Bible refers to “the LORD’s anointed” — meshiach YHWH — the phrase typically refers to the reigning Davidic king, especially in the historical books and in the Psalms (Psalm 2:2, Psalm 18:50, Psalm 89:38, etc.). The word is a title for an office, not yet a unique designation for a single future figure.

Cyrus, the non-Israelite messiah

One of the more striking uses of mashiach in the Hebrew Bible appears in Isaiah 45:1, where the LORD addresses Cyrus, king of Persia, as “His anointed”:

Thus says the LORD to Cyrus, His anointed, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him… (Isaiah 45:1, BSB)

Cyrus is the Persian king who allowed the Jewish exiles to return from Babylon to Jerusalem (the decree is described in 2 Chronicles 36:22–23 and Ezra 1:1–4). Isaiah’s application of mashiach to a non-Israelite, non-Davidic, foreign king is a notable expansion of the term’s typical scope. It indicates that in Hebrew Bible usage, mashiach identifies someone commissioned by the LORD for a particular role, regardless of whether they are inside the covenant community.

The development toward “the Messiah”

In Second Temple Judaism (roughly 500 BC to AD 70), expectation of “the Messiah” — a future anointed figure who would inaugurate a particular eschatological era — developed in various streams of Jewish thought. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Psalms of Solomon (a non-canonical Jewish text from the first century BC), and other Second Temple literature attest to multiple, sometimes overlapping, messianic expectations: a kingly messiah, a priestly messiah, a prophetic messiah. There was no single unified picture.

The New Testament writers identify Jesus as ho Christos — the Anointed One — drawing on this background and reshaping it. In John 1:41, Andrew tells Simon “We have found the Messiah” (Greek: Messian), with the Gospel writer providing the gloss “(which is, being interpreted, the Christ).” John explicitly bridges the Hebrew transliteration and the Greek translation in the same verse.

Christ as title, then name

In the earliest New Testament usage, Christos still functions as a title — “Jesus the Christ,” “the Anointed One.” Over time in early Christian usage, the title slid into a near-name: “Jesus Christ,” then often simply “Christ” used as if it were a personal name. The shift is visible across the Pauline letters and is essentially complete by the second century.

Modern English usage tends to use “Christ” as a name. The original lexical and historical depth — anointing, kingship, priesthood, the Cyrus expansion, the Second Temple development — is all behind that single English word.