We were flying into Bible territory yesterday in our morning church service. Our pastor was talking about the prodigal son in Luke 15. We got to verse 13 and he made a point of what a young son was doing – as the New Living Translation says, “wild living”. This became a bit of unison repetition throughout the sermon by the congregation to emphasize this point.
Of course, with my curiosity to know what the Greek said I turned to the passage. The living part was easy – it says living! The wild part? One English translation just calls this living “prodigally”. Not much help.
The Greek word is asotos (with a few accents here and there which I will ignore for your sake). Akin to another Greek word that really is “a prodigal”. This is the only time this particular form of the word is used in the New Testament.
Having said that, here are some words that have been used to describe asotos: unsavedness (what can’t be saved – waste), wastefulness, wantonness, profligacy, dissipation, incorrigibleness, abandoned, debauchery, excess, riotous, loose. Of course, you need to compare this to other Greek writers of the time to get context for what this word may have meant. Perhaps all of these things or maybe just one or two?
In some ways you can choose your definition. I would want to make the point that the older brother (who presumably kept up with spying out the younger brother) points out a few verses later that the younger brother was with prostitutes. Maybe not all he was doing, but something he was doing. Thus I would want my definition to include prostitutes in some way.
At the very least, the “away from home” behaviour was not good.
I guess “wild” could describe it!