Spoudason is the aorist active imperative of the Greek verb spoudazō. It commands a single, complete act: make haste, give every diligence, exert yourself with everything you have. The root spoudazō is the language of a craftsman bearing down on a piece of work before he is willing to put his name on it. It is the language of a runner straining toward the finish line. It is not casual. It is not background activity. It is the verb of a person whose name is on what comes off the bench.

The KJV in 1611 translated spoudason in 2 Timothy 2:15 as "study." In seventeenth-century English, "study" carried the older sense of "be eager, give effort, make haste." By the twenty-first century, "study" had narrowed to mean academic reading. The verse now reads, to the modern English ear, as a command to do research. That is not what Sha'ul wrote. He wrote a command to a craftsman: bear down, exert every effort, present yourself as a workman who does not need to be ashamed.

The English drift cost the verse its bite. Read it in Greek and the bite returns. Sha'ul is not asking Timothy to take a class. He is telling him to handle the word of truth the way a stonemason handles his tools. The diligence is in the cutting, not in the reading. Spoudason names the posture of a person who is responsible for his work and who will not let the work go out into the world half-finished.