The noun σικαριος (sikarios) means dagger-man, and by New Testament times had become synonymous with assassin or terrorist, and had even become the name of an ideology centered on violence and the induction of fear. Out word occurs in Acts 21:38 only, where a Roman commander asks Paul if he might be the Egyptian who, sometime prior, led four thousand terrorists into the wilderness. How the commander came to mistake Paul for the leader of four thousand assassins, or who that leader instead might have been, remains a mystery. But the curious case of the misplaced murderer is a theme that runs in the New Testament from Barabbas to Theudas, and seems to be specifically designed to ridicule the intelligence of the opposing party.

But the Sicarii were a proper movement, who seem to have partially overlapped with the Zealots — meaning that some but not all Zealots were Sicarii, and that some but not all Sicarii were Zealots. Our main source of information on the Sicarii is Josephus, who was a Jew but strongly biased in favor of the Romans. According to him, the Zealots were violent brutes but the Sicarii were calculating murderers. Some took to murdering out of political convictions and others because they were hired hitmen. They were mostly Jews and their targets were mostly Romans, but any fellow Jew they suspected of collaborating with the Romans or even not hating them enough could be hit as well. Their victims included women, children and even (high) priests. They kidnapped, extorted and, like most terrorists, succeeded in little more than Roman retaliation against the Jewish civilian population.

The word σικαριος (sikarios) is commonly thought to derive from the Latin noun sica, which described a sort of curved dagger or short curved sword that was widely used by east European peoples but considered typically Illyrian by the Romans. The idea behind the curved blade was to make it easier to stab a man who hid behind a shield. This in turn resulted in the Romans changing the design of their armor.

Where the noun sica comes from isn't clear. It resembles the Albanian word for knife, but it's not clear which came first, the Latin or the Albanian. Our noun also resembles the Latin verb seco, to cut, from the Proto-Indo-European root "sek-", meaning to cut, which may or may not have given English the words saw and sickle. Certain experts, however, have established that it's quite impossible that our noun sica could have derived from "sek-" and have subsequently declared our noun's etymology unknown.

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that our word's formation may have been helped along by the noun σικερα (sikera), which describes an alcoholic drink, while drunkenness and murderous rage go hand in hand in the Hebrew Bible (see directly below). The verb שׂכר (sakar) means to hire, which may mean that σικαριος (sikarios) was originally simply a hired hand and only later became a mercenary. Since the Phoenicians traded profusely with the early Greeks, and even gave them their alphabet, a long list of Semitic terms went along with that and were incorporated into the Greek language, from where it could easily have reached Latin: see our article on the many Hebrew roots of the Greek language.

The noun σικερα (sikera) describes a sort of alcoholic drink (Luke 1:15 only). This noun is an immediate transliteration of the Hebrew word שׁכר (shekar), which likewise denotes a drink that makes drunk, and which derives from the verb שׁכר (shakar), to be or become drunk. Note that in the Bible, one could be drunk with alcohol or with murderous rage: Isaiah 49:26 reads "... they will be drunk with murder and rage" (also see Psalm 60:3, 75:8, Isaiah 51:17, Jeremiah 25:15, Obadiah 1:16, Revelation 14:10). A word that may have sounded similar to our verb שׁכר (shakar) is the non-related word שׁקר (sheker), deception or lie, and its denominative verb שׁקר (shakar), to deal falsely.

Another verb, which is spelled the same as שׁכר (shakar), to become drunk, but pronounced slightly differently (according to the medieval Masoretes), is שׂכר (sakar), meaning to hire. The adjective שׂכיר (sakir) means hired and may be used substantially to denote a hired man. A mercenary would be such a שׂכיר (sakir). And in societies were money was scarce or not yet invented, such a hireling might be paid in food, drink, housing and safety. Depending on the task and the measure of its reward, a job well done could surely result in the hireling ending up in a drunken rage.