βόσκω
to feed
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 3 times (33%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1006 appears — 9 distinct verses across 4 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Greek form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Greek New Testament; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences of this word are not indexed here.
Matthew 2 verses
Mark 2 verses
Luke 3 verses
- Luke 8:32 βοσκομένων pres pass ptcp gen pl masc Now there was there a herd of many pigs feeding on the mountain, and they begged him that he would allow them to enter into those. He allowed them.
- Luke 8:34 βόσκοντες pres act ptcp nom pl masc When those who fed them saw what had happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country.
- Luke 15:15 βόσκειν pres act inf He went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs.
John 2 verses
- John 21:15 βόσκε pres act impv 2sg So when they had eaten their breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I have affection for you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
- John 21:17 βόσκε pres act impv 2sg He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you have affection for me?" Peter was grieved because he asked him the third time, "Do you have affection for me?" He said to him, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I have affection for you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
βοσκω — transliterated bóskō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to feed.” Debuting at Matthew 8:30, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 9 verses across 4 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a third of its appearances fall in Luke. Related forms include βιβρωσκω, βρωμα and βρωσις. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1006 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,140
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,140 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the New Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 9 distinct verses.
- Gospels 9 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 33%
- Johannine 2 verses · 22%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Feed 3×, Feeding 3×, They that fed 2×
- American Standard Version: Feed 3×, Feeding 3×, They that fed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Feed 3×, Feeding 3×, Tending 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Feed 3×, Feeding 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1006 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1006 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1006 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1006 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in Thayer's
The 1 sense Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- portraying the duty of a Christian teacher to promote in every way the spiritual welfare of the members of the church
Word origin
Derived from βιβρωσκω (bibrṓskō) (G977) — to eat.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G1006 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| βόσκοντες bóskontes | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 8:33 | 3 |
| βοσκομένη boskoménē | Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 8:30 | 2 |
| βόσκε bóske | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | John 21:15 | 2 |
| βοσκομένων boskoménōn | Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Luke 8:32 | 1 |
| βόσκειν bóskein | Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive | Luke 15:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1006, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word βοσκω appears 28 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 25 verses in 7 books.
- 28
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 25
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 29:7 βόσκω
- 1 Kings 12:16 βόσκω
- Job 1:14 βόσκω
- Isaiah 5:17 βόσκω
- Jeremiah 38:10 βόσκω
- Ezekiel 34:2 βόσκω
- Daniel 4:9 βόσκω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1006) appears in the Greek Septuagint. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 29:7 βόσκω He said, "Behold, it is still the middle of the day, not time to gather the cattle together. Water the sheep, and go and feed them."
- Genesis 29:9 βόσκω While he was yet speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she kept them.
- Genesis 37:12 βόσκω His brothers went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.
- Genesis 37:16 βόσκω He said, "I am looking for my brothers. Tell me, please, where they are feeding the flock."
- Genesis 41:2 βόσκω Behold, there came up out of the river seven cattle, well-favored and fat-fleshed, and they fed in the reed-grass.
- 1 Kings 12:16 βόσκω When all Israel saw that the king didn't listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, Israel: now see to your own house, David. So Israel departed to their tents.
- Job 1:14 βόσκω that there came a messenger to Job, and said, "The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them,
- Isaiah 5:17 βόσκω Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture, And strangers will eat the ruins of the rich.
- Isaiah 11:6 βόσκω The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
- Isaiah 11:7 βόσκω The cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
- Isaiah 14:30 βόσκω The firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety; and I will kill your root with famine, and your remnant shall be killed.
- Isaiah 30:23 βόσκω He will give the rain for your seed, with which you shall sow the ground; and bread of the increase of the ground, and it shall be fat and plenteous. In that day shall your cattle feed in large pastures;
- Isaiah 34:17 βόσκω He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them by line: they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.
- Isaiah 49:9 βόσκω saying to those who are bound, Go forth; to those who are in darkness, Show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and on all bare heights shall be their pasture.
- Isaiah 65:25 βόσκω The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 38:10 βόσκω Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, saying, Take from hence thirty men with you, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon, before he die.
- Ezekiel 34:2 βόσκω Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and tell them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shouldn't the shepherds feed the sheep?
- Ezekiel 34:3 βόσκω You eat the fat, and you clothe you with the wool, you kill the fatlings; but you don't feed the sheep.
- Ezekiel 34:8 βόσκω As I live, says the Lord Yahweh, surely because my sheep became a prey, and my sheep became food to all the animals of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my sheep, but the shepherds fed themselves, and didn't feed my sheep;
- Ezekiel 34:10 βόσκω Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the sheep; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; and I will deliver my sheep from their mouth, that they may not be food for them.
- Ezekiel 34:13 βόσκω I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country.
- Ezekiel 34:14 βόσκω I will feed them with good pasture; and on the mountains of the height of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie down in a good fold; and on fat pasture shall they feed on the mountains of Israel.
- Ezekiel 34:15 βόσκω I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will cause them to lie down, says the Lord Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 34:16 βόσκω I will seek that which was lost, and will bring back that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but the fat and the strong I will destroy; I will feed them in justice.
- Daniel 4:9 βόσκω Belteshazzar, master of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you, and no secret troubles you, tell me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and the interpretation of it.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1006) in the Septuagint — not a translation of any one Hebrew word. The store carries no word-level Hebrew↔Greek alignment, so no Hebrew original is asserted here. Counts come from the recovered LXX Strong's tagging — high-frequency vocabulary is well covered, while rare or late forms may be untagged — so they reflect tagged occurrences and may slightly undercount.
