γρηγορεύω
to watch
‘to watch’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Present-tense verb in the Greek New Testament →
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).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 10 distinct
- Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural 10 times (45%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (5%)
+2 more forms (2 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 22 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1127 appears — 22 distinct verses across 9 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 6 verses
- Matthew 24:42 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Watch therefore, for you don't know in what hour your Lord comes.
- Matthew 24:43 ἐγρηγόρησεν aor act ind 3sg But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
- Matthew 25:13 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Watch therefore, for you don't know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
- Matthew 26:38 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Then he said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch with me."
- Matthew 26:40 γρηγορῆσαι aor act inf He came to the disciples, and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "What, couldn't you watch with me for one hour?
- Matthew 26:41 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Watch and pray, that you don't enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Mark 6 verses
- Mark 13:34 γρηγορῇ pres act subj 3sg "It is like a man, traveling to another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, and to each one his work, and also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch.
- Mark 13:35 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Watch therefore, for you don't know when the lord of the house is coming, whether at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning;
- Mark 13:37 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl What I tell you, I tell all: Watch."
- Mark 14:34 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch."
- Mark 14:37 γρηγορῆσαι aor act inf He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn't you watch one hour?
- Mark 14:38 γρηγορεῖτε pres act impv 2pl Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Luke 1 verse
Acts 1 verse
1 Corinthians 1 verse
Colossians 1 verse
1 Thessalonians 2 verses
1 Peter 1 verse
Revelation 3 verses
- Revelation 3:2 γρηγορῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc Wake up, and keep the things that remain, which you were about to throw away, for I have found no works of yours perfected before my God.
- Revelation 3:3 γρηγορήσῃς aor act subj 2sg Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If therefore you won't watch, I will come as a thief, and you won't know what hour I will come upon you.
- Revelation 16:15 γρηγορῶν pres act ptcp nom sg masc "Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his clothes, so that he doesn't walk naked, and they see his shame."
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.
γρηγορευω (grēgoreúō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to watch.” The King James Version usually renders it “watch,” while modern versions prefer “keep watch” (Berean Standard Bible) and “be alert” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. With 22 verses in 9 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It concentrates in Matthew, which alone accounts for 27% of its uses. Its lexical range runs to 2 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1127 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 →
- 22
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
- 9 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 9 of 27 New Testament books.
- #586
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 586 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 22 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 6 verses 27%
- Mark 6 verses 27%
- Revelation 3 verses 14%
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 22 distinct verses.
- Gospels 13 verses · 59%
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 18%
- Johannine 3 verses · 14%
- Revelation 3 verses · 14%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 9%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 5%
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: Watch 11×, Watch ye 3×
- American Standard Version: Watch 13×, Watching 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Keep watch 9×, Watch 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be alert 9×, Stay alert 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1127 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1127 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1127 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1127 across 23 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 2 senses 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.
- to watch
- metaph. give strict attention to, be cautious, active
Word origin
Derived from εγειρω (egeírō) (G1453) — to raise.
From G1453 ; to keep awake that is watch (literally or figuratively): - be vigilant wake (be) watch (-ful).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 11 distinct written forms G1127 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1127, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
