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δαιμονίζομαι

to be demon-possessed

G1139 Strong's Greek
daimonízomai Transliteration
/dahee-mon-id'-zom-ahee/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 13 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

δαιμονιζομαι — transliterated daimonízomai — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to be demon-possessed.” Its uses cluster heavily in Matthew (54% of all occurrences). With 13 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Matthew 4:24. From the same root come δαιμων and δαιμονιον. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
have a devil
Modern gloss
to be demon-possessed
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G1139 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 →

13
distinct verses
The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
4 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 4:24
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 4:24.
John 10:21
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in John 10:21.
#863
by frequency
Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 863 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 13 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 13 · 100%
  • Acts 0 · 0%
  • Pauline Epistles 0 · 0%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 0 · 0%

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 13 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 13 verses · 100%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 8%
  • Johannine 1 verse · 8%

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: Were possessed with devils 3×, Was possessed with the devil 2×
  • American Standard Version: Possessed with demons 3×, One possessed with a demon 2×, Was possessed with demons 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Demon-possessed 5×, Demon-possessed man 3×, Possessed by a demon 2×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Being possessed by demons 3×, Being demon possessed 2×, Demon possessed 2×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G1139 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Were possessed with devils” 3×
  • “Was possessed with the devil” 2×

Plus 8 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 G1139 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Possessed with demons” 3×
  • “One possessed with a demon” 2×
  • “Was possessed with demons” 2×
  • “Were possessed with demons” 2×

Plus 5 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 G1139 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Demon-possessed” 5×
  • “Demon-possessed man” 3×
  • “Possessed by a demon” 2×

Plus 3 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 G1139 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Being possessed by demons” 3×
  • “Being demon possessed” 2×
  • “Demon possessed” 2×
  • “Possessed by demons” 2×

Plus 6 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.

  1. to be under the power of a demon.

Word origin

Derived from δαιμων (daímōn) (G1142) — demon.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 02:19,1

Middle voice from G1142 ; to be exercised by a daemon : - have a (be vexed with be possessed with) devil (-s).

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 10 distinct written forms G1139 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
δαιμονιζομένους daimonizoménous Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 4:24 3
δαιμονιζόμενον daimonizómenon Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 9:32 2
δαιμονίζεται daimonízetai Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 15:22 1
δαιμονιζομένου daimonizoménou Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine John 10:21 1
δαιμονιζομένων daimonizoménōn Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Matthew 8:33 1
δαιμονιζομένῳ daimonizoménō Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine Mark 5:16 1
δαιμονιζόμενοι daimonizómenoi Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 8:28 1
δαιμονιζόμενος daimonizómenos Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 12:22 1
δαιμονισθείς daimonistheís Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 8:36 1
δαιμονισθεὶς daimonistheìs Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Mark 5:18 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1139, 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.