διαφέρω
to carry through
‘to carry through’ is one of 4 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).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 4 times (31%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 4 times (31%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter 2 times (15%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 13 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1308 appears — 13 distinct verses across 8 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 3 verses
- Matthew 6:26 διαφέρετε pres act ind 2pl See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they?
- Matthew 10:31 διαφέρετε pres act ind 2pl Therefore don't be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows.
- Matthew 12:12 διαφέρει pres act ind 3sg Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day."
Mark 1 verse
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 12:7 διαφέρετε pres act ind 2pl But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore don't be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows.
- Luke 12:24 διαφέρετε pres act ind 2pl Consider the ravens: they don't sow, they don't reap, they have no warehouse or barn, and God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than birds!
Acts 2 verses
- Acts 13:49 διεφέρετο impf pass ind 3sg The Lord's word was spread abroad throughout all the region.
- Acts 27:27 διαφερομένων pres pass ptcp gen pl masc But when the fourteenth night had come, as we were driven back and forth in the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors surmised that they were drawing near to some land.
Romans 1 verse
1 Corinthians 1 verse
Galatians 2 verses
- Galatians 2:6 διαφέρει pres act ind 3sg But from those who were reputed to be important (whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God doesn't show partiality to man)--they, I say, who were respected imparted nothing to me,
- Galatians 4:1 διαφέρει pres act ind 3sg But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a bondservant, though he is lord of all;
Philippians 1 verse
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.
“to carry through” is the headline sense of the Greek word διαφερω (diaphérō). Lexicons map it across 4 senses. It turns up in 13 verses across 8 books, an uncommon footprint. Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 6:26. It clusters with δια, διαβαινω and διαβαλλω under a shared root. See the sense tree, 13-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1308 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.
- 8 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 8 of 27 New Testament books.
- #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 →
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 13 distinct verses.
- Gospels 6 verses · 46%
- Pauline corpus 5 verses · 38%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 31%
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: Better than 3×, Are 2×
- American Standard Version: Are 2×, More value 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Are worth more 1×, Carry 1×, Differs 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are 2×, Valuable 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1308 across 16 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1308 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 G1308 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1308 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 4 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 bear or carry through any place
- to carry in different directions, to different places
- to differ, to test, prove, the good things that differ,
- impersonally, it makes a difference, it matters, is of importance
Word origin
Derived from δια (diá) (G1223) — through.
From G1223 and G5342 ; to bear through that is (literally) transport ; usually to bear apart that is (objectively) to toss about (figuratively report ); subjectively to differ or (by implication) surpass : - be better carry differ from drive up and down be (more) excellent make matter publish be of more value.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G1308 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| διαφέρει diaphérei | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Matthew 12:12 | 4 |
| διαφέρετε diaphérete | Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | Matthew 6:26 | 4 |
| διαφέροντα diaphéronta | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Romans 2:18 | 2 |
| διαφερομένων diapheroménōn | Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Acts 27:27 | 1 |
| διενέγκῃ dienénkē | Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular | Mark 11:16 | 1 |
| διεφέρετο diephéreto | Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 13:49 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1308, 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
- διαβαινω diabaínō G1224 to pass through
- διαβαλλω diabállō G1225 to slander
- διαβεβαιοομαι diabebaióomai G1226 to affirm strongly
- διαβλεπω diablépō G1227 to look through
- διαγγελλω diangéllō G1229 to proclaim
- διαγινομαι diagínomai G1230 to continue
- διαγινωσκω diaginṓskō G1231 to ascertain
- διαγογγυζω diagongýzō G1234 to murmur
- διαγρηγορεω diagrēgoréō G1235 to watch through
- διαγω diágō G1236 to lead through
- διαδεχομαι diadéchomai G1237 to receive in succession
- διαδημα diádēma G1238 diadem
- διαδιδωμι diadídōmi G1239 to distribute
- διαζωννυμι diazṓnnymi G1241 to gird around
- διαιρεω diairéō G1244 to divide
- διακαθαριζω diakatharízō G1245 to cleanse thoroughly
- διακατελεγχομαι diakatelénchomai G1246 to confute
- διακουομαι diakoúomai G1251 to hear fully
- διακρινω diakrínō G1252 to distinguish
- διακωλυω diakōlýō G1254 to hinder
- διαλαλεω dialaléō G1255 to converse
- διαλεγομαι dialégomai G1256 to discuss
- διαλειπω dialeípō G1257 to intermit
- διαλλασσω diallássō G1259 to reconcile
+62 more words share this root (not shown).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 89 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word διαφερω appears 6 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 6 verses in 2 books.
- 6
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 6
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Proverbs 20:2 διαφέρω
- Daniel 7:3 διαφέρω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1308) 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.
- Proverbs 20:2 διαφέρω The terror of a king is like the roaring of a lion: He who provokes him to anger forfeits his own life.
- Proverbs 27:14 διαφέρω He who blesses his neighbor with a loud voice early in the morning, It will be taken as a curse by him.
- Daniel 7:3 διαφέρω Four great animals came up from the sea, diverse one from another.
- Daniel 7:23 διαφέρω Thus he said, The fourth animal shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.
- Daniel 7:24 διαφέρω As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom shall ten kings arise: and another shall arise after them; and he shall be diverse from the former, and he shall put down three kings.
- Daniel 7:28 διαφέρω Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts much troubled me, and my face was changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1308) 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.
