δικαιόω
to justify
‘to justify’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Aorist-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
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G1344 appears in the Present tense in the Book of James. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
James
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.
The Greek verb δικαιοω centers on the idea of “to justify.” Debuting at Matthew 11:19, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 35 verses across 9 books of the Greek New Testament, among its moderately common vocabulary. The word gravitates to Romans (40%), then Galatians and Luke. Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. Dig into 35-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1344 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 →
- 35
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 35 distinct verses.
- 9 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 9 of 27 New Testament books.
- #385
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 385 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 35 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 35 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 24 verses · 69%
- Gospels 7 verses · 20%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 17%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 3 verses · 9%
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: Justified 9×, Be justified 5×, Is justified 5×
- American Standard Version: Justified 9×, Is justified 7×, Be justified 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Is justified 4×, Justified 4×, Justify 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Justified 5×, Is justified 4×, Justifying 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1344 across 48 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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 G1344 across 47 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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 G1344 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 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 G1344 across 45 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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 3 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 render righteous or such he ought to be
- to show, exhibit, evince, one to be righteous, such as he is and wishes himself to be considered
- to declare, pronounce, one to be just, righteous, or such as he ought to be
Word origin
Derived from δικαιος (díkaios) (G1342) — righteous.
From G1342 ; to render (that is show or regard as) just or innocent : - free justify (-ier) be righteous.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 25 distinct written forms G1344 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 G1344, 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
- δικαιοκρισια dikaiokrisía G1341 righteous judgment
- δικαιοσυνη dikaiosýnē G1343 righteousness
- δικαιως dikaíōs G1346 justly
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word δικαιοω appears 29 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 28 verses in 12 books.
- 29
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 28
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 38:26 δικαιόω
- Exodus 23:7 δικαιόω
- Deuteronomy 25:1 δικαιόω
- 2 Samuel 15:4 δικαιόω
- 1 Kings 8:32 δικαιόω
- 2 Chronicles 6:23 δικαιόω
- Job 33:32 δικαιόω
- Psalms 18:10 δικαιόω
- Isaiah 1:17 δικαιόω
- Jeremiah 3:11 δικαιόω
- Ezekiel 16:51 δικαιόω
- Micah 6:11 δικαιόω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1344) 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 38:26 δικαιόω Judah acknowledged them, and said, "She is more righteous than I, because I didn't give her to Shelah, my son." He knew her again no more.
- Genesis 44:16 δικαιόω Judah said, "What will we tell my lord? What will we speak? Or how will we clear ourselves? God has found out the iniquity of your servants. Behold, we are my lord's bondservants, both we, and he also in whose hand the cup is found."
- Exodus 23:7 δικαιόω "Keep far from a false charge, and don't kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked.
- Deuteronomy 25:1 δικαιόω If there be a controversy between men, and they come to judgment, and [the judges] judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked;
- 2 Samuel 15:4 δικαιόω Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man who has any suit or cause might come to me, and I would do him justice!
- 1 Kings 8:32 δικαιόω then hear you in heaven, and do, and judge your servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way on his own head, and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness.
- 2 Chronicles 6:23 δικαιόω then hear from heaven, and do, and judge your servants, requiting the wicked, to bring his way on his own head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness.
- Job 33:32 δικαιόω If you have anything to say, answer me: Speak, for I desire to justify you.
- Psalms 18:10 δικαιόω He rode on a cherub, and flew. Yes, he soared on the wings of the wind.
- Psalms 50:6 δικαιόω The heavens shall declare his righteousness, For God himself is judge. Selah.
- Psalms 72:13 δικαιόω He will have pity on the poor and needy. He will save the souls of the needy.
- Psalms 81:3 δικαιόω Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, At the full moon, on our feast day.
- Psalms 142:2 δικαιόω I pour out my complaint before him. I tell him my troubles.
- Isaiah 1:17 δικαιόω Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow."
- Isaiah 5:23 δικαιόω Who acquit the guilty for a bribe, But deny justice for the innocent!
- Isaiah 42:21 δικαιόω It pleased Yahweh, for his righteousness' sake, to magnify the law, and make it honorable.
- Isaiah 43:9 δικαιόω Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be assembled: who among them can declare this, and show us former things? let them bring their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear, and say, It is truth.
- Isaiah 43:26 δικαιόω Put me in remembrance; let us plead together: set you forth [your cause], that you may be justified.
- Isaiah 45:25 δικαιόω In Yahweh shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.
- Isaiah 50:8 δικαιόω He is near who justifies me; who will bring charges against me? Let us stand up together: who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.
- Isaiah 53:11 δικαιόω He shall see of the travail of his soul, [and] shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities.
- Jeremiah 3:11 δικαιόω Yahweh said to me, Backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.
- Ezekiel 16:51 δικαιόω Neither has Samaria committed half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters by all your abominations which you have done.
- Ezekiel 16:52 δικαιόω You also, bear you your own shame, in that you have given judgment for your sisters; through your sins that you have committed more abominable than they, they are more righteous that you: yes, be also confounded, and bear your shame, in that you have justified your sisters.
- Ezekiel 21:18 δικαιόω The word of Yahweh came to me again, saying,
- Ezekiel 44:24 δικαιόω In a controversy they shall stand to judge; according to my ordinances shall they judge it: and they shall keep my laws and my statutes in all my appointed feasts; and they shall make my Sabbaths holy.
- Micah 6:11 δικαιόω Shall I be pure with dishonest scales, And with a bag of deceitful weights?
- Micah 7:9 δικαιόω I will bear the indignation of Yahweh, Because I have sinned against him, Until he pleads my case, and executes judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light. I will see his righteousness.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1344) 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.
