δουλόω
to enslave
‘to enslave’ 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 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
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
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”).
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.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G1402 appears in the Book of 1 Corinthians — 2 distinct verses. 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.
1 Corinthians
- 1 Corinthians 7:15 δεδούλωται perf pass ind 3sg Yet if the unbeliever departs, let there be separation. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace.
- 1 Corinthians 9:19 ἐδούλωσα aor act ind 1sg For though I was free from all, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more.
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.
δουλοω (doulóō) is a Greek noun most often rendered “to enslave.” It first appears in Acts 7:6. The Greek New Testament uses it across 8 verses — uncommon. Romans dominates its distribution — 2 of 8 verses. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. See the sense tree, 8-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1402 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,240
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,240 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Romans 2 verses 25%
- 1 Corinthians 2 verses 25%
- Acts 1 verse 13%
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 8 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 6 verses · 75%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 13%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 13%
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: Bondage 2×
- American Standard Version: Under bondage 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Have become slaves 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Enslaved 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1402 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 G1402 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G1402 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G1402 across 9 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.
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 make a slave of, reduce to bondage
- metaph. give myself wholly to one's needs and service, make myself a bondman to him
Word origin
Derived from δουλος (doûlos) (G1401) — slave.
From G1401 ; to enslave (literally or figuratively): - bring into (be under) bondage X given become (make) servant.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G1402 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| δεδούλωται dedoúlōtai | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | 1 Corinthians 7:15 | 2 |
| δεδουλωμένας dedoulōménas | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Feminine | Titus 2:3 | 1 |
| δεδουλωμένοι dedoulōménoi | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Galatians 4:3 | 1 |
| δουλωθέντες doulōthéntes | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Romans 6:22 | 1 |
| δουλώσουσιν doulṓsousin | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 7:6 | 1 |
| ἐδουλώθητε edoulṓthēte | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | Romans 6:18 | 1 |
| ἐδούλωσα edoúlōsa | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | 1 Corinthians 9:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1402, 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
- δουλαγωγεω doulagōgéō G1396 to enslave
- δουλευω douleúō G1398 to serve
- δουλη doúlē G1399 female slave
- δουλον doûlon G1400 slave
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 δουλοω appears 2 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2 verses in 2 books.
- 2
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 2
- 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
- Genesis 15:13 δουλόω
- Proverbs 27:8 δουλόω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1402) 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 15:13 δουλόω He said to Abram, "Know for sure that your seed will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them. They will afflict them four hundred years.
- Proverbs 27:8 δουλόω As a bird that wanders from her nest, So is a man who wanders from his home.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1402) 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.
