αἴρω
to raise up
also: elevate, lift up 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
- 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).
- 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).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
5 verses where G142 appears in the Present tense in the Book of John. 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.
John
- John 1:29 αἴρων pres act ptcp nom sg masc The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
- John 10:18 αἴρει pres act ind 3sg No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. I received this commandment from my Father."
- John 10:24 αἴρεις pres act ind 2sg The Jews therefore came around him and said to him, "How long will you hold us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
- John 15:2 αἴρει pres act ind 3sg Every branch in me that doesn't bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
- John 16:22 αἴρει pres act ind 3sg Therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.
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 raise up” is the headline sense of the Greek verb αιρω (aírō). Where the King James Version says “take up,” newer translations reach for “pick up” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 97 verses across 10 books of the Greek New Testament, among its moderately common vocabulary. Debuting at Matthew 4:6, it then recurs through the corpus. Lexicons map it across 3 senses — beyond “to raise up” it also covers “elevate” and “lift up”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G142 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 →
- 97
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 97 distinct verses.
- 10 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
- #163
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 163 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 97 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 97 distinct verses.
- Gospels 82 verses · 85%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 28 verses · 29%
- Johannine 26 verses · 27%
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 4%
- Revelation 2 verses · 2%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%
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: Take up 13×, Take 11×, Taketh away 6×
- American Standard Version: Take 13×, Take up 11×, Took up 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pick up 7×, Picked up 7×, Take 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Take 12×, Away 9×, Will be taken away 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G142 across 110 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 31 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 G142 across 105 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 35 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 G142 across 100 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 36 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G142 across 117 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 raise up, elevate, lift up
- to take upon one's self and carry what has been raised up, to bear
- to bear away what has been raised, carry off
Word origin
Origin: a primary root
A primary verb; to lift ; by implication to take up or away ; figuratively to raise (the voice) keep in suspense (the mind); specifically to sail away (that is weigh anchor ); by hebraism (compare [ H5375 ]) to expiate sin : - away with bear (up) carry lift up loose make to doubt put away remove take (away up).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 34 distinct written forms G142 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 G142, 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.
Derived from this word
- αιρεομαι hairéomai G138 to choose
- αρα ará G685 curse
- αρα ára G686 therefore
- αρεσκω aréskō G700 to please
- αριθμος arithmós G706 number
- αρκεω arkéō G714 to ward off
- αρρην árrhēn G730 male
- αρτι árti G737 now
- αρτος ártos G740 bread
- αρτυω artýō G741 to season
- αρωμα árōma G759 spice
- ορος óros G3735 mountain
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 13 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αιρω appears 245 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 227 verses in 28 books.
- 245
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 227
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 28 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 28 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 35:2 αἴρω
- Exodus 25:14 αἴρω
- Leviticus 10:4 αἴρω
- Numbers 1:50 αἴρω
- Deuteronomy 10:8 αἴρω
- Joshua 3:3 αἴρω
- Judges 8:28 αἴρω
- Ruth 2:18 αἴρω
- 1 Samuel 2:28 αἴρω
- 2 Samuel 2:22 αἴρω
- 1 Kings 2:26 αἴρω
- 2 Kings 2:16 αἴρω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G142) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 227. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 35:2 αἴρω Then Jacob said to his household, and to all who were with him, "Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, change your garments.
- Genesis 40:16 αἴρω When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph, "I also was in my dream, and, behold, three baskets of white bread were on my head.
- Genesis 43:34 αἴρω He sent portions to them from before him, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. They drank, and were merry with him.
- Genesis 44:1 αἴρω He commanded the steward of his house, saying, "Fill the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put every man's money in his sack's mouth.
- Genesis 45:23 αἴρω To his father, he sent after this manner: ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and provision for his father by the way.
- Genesis 46:5 αἴρω Jacob rose up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him.
- Genesis 47:30 αἴρω but when I sleep with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place." He said, "I will do as you have said."
- Exodus 25:14 αἴρω You shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark.
- Exodus 25:27 αἴρω the rings shall be close to the rim, for places for the poles to carry the table.
- Exodus 25:28 αἴρω You shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be carried with them.
- Exodus 27:7 αἴρω Its poles shall be put into the rings, and the poles shall be on the two sides of the altar, when carrying it.
- Exodus 30:4 αἴρω You shall make two golden rings for it under its molding; on its two ribs, on its two sides you shall make them; and they shall be for places for poles with which to bear it.
- Exodus 38:4 αἴρω He made for the altar a grating of a network of brass, under the ledge around it beneath, reaching halfway up.
- Exodus 38:10 αἴρω their pillars were twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets were of silver.
- Exodus 38:24 αἴρω All the gold that was used for the work in all the work of the sanctuary, even the gold of the offering, was twenty-nine talents, and seven hundred thirty shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary.
- Leviticus 10:4 αἴρω Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, "Draw near, carry your brothers from before the sanctuary out of the camp."
- Leviticus 10:5 αἴρω So they drew near, and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said.
- Leviticus 11:25 αἴρω Whoever carries any part of their carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening.
- Leviticus 11:28 αἴρω He who carries their carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening. They are unclean to you.
- Leviticus 11:40 αἴρω He who eats of its carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening. He also who carries its carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening.
- Leviticus 15:10 αἴρω Whoever touches anything that was under him shall be unclean until the evening. He who carries those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.
- Numbers 1:50 αἴρω but appoint the Levites over the Tabernacle of the Testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it. They shall carry the tabernacle, and all its furnishings; and they shall take care of it, and shall encamp around it.
- Numbers 2:17 αἴρω "Then the tent of meeting shall set out, with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps. As they encamp, so shall they set out, every man in his place, by their standards.
- Numbers 4:15 αἴρω "When Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary, and all the furniture of the sanctuary, as the camp moves forward; after that, the sons of Kohath shall come to carry it: but they shall not touch the sanctuary, lest they die. These things are the burden of the sons of Kohath in the Tent of Meeting.
- Numbers 4:24 αἴρω This is the service of the families of the Gershonites, in serving and in bearing burdens:
- Numbers 4:25 αἴρω they shall carry the curtains of the tabernacle, and the Tent of Meeting, its covering, and the covering of sealskin that is above on it, and the screen for the door of the Tent of Meeting,
- Numbers 4:31 αἴρω This is the charge of their burden, according to all their service in the Tent of Meeting: the tabernacle's boards, its bars, its pillars, its sockets,
- Numbers 4:32 αἴρω and the pillars of the court around it, and their sockets, and their pins, and their cords, with all their instruments, and with all their service: and by name you shall appoint the instruments of the charge of their burden.
- Numbers 4:47 αἴρω from thirty years old and upward even to fifty years old, everyone who entered in to do the work of service, and the work of bearing burdens in the Tent of Meeting,
- Numbers 4:49 αἴρω According to the commandment of Yahweh they were numbered by Moses, everyone according to his service, and according to his burden. Thus were they numbered by him, as Yahweh commanded Moses.
- Numbers 7:9 αἴρω But to the sons of Kohath he gave none, because the service of the sanctuary belonged to them; they carried it on their shoulders.
- Numbers 10:17 αἴρω The tent was taken down; and the sons of Gershon and the sons of Merari, who bore the tent, set forward.
- Numbers 10:21 αἴρω The Kohathites set forward, bearing the sanctuary: and [the others] did set up the tent against their coming.
- Numbers 11:12 αἴρω Have I conceived all this people? have I brought them forth, that you should tell me, Carry them in your bosom, as a nursing-father carries the sucking child, to the land which you swore to their fathers?
- Numbers 13:23 αἴρω They came to the valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it on a staff between two; [they brought] also of the pomegranates, and of the figs.
- Deuteronomy 10:8 αἴρω At that time Yahweh set apart the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, to stand before Yahweh to minister to him, and to bless in his name, to this day.
- Deuteronomy 31:9 αἴρω Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and to all the elders of Israel.
- Deuteronomy 31:25 αἴρω that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, saying,
- Deuteronomy 32:40 αἴρω For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live forever,
- Joshua 3:3 αἴρω and they commanded the people, saying, When you see the ark of the covenant of Yahweh your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then you shall remove from your place, and go after it.
- Joshua 3:6 αἴρω Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people. They took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people.
- Joshua 3:8 αἴρω You shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When you are come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.
- Joshua 3:13 αἴρω It shall come to pass, when the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of Yahweh, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, even the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand in one heap.
- Joshua 3:14 αἰρω It happened, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over the Jordan, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant being before the people;
- Joshua 3:15 αἴρω and when those who bore the ark were come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark were dipped in the brink of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the time of harvest),
- Joshua 3:17 αἴρω The priests who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel passed over on dry ground, until all the nation were passed clean over the Jordan.
- Joshua 4:5 αἴρω and Joshua said to them, Pass over before the ark of Yahweh your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up every man of you a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel;
- Joshua 4:9 αἴρω Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests who bore the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there to this day.
- Joshua 4:10 αἴρω For the priests who bore the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan, until everything was finished that Yahweh commanded Joshua to speak to the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the people hurried and passed over.
- Joshua 4:16 αἴρω Command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony, that they come up out of the Jordan.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G142) 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.
