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αἰτέω

to ask

G154 Strong's Greek
aitéō Transliteration
/ahee-teh'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 70 appearances

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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 ask” is the headline sense of the Greek verb αιτεω (aitéō). Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 5:42. The Greek New Testament uses it across 67 verses — moderately common. Related forms include αιτημα, αιτια and αιτιος. See the sense tree, 67-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
ask
Modern gloss
to ask
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G154 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 →

67
distinct verses
The word appears in 67 distinct verses.
11 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 11 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 5:42
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 5:42.
1 John 5:16
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in 1 John 5:16.
#239
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 239 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 67 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 44 · 66%
  • Acts 10 · 15%
  • Pauline Epistles 4 · 6%
  • General Epistles 9 · 13%
  • 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 67 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 44 verses · 66%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 21 verses · 31%
  • Johannine 14 verses · 21%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 9 verses · 13%
  • Pauline corpus 4 verses · 6%

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: Ask 10×, Ye shall ask 7×, Asketh 5×
  • American Standard Version: Ask 13×, Asked 8×, Ye shall ask 5×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Ask 10×, You ask 6×, Ask for 5×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ask 8×, Asking 7×, You ask 6×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G154 across 71 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Ask” 10×
  • “Ye shall ask” 7×
  • “Asketh” 5×
  • “Desired” 5×
  • “We ask” 4×
  • “Ye ask” 4×
  • “Begged” 2×
  • “Desire” 2×
  • “Desiring” 2×
  • “He shall ask” 2×
  • “Let him ask” 2×
  • “They desired” 2×

Plus 24 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 G154 across 69 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Ask” 13×
  • “Asked” 8×
  • “Ye shall ask” 5×
  • “Asketh” 3×
  • “Asking” 3×
  • “He shall ask” 3×
  • “They asked” 3×
  • “We ask” 3×
  • “Ye ask” 3×
  • “Let him ask” 2×
  • “One that asketh” 2×
  • “Shall ask” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 17 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 G154 across 70 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Ask” 10×
  • “You ask” 6×
  • “Ask for” 5×
  • “Asks” 5×
  • “We ask” 5×
  • “Asked for” 2×
  • “Asking” 2×
  • “Asks for” 2×
  • “He asks for” 2×
  • “He should ask” 2×
  • “Requested” 2×
  • “You are asking” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 23 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 G154 across 74 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Ask” 8×
  • “Asking” 7×
  • “You ask” 6×
  • “Asked for” 4×
  • “We ask” 4×
  • “Ask for” 3×
  • “Asking for” 2×
  • “Do” 2×
  • “Let him ask” 2×
  • “Request” 2×
  • “Requesting” 2×
  • “They were requesting” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 26 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 ask, beg, call for, crave, desire, require

Word origin

Origin: of uncertain derivation

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 04:11,3

Of uncertain derivation; to ask (in generally): - ask beg call for crave desire require. Compare G4441 .

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


Forms in the corpus

The 39 distinct written forms G154 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ᾐτήσατο ētḗsato Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 27:58 6
αἰτήσει aitḗsei Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 7:9 5
αἰτήσητε aitḗsēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 21:22 4
αἰτεῖσθε aiteîsthe Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 20:22 4
αἰτούμενοι aitoúmenoi Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Luke 23:23 4
αἰτεῖτε aiteîte Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Luke 11:9 3
αἰτοῦσιν aitoûsin Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 7:11 3
αἰτήσας aitḗsas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 1:63 2
αἰτήσωνται aitḗsōntai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 18:19 2
αἰτείτω aiteítō Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular James 1:5 2
αἰτεῖσθαι aiteîsthai Verb, Present, Middle, Infinitive Mark 15:8 2
αἰτοῦντί aitoûntí Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:42 2
αἰτώμεθα aitṓmetha Verb, Present, Middle, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural 1 John 5:14 2
αἰτῶν aitō̂n Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 7:8 2
ᾐτήσαντο ētḗsanto Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 13:21 2
ᾐτοῦντο ētoûnto Verb, Imperfect, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 23:25 2
Αἰτεῖτε Aiteîte Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 7:7 1
αἰτήσασθε aitḗsasthe Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural John 15:7 1
αἰτήσεσθε aitḗsesthe Verb, Future, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 16:26 1
αἰτήσητέ aitḗsēté Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural John 14:14 1
αἰτήσηται aitḗsētai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 14:7 1
αἰτήσουσιν aitḗsousin Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 12:48 1
αἰτήσωμέν aitḗsōmén Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Mark 10:35 1
αἰτήσωμαι aitḗsōmai Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular Mark 6:24 1
αἰτήσῃ aitḗsē Verb, Aorist, Middle, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular John 11:22 1
αἰτήσῃς aitḗsēs Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular Mark 6:23 1
αἰτεῖν aiteîn Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Acts 3:2 1
αἰτεῖς aiteîs Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular John 4:9 1
αἰτούμεθα aitoúmetha Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Ephesians 3:20 1
αἰτοῦμαι aitoûmai Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Ephesians 3:13 1
αἰτοῦντι aitoûnti Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine 1 Peter 3:15 1
αἰτοῦσά aitoûsá Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 20:20 1
αἰτῆσαι aitē̂sai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 6:8 1
αἰτῶμεν aitō̂men Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural 1 John 3:22 1
αἴτησόν aítēsón Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Mark 6:22 1
ᾐτήκαμεν ētḗkamen Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 John 5:15 1
ᾐτήσασθε ētḗsasthe Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Acts 3:14 1
ᾐτήσατε ētḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 16:24 1
ᾔτησας ḗtēsas Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular John 4:10 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G154, 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

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word αιτεω appears 69 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 61 verses in 19 books.

69
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
61
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
19 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 19 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G154) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 61. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G154) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

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

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