ἐκκεντέω
to pierce
‘to pierce’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
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).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G1574 appears in the Book of John — 1 distinct verse. 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
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 pierce” is the headline sense of the Greek verb εκκεντεω (ekkentéō). It occurs a mere 2 verses across Scripture. More than half of its appearances fall in John. First canonically at John 19:37, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1574 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,678
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,678 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- John 1 verse 50%
- Revelation 1 verse 50%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Johannine 2 verses · 100%
- Gospels 1 verse · 50%
- Revelation 1 verse · 50%
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: Pierced 1×, They pierced 1×
- American Standard Version: Pierced 1×, They pierced 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pierced 1×, They have pierced 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Pierced 1×, They pierced 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1574 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1574 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1574 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1574 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 put out, dig out
- to dig through, transfix, pierce
Word origin
Derived from εκ (ek) (G1537) — from.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1574, 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
- εκβαλλω ekbállō G1544 to cast out
- εκβασις ékbasis G1545 exit
- εκγαμιζω ekgamízō G1547 to give in marriage
- εκγαμισκω ekgamískō G1548 to give in marriage
- εκγονον ékgonon G1549 offspring
- εκδαπαναω ekdapanáō G1550 to spend
- εκδεχομαι ekdéchomai G1551 to receive
- εκδηλος ékdēlos G1552 evident
- εκδημεω ekdēméō G1553 to depart
- εκδιδωμι ekdídōmi G1554 to give out
- εκδιηγεομαι ekdiēgéomai G1555 to relate
- εκδικος ékdikos G1558 without justice
- εκδιωκω ekdiṓkō G1559 to banish
- εκδοτος ékdotos G1560 delivered up
- εκδυω ekdýō G1562 to put off
- εκζητεω ekzētéō G1567 to seek out
- εκθαμβος ékthambos G1569 astonished
- εκθετος ékthetos G1570 exposed
- εκκαθαιρω ekkathaírō G1571 to cleanse
- εκκαιω ekkaíō G1572 to burn
- εκκακεω ekkakéō G1573 to be exhausted
- εκκλαω ekkláō G1575 to cut off
- εκκλειω ekkleíō G1576 to shut out
- εκκλησια ekklēsía G1577 assembly
+88 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 114 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word εκκεντεω appears 6 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 6 verses in 6 books.
- 6
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 6
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Numbers 22:29 ἐκκεντέω
- Joshua 16:10 ἐκκεντέω
- Judges 9:54 ἐκκεντέω
- 1 Chronicles 10:4 ἐκκεντέω
- Isaiah 14:19 ἐκκεντέω
- Jeremiah 44:10 ἐκκεντέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1574) 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.
- Numbers 22:29 ἐκκεντέω Balaam said to the donkey, Because you have mocked me, I would there were a sword in my hand, for now I had killed you.
- Joshua 16:10 ἐκκεντέω They didn't drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell in the midst of Ephraim to this day, and are become servants to do forced labor.
- Judges 9:54 ἐκκεντέω Then he called hastily to the young man his armor bearer, and said to him, Draw your sword, and kill me, that men not say of me, A woman killed him. His young man thrust him through, and he died.
- 1 Chronicles 10:4 ἐκκεντέω Then said Saul to his armor-bearer, Draw your sword, and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it.
- Isaiah 14:19 ἐκκεντέω But you are cast forth away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot.
- Jeremiah 44:10 ἐκκεντέω They are not humbled even to this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I set before you and before your fathers.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1574) 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.
