ἐνεργέω
to work
‘to work’ 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 Present-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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G1754 appears in the Book of Ephesians — 4 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.
Ephesians
- Ephesians 1:11 ἐνεργοῦντος pres act ptcp gen sg masc in whom also we were assigned an inheritance, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his will;
- Ephesians 1:20 ἐνήργηκεν perf act ind 3sg which he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,
- Ephesians 2:2 ἐνεργοῦντος pres act ptcp gen sg neut in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience;
- Ephesians 3:20 ἐνεργουμένην pres mid ptcp acc sg fem Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
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.
At its core, ενεργεω (energéō) means “to work.” Translators differ — “worketh” in the King James Version, then “work” (Berean Standard Bible) and “working” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. It turns up in 19 verses across 12 books, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Matthew 14:2. Ranging over 3 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Dig into 19-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1754 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 →
- 19
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 19 distinct verses.
- 12 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 12 of 27 New Testament books.
- #607
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 607 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 19 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ephesians 4 verses 21%
- Galatians 3 verses 16%
- 1 Corinthians 2 verses 11%
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 19 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 16 verses · 84%
- Gospels 2 verses · 11%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 5%
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: Worketh 10×, Do shew forth themselves 2×
- American Standard Version: Worketh 10×, Wrought 3×, Work 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Work 5×, Are at work 2×, Works 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Working 9×, Is 3×, Work 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1754 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 G1754 across 22 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1754 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 G1754 across 24 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 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 be operative, be at work, put forth power
- to effect
- to display one's activity, show one's self operative
Word origin
Derived from ενεργης (energḗs) (G1756) — active.
From G1756 ; to be active efficient : - do (be) effectual (fervent) be mighty in shew forth self work (effectually in).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 13 distinct written forms G1754 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 G1754, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ενεργεω appears 4 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 4 verses in 3 books.
- 4
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 4
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Numbers 8:24 ἐνεργέω
- Proverbs 21:6 ἐνἐργέω
- Isaiah 41:4 ἐνεργέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1754) 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 8:24 ἐνεργέω "This is that which belongs to the Levites: from twenty-five years old and upward they shall go in to wait on the service in the work of the Tent of Meeting;
- Proverbs 21:6 ἐνἐργέω Getting treasures by a lying tongue Is a fleeting vapor for those who seek death.
- Proverbs 31:12 ἐνἐργέω She does him good, and not harm, All the days of her life.
- Isaiah 41:4 ἐνεργέω Who has worked and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I, Yahweh, the first, and with the last, I am he.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1754) 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.
