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ἐπερωτάω

to ask

‘to ask’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

G1905 Strong's Greek
eperōtáō Transliteration
/ep-er-o-tah'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 56 appearances

Compare with another word →

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, επερωταω (eperōtáō) means “to ask.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “asked” in the King James Version, “questioned” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 56 verses across 7 books, a moderately common footprint. The word gravitates to Mark (45%), then Luke and Matthew. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 56-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 G1905 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 →

56
distinct verses
The word appears in 56 distinct verses.
7 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 12:10
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 12:10.
1 Corinthians 14:35
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in 1 Corinthians 14:35.
#286
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 286 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 56 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 52 · 93%
  • Acts 2 · 4%
  • Pauline Epistles 2 · 4%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • 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 56 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 52 verses · 93%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 19 verses · 34%
  • Johannine 2 verses · 4%
  • Pauline corpus 2 verses · 4%

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: Asked 25×, He asked 12×, They asked 7×
  • American Standard Version: Asked 26×, He asked 11×, They asked 7×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Asked 15×, Questioned 10×, He asked 7×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Questioned 11×, Asked 5×, Ask 4×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G1905 across 62 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 25×
  • “He asked” 12×
  • “They asked” 7×
  • “Ask” 5×

Plus 13 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 G1905 across 61 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 26×
  • “He asked” 11×
  • “They asked” 7×
  • “Ask” 5×

Plus 12 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 G1905 across 56 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 15×
  • “Questioned” 10×
  • “He asked” 7×
  • “Question” 5×
  • “Ask” 3×
  • “They asked” 3×
  • “He questioned” 2×
  • “They inquired” 2×

Plus 9 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 G1905 across 59 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Questioned” 11×
  • “Asked” 5×
  • “Ask” 4×
  • “Were asking” 4×
  • “He asked” 3×
  • “He questioned” 3×
  • “He was asking” 3×
  • “Was questioning” 3×
  • “Asking” 2×
  • “Question” 2×
  • “They questioned” 2×
  • “Were questioning” 2×

Plus 15 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.

  1. to accost one with an enquiry, put a question to, enquiry of, ask, interrogate
  2. to address one with a request or demand

Word origin

Derived from επι (epí) (G1909) — upon.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 13:27,3

From G1909 and G2065 ; to ask for that is inquire seek : - ask (after questions) demand desire question.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 16 distinct written forms G1905 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἐπηρώτησεν epērṓtēsen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 22:35 15
ἐπηρώτα epērṓta Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 5:9 10
ἐπηρώτων epērṓtōn Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 7:17 9
ἐπηρώτησαν epērṓtēsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 12:10 7
ἐπερωτῆσαι eperōtē̂sai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 22:46 3
ἐπερωτῶσιν eperōtō̂sin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 7:5 2
ἐπερωτάτωσαν eperōtátōsan Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Plural 1 Corinthians 14:35 1
ἐπερωτήσας eperōtḗsas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Acts 23:34 1
ἐπερωτήσατε eperōtḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural John 9:23 1
ἐπερωτήσω eperōtḗsō Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Mark 11:29 1
ἐπερωτᾶν eperōtân Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Luke 20:40 1
ἐπερωτῶ eperōtō̂ Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Luke 6:9 1
ἐπερωτῶντα eperōtō̂nta Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Luke 2:46 1
ἐπηρώτησέν epērṓtēsén Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 18:18 1
Ἐπερωτηθεὶς Eperōtētheìs Verb, Aorist, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 17:20 1
Ἐπηρώτων Epērṓtōn Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 8:9 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1905, 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

+110 more words share this root (not shown).

Derived from this word

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 138 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word επερωταω appears 55 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 54 verses in 21 books.

55
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
54
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
21 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 21 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1905) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 54. 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 (G1905) 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

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

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

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.