ἐπιμελέομαι
to care for
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).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Passive deponent
- Passive in form but active in meaning.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- Middle deponent
- Middle in form but active in meaning.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Number
- Singular
- One.
2 distinct verses where G1959 appears in the Aorist tense, across 1 book. 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.
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 10:34 ἐπεμελήθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
- Luke 10:35 ἐπιμελήθητι aor pass impv 2sg On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.'
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 care for” is the headline sense of the Greek verb επιμελεομαι (epimeléomai). A scarce word — 3 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. It clusters heavily in Luke, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. First canonically at Luke 10:34, it enters the text early. From the same root come επι, επαγγελλω and επαγω. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1959 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
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 3 distinct verses.
- Gospels 2 verses · 67%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 67%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 33%
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: Shall he take care of 1×, Take care 1×, Took care 1×
- American Standard Version: Shall he take care 1×, Take care of 1×, Took care of 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Can he care for 1×, Take care 1×, Took care 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Take care 1×, Took care 1×, Will he take care of 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1959 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G1959 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G1959 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G1959 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- to take care of a person or thing
Word origin
Derived from επι (epí) (G1909) — upon.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G1959 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐπεμελήθη epemelḗthē | Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 10:34 | 1 |
| ἐπιμελήθητι epimelḗthēti | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | Luke 10:35 | 1 |
| ἐπιμελήσεται epimelḗsetai | Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | 1 Timothy 3:5 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1959, 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
- επαγγελλω epangéllō G1861 to announce
- επαγω epágō G1863 to bring upon
- επαγωνιζομαι epagōnízomai G1864 to contend
- επαθροιζω epathroízō G1865 to gather together
- επαινεω epainéō G1867 to approve
- επαινος épainos G1868 approval
- επαιρω epaírō G1869 to lift up
- επαισχυνομαι epaischýnomai G1870 to be ashamed
- επαιτεω epaitéō G1871 to ask repeatedly
- επακουω epakoúō G1873 to give ear to
- επακροαομαι epakroáomai G1874 to listen to
- επαν epán G1875 after
- επαναγκες epánankes G1876 necessarily
- επαναγω epanágō G1877 to lead back
- επαναμιμνησκω epanamimnḗskō G1878 to remind
- επαναπαυομαι epanapaúomai G1879 to rest upon
- επανερχομαι epanérchomai G1880 to return
- επανισταμαι epanístamai G1881 to raise up against
- επανορθωσις epanórthōsis G1882 correction
- επανω epánō G1883 above
- επαρκεω eparkéō G1884 to avail
- επαρχια eparchía G1885 office of governor
- επαυλις épaulis G1886 farm
- επαυριον epaúrion G1887 the next day
+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 139 — 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 επιμελεομαι appears 2 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2 verses in 2 books.
- 2
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 2
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 44:21 ἐπιμελέομαι
- Proverbs 27:25 ἐπιμελέομαι
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1959) 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.
- Genesis 44:21 ἐπιμελέομαι You said to your servants, 'Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.'
- Proverbs 27:25 ἐπιμελέομαι The hay is removed, and the new growth appears, The grasses of the hills are gathered in.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1959) 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.
