ἐπιστηρίζω
to confirm
‘to confirm’ is one of 2 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
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G1991 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Acts 3 verses
- Acts 14:22 ἐπιστηρίζοντες pres act ptcp nom pl masc confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many afflictions we must enter into the Kingdom of God.
- Acts 15:32 ἐπεστήριξαν aor act ind 3pl Judas and Silas, also being prophets themselves, encouraged the brothers with many words, and strengthened them.
- Acts 15:41 ἐπιστηρίζων pres act ptcp nom sg masc He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the assemblies.
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.
επιστηριζω (epistērízō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to confirm.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. Acts dominates its distribution — 3 of 3 verses. Scripture first uses it in Acts 14:22. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G1991 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.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 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 →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 3 verses 100%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 100%
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: Confirming 2×
- American Standard Version: Confirming 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Strengthening 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Strengthening 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G1991 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G1991 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G1991 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 G1991 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.
- to establish besides, strengthen more
- to render more firm, confirm
Word origin
Derived from επι (epí) (G1909) — upon.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G1991 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐπεστήριξαν epestḗrixan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 15:32 | 1 |
| ἐπιστηρίζοντες epistērízontes | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 14:22 | 1 |
| ἐπιστηρίζων epistērízōn | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 15:41 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1991, 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).
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 137 — 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 επιστηριζω appears 10 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 10 verses in 6 books.
- 10
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 10
- 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
- Genesis 28:13 ἐπιστηρίζω
- Judges 16:26 ἐπιστηρίζω
- 2 Samuel 1:6 επιστηρίζω
- Psalms 31:8 ἐπιστηρίζω
- Song of Solomon 8:5 ἐπιστηρίζω
- Isaiah 36:6 ἐπιστηρίζω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1991) 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 28:13 ἐπιστηρίζω Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, "I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed.
- Judges 16:26 ἐπιστηρίζω and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, Allow me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house rests, that I may lean on them.
- Judges 16:29 ἐπιστηρίζω Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and leaned on them, the one with his right hand, and the other with his left.
- 2 Samuel 1:6 επιστηρίζω The young man who told him said, As I happened by chance on Mount Gilboa, behold, Saul was leaning on his spear; and, behold, the chariots and the horsemen followed hard after him.
- Psalms 31:8 ἐπιστηρίζω You have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a large place.
- Psalms 37:3 ἐπιστηρίζω Trust in Yahweh, and do good. Dwell in the land, and enjoy safe pasture.
- Psalms 70:6 ἐπιστηρίζω
- Psalms 87:8 ἐπιστηρίζω
- Song of Solomon 8:5 ἐπιστηρίζω Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, Leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you.
- Isaiah 36:6 ἐπιστηρίζω Behold, you trust on the staff of this bruised reed, even on Egypt, whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust on him.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1991) 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.
