Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

ἐρωτάω

to ask

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

G2065 Strong's Greek
erōtáō Transliteration
/er-o-tah'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 64 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.

“to ask” is the headline sense of the Greek verb ερωταω (erōtáō). Translators differ — “ask” in the King James Version, then “asked” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 62 verses in 10 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. It concentrates in John, which alone accounts for 42% of its uses. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.

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 G2065 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 →

62
distinct verses
The word appears in 62 distinct verses.
10 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 15:23
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 15:23.
2 John 1:5
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in 2 John 1:5.
#258
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 258 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 62 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 49 · 79%
  • Acts 7 · 11%
  • Pauline Epistles 4 · 6%
  • General Epistles 2 · 3%
  • 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 62 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 49 verses · 79%
  • Johannine 28 verses · 45%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 23 verses · 37%
  • Pauline corpus 4 verses · 6%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 3%

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: Ask 9×, Besought 6×, Asked 5×
  • American Standard Version: Asked 10×, Ask 8×, I pray 5×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Asked 12×, Ask 8×, They asked 5×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Asked 10×, Ask 7×, They asked 7×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G2065 across 59 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Ask” 9×
  • “Besought” 6×
  • “Asked” 5×
  • “I pray” 5×
  • “Desired” 4×
  • “They asked” 3×
  • “We beseech” 3×
  • “Prayed” 2×
  • “They besought” 2×
  • “Will pray” 2×

Plus 18 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 G2065 across 57 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 10×
  • “Ask” 8×
  • “I pray” 5×
  • “They asked” 3×
  • “We beseech” 3×
  • “Asketh” 2×
  • “Asking” 2×
  • “Besought” 2×
  • “I beseech” 2×
  • “They besought” 2×
  • “Will pray” 2×

Plus 16 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 G2065 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 12×
  • “Ask” 8×
  • “They asked” 5×
  • “Question” 3×
  • “We ask” 3×
  • “Asks” 2×
  • “I am not asking” 2×
  • “I will also ask” 2×
  • “Invited” 2×
  • “Please” 2×
  • “Urged” 2×
  • “Will ask” 2×

Plus 18 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 G2065 across 68 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asked” 10×
  • “Ask” 7×
  • “They asked” 7×
  • “I ask” 4×
  • “Will ask” 4×
  • “Asks” 3×
  • “We ask” 3×
  • “Do you ask” 2×
  • “I do” 2×
  • “Question” 2×

Plus 24 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 question
  2. to request, entreat, beg, beseech

Word origin

Derived from ερεω (eréō) (G2046) — to speak.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 13:25,3

Apparently from G2046 (compare G2045 ); to interrogate ; by implication to request : - ask beseech desire intreat pray. Compare G4441 .

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


Forms in the corpus

The 23 distinct written forms G2065 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἐρωτῶ erōtō̂ Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Luke 14:18 9
ἠρώτησαν ērṓtēsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 4:38 8
ἠρώτων ērṓtōn Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 7:4 7
ἠρώτησεν ērṓtēsen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 5:3 6
ἐρωτήσω erōtḗsō Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Matthew 21:24 5
ἐρωτᾷ erōtâ Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 11:37 5
ἠρώτα ērṓta Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 16:13 5
ἐρωτᾷς erōtâs Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 19:17 2
Ἐρωτῶμεν Erōtō̂men Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 Thessalonians 5:12 2
ἠρώτουν ērṓtoun Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 15:23 2
ἐρωτήσατε erōtḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural John 9:21 1
ἐρωτήσετε erōtḗsete Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 16:23 1
ἐρωτήσωσιν erōtḗsōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural John 1:19 1
ἐρωτήσῃ erōtḗsē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular 1 John 5:16 1
ἐρωτώντων erōtṓntōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Acts 18:20 1
ἐρωτᾶν erōtân Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive John 16:19 1
ἐρωτῆσαί erōtē̂saí Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Acts 23:20 1
ἐρωτῆσαι erōtē̂sai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Luke 9:45 1
ἐρωτῶμεν erōtō̂men Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 Thessalonians 4:1 1
ἐρωτῶν erōtō̂n Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 7:3 1
ἐρωτῶντες erōtō̂ntes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine John 8:7 1
ἐρώτησον erṓtēson Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular John 18:21 1
Ἠρώτα Ērṓta Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 7:36 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2065, 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

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 6 — 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 ερωταω appears 61 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 58 verses in 14 books.

61
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
58
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
14 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 14 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2065) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 58. 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 (G2065) 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.