ἀλείφω
to anoint
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).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G218 appears in the Aorist tense in the Book of Luke. 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
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 anoint” is the headline sense of the Greek verb αλειφω (aleíphō). Scripture first uses it in Matthew 6:17. With 8 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It concentrates in Mark, which alone accounts for 25% of its uses. From the same root come Α, αβαρης and αβυσσος. See the sense tree, 8-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G218 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,140
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,140 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
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 8 distinct verses.
- Gospels 7 verses · 88%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 25%
- Johannine 2 verses · 25%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 13%
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: Anointed 4×, Anoint 3×
- American Standard Version: Anointed 4×, Anoint 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Anoint 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Anoint 2×, Anointing 2×, Having anointed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G218 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G218 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G218 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G218 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 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 anoint
Word origin
Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G218 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἤλειψεν ḗleipsen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 7:46 | 2 |
| ἀλείψαντες aleípsantes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | James 5:14 | 1 |
| ἀλείψασα aleípsasa | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | John 11:2 | 1 |
| ἀλείψωσιν aleípsōsin | Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 16:1 | 1 |
| ἄλειψαί áleipsaí | Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular | Matthew 6:17 | 1 |
| ἤλειφεν ḗleiphen | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 7:38 | 1 |
| ἤλειφον ḗleiphon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 6:13 | 1 |
| ἤλειψας ḗleipsas | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular | Luke 7:46 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G218, 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
- αβαρης abarḗs G4 light
- αβυσσος ábyssos G12 abyss
- αγαμος ágamos G22 unmarried
- αγενεαλογητος agenealógētos G35 without genealogy
- αγενης agenḗs G36 ignoble
- αγναφος ágnaphos G46 unprocessed
- αγνοεω agnoéō G50 to be ignorant
- αγνωσια agnōsía G56 ignorance
- αγνωστος ágnōstos G57 unknown
- αγραμματος agrámmatos G62 unlearned
- αγρυπνεω agrypnéō G69 to watch
- αδαπανος adápanos G77 free
- αδελφος adelphós G80 brother
- αδηλος ádēlos G82 obscure
- αδης háidēs G86 hell
- αδιακριτος adiákritos G87 clear
- αδιαλειπτος adiáleiptos G88 continual
- αδικος ádikos G94 unjust
- αδοκιμος adókimos G96 unapproved
- αδολος ádolos G97 guileless
- αδυνατος adýnatos G102 weak
- αζυμος ázymos G106 unleavened
- αθανασια athanasía G110 immortal
- αθεμιτος athémitos G111 unlawful
+149 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 176 — 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 αλειφω appears 19 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 17 verses in 11 books.
- 19
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 17
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 31:13 ἀλείφω
- Exodus 40:15 ἀλείφω
- Numbers 3:3 ἀλείφω
- Ruth 3:3 ἀλείφω
- 2 Samuel 12:20 ἀλείφω
- 2 Kings 4:2 ἀλείφω
- 2 Chronicles 28:15 ἀλείφω
- Esther 2:12 ἀλείφω
- Ezekiel 13:10 ἀλείφω
- Daniel 10:3 ἀλείφω
- Micah 6:15 ἀλείφω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G218) 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 31:13 ἀλείφω I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me. Now arise, get out from this land, and return to the land of your birth."
- Exodus 40:15 ἀλείφω You shall anoint them, as you anointed their father, that they may minister to me in the priest's office. Their anointing shall be to them for an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations.
- Numbers 3:3 ἀλείφω These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the priests who were anointed, whom he consecrated to minister in the priest's office.
- Ruth 3:3 ἀλείφω Wash yourself therefore, and anoint you, and put your clothing on you, and get you down to the threshing floor, but don't make yourself known to the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.
- 2 Samuel 12:20 ἀλείφω Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his clothing; and he came into the house of Yahweh, and worshiped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he ate.
- 2 Samuel 14:2 ἀλείφω Joab sent to Tekoa, and fetched there a wise woman, and said to her, please act like a mourner, and put on mourning clothing, Please, and don't anoint yourself with oil, but be as a woman who has a long time mourned for the dead:
- 2 Kings 4:2 ἀλείφω Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you? tell me; what have you in the house? She said, Your handmaid has nothing in the house, except a pot of oil.
- 2 Chronicles 28:15 ἀλείφω The men who have been mentioned by name rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all who were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them on donkeys, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brothers: then they returned to Samaria.
- Esther 2:12 ἀλείφω Now when the turn of every maiden was come to go in to king Ahasuerus, after it had been done to her as prescribed for the women twelve months (for so were the days of their purification accomplished, [to wit], six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors and with the things for the purifying of the women),
- Ezekiel 13:10 ἀλείφω Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there is no peace; and when one builds up a wall, behold, they daub it with whitewash:
- Ezekiel 13:11 ἀλείφω tell those who daub it with whitewash, that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and you, great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it.
- Ezekiel 13:12 ἀλείφω Behold, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said to you, Where is the daubing with which you have daubed it?
- Ezekiel 13:14 ἀλείφω So will I break down the wall that you have daubed with whitewash, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation of it shall be uncovered; and it shall fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it: and you shall know that I am Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 13:15 ἀλείφω Thus will I accomplish my wrath on the wall, and on those who have daubed it with whitewash; and I will tell you, The wall is no more, neither those who daubed it;
- Ezekiel 22:28 ἀλείφω Her prophets have daubed for them with whitewash, seeing false visions, and divining lies to them, saying, Thus says the Lord Yahweh, when Yahweh has not spoken.
- Daniel 10:3 ἀλείφω I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine into my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, until three whole weeks were fulfilled.
- Micah 6:15 ἀλείφω You will sow, but won't reap. You will tread the olives, but won't anoint yourself with oil; And crush grapes, but won't drink the wine.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G218) 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.
