καθήκω
to come down
‘to come down’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Imperfect-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
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- 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
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 distinct verse where G2520 appears in the Present 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.
Romans 1 verse
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 come down” is the headline sense of the Greek verb καθηκω (kathḗkō). The Greek New Testament uses it only 2 verses. It clusters heavily in Acts, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. First canonically at Acts 22:22, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. See the sense tree, 2-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2520 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,678
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,678 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 2 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 2 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 50%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 50%
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: Convenient 1×, Fit 1×, Is 1×
- American Standard Version: Are 1×, Fit 1×, Fitting 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: He is not fit 1×, Ought not to be done 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are 1×, Proper 1×, Right for 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2520 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2520 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2520 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2520 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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 come down
- it is becoming
- it is fit
Word origin
Derived from κατα (katá) (G2596) — down.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G2520 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| καθήκοντα kathḗkonta | Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Romans 1:28 | 1 |
| καθῆκεν kathē̂ken | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 22:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2520, 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
- καθα kathá G2505 according as
- καθαιρεω kathairéō G2507 to tear down
- καθαπτω katháptō G2510 to fasten down
- καθεδρα kathédra G2515 seat
- καθεζομαι kathézomai G2516 to sit down
- καθεξης kathexēs G2517 in order
- καθευδω katheúdō G2518 to fall asleep
- καθηγητης kathēgētḗs G2519 guide
- καθημαι káthēmai G2521 to sit down
- καθημερινος kathēmerinós G2522 daily
- καθιημι kathíēmi G2524 to send down
- καθιστημι kathístēmi G2525 to place
- καθο kathó G2526 according to what
- καθολου kathólou G2527 wholly
- καθοπλιζω kathoplízō G2528 to arm
- καθοραω kathoráō G2529 to see clearly
- καθοτι kathóti G2530 according to what
- καθως kathṓs G2531 according as
- καμμυω kammýō G2576 to close eyes
- καταβαινω katabaínō G2597 to descend
- καταβαλλω katabállō G2598 to cast down
- καταβαρεω katabaréō G2599 to weigh down
- καταβιβαζω katabibázō G2601 to bring down
- καταβραβευω katabrabeúō G2603 to defraud
+103 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 129 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word καθηκω appears 13 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 13 verses in 7 books.
- 13
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 13
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 19:31 καταἥκω
- Exodus 5:13 καταἥκω
- Leviticus 5:10 καταἥκω
- Deuteronomy 21:17 καταἥκω
- 1 Samuel 2:16 καταἥκω
- Ezekiel 21:32 καταἥκω
- Hosea 2:7 καταἥκω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2520) 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 19:31 καταἥκω The firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.
- Exodus 5:13 καταἥκω The taskmasters were urgent saying, "Fulfill your work quota daily, as when there was straw!"
- Exodus 5:19 καταἥκω The officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble, when it was said, "You shall not diminish anything from your daily quota of bricks!"
- Exodus 16:16 καταἥκω This is the thing which Yahweh has commanded: "Gather of it everyone according to his eating; an omer a head, according to the number of your persons, shall you take it, every man for those who are in his tent."
- Exodus 16:18 καταἥκω When they measured it with an omer, he who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating.
- Exodus 16:21 καταἥκω They gathered it morning by morning, everyone according to his eating. When the sun grew hot, it melted.
- Exodus 36:1 καταἥκω "Bezalel and Oholiab shall work with every wise-hearted man, in whom Yahweh has put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all the work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that Yahweh has commanded."
- Leviticus 5:10 καταἥκω He shall offer the second for a burnt offering, according to the ordinance; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin which he has sinned, and he shall be forgiven.
- Leviticus 9:16 καταἥκω He presented the burnt offering, and offered it according to the ordinance.
- Deuteronomy 21:17 καταἥκω but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated, by giving him a double portion of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
- 1 Samuel 2:16 καταἥκω If the man said to him, They will surely burn the fat first, and then take as much as your soul desires; then he would say, No, but you shall give it me now: and if not, I will take it by force.
- Ezekiel 21:32 καταἥκω You shall be for fuel to the fire; your blood shall be in the midst of the land; you shall be no more remembered: for I, Yahweh, have spoken it.
- Hosea 2:7 καταἥκω She will follow after her lovers, But she won't overtake them; And she will seek them, But won't find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband; For then was it better with me than now.'
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2520) 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.
