κατέρχομαι
to come down
‘to come down’ 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 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).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Middle or Passive deponent
- Middle/passive in form but active in meaning.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 4 times (25%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 3 times (19%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G2718 appears — 16 distinct verses across 3 books. 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
Acts 13 verses
- Acts 8:5 κατελθὼν aor act ptcp nom sg masc Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the Christ.
- Acts 9:32 κατελθεῖν aor act inf It happened, as Peter went throughout all those parts, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.
- Acts 11:27 κατῆλθον aor act ind 3pl Now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.
- Acts 12:19 κατελθὼν aor act ptcp nom sg masc When Herod had sought for him, and didn't find him, he examined the guards, and commanded that they should be put to death. He went down from Judea to Caesarea, and stayed there.
- Acts 13:4 κατῆλθον aor act ind 3pl So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. From there they sailed to Cyprus.
- Acts 15:1 κατελθόντες aor act ptcp nom pl masc Some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can't be saved."
- Acts 15:30 κατῆλθον aor act ind 3pl So, when they were sent off, they came to Antioch. Having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the letter.
- Acts 18:5 κατῆλθον aor act ind 3pl But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the Spirit, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.
- Acts 18:22 κατελθὼν aor act ptcp nom sg masc When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the assembly, and went down to Antioch.
- Acts 19:1 κατελθεῖν aor act inf It happened that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper country, came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples.
- Acts 21:3 κατήλθομεν aor act ind 1pl When we had come in sight of Cyprus, leaving it on the left hand, we sailed to Syria, and landed at Tyre, for there the ship was to unload her cargo.
- Acts 21:10 κατῆλθέν aor act ind 3sg As we stayed there some days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.
- Acts 27:5 κατήλθαμεν aor act ind 1pl When we had sailed across the sea which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra, a city of Lycia.
James 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.
The Greek verb κατερχομαι centers on the idea of “to come down.” Acts dominates its distribution — 13 of 16 verses. Spanning 16 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. Its earliest occurrence is Luke 4:31. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. 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 G2718 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #726
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 726 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 16 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 16 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 15 verses · 94%
- Gospels 2 verses · 13%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 6%
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: Came down 3×
- American Standard Version: Came 2×, Came down 2×, Went down 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Came down 4×, Went down 3×, He went down 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Came down 7×, Coming down 2×, Having come down 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2718 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2718 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G2718 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G2718 across 16 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 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.
- of one who goes from a higher to a lower locality
- of those who come to a place by a ship
Word origin
Derived from κατα (katá) (G2596) — down.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms G2718 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κατῆλθον katē̂lthon | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Acts 11:27 | 4 |
| κατελθὼν katelthṑn | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 8:5 | 3 |
| κατελθεῖν kateltheîn | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Acts 9:32 | 2 |
| κατήλθαμεν katḗlthamen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | Acts 27:5 | 1 |
| κατήλθομεν katḗlthomen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural | Acts 21:3 | 1 |
| κατελθόντες katelthóntes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 15:1 | 1 |
| κατελθόντων katelthóntōn | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Luke 9:37 | 1 |
| κατερχομένη katerchoménē | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | James 3:15 | 1 |
| κατῆλθέν katē̂lthén | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 21:10 | 1 |
| κατῆλθεν katē̂lthen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 4:31 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2718, 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
- καθηκω kathḗkō G2520 to come down
- 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
+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.
