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λαμβάνω

to take

‘to take’ is one of 7 main senses fuller range ↓

G2983 Strong's Greek
lambánō Transliteration
/lam-ban'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 258 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.

At its core, λαμβανω (lambánō) means “to take.” Translators differ — “took” in the King James Version, then “having taken” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 243 verses in 21 books, it is a common word in the Greek New Testament. First canonically at Matthew 5:40, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 7 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
accept
Modern gloss
to take
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G2983 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 →

243
distinct verses
The word appears in 243 distinct verses.
21 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 21 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 5:40
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 5:40.
Revelation 22:17
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:17.
#62
by frequency
Top 100 most frequent Greek words (rank 62 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 243 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 131 · 54%
  • Acts 29 · 12%
  • Pauline Epistles 30 · 12%
  • General Epistles 31 · 13%
  • Revelation 22 · 9%

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 243 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 131 verses · 54%
  • Johannine 69 verses · 28%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 50 verses · 21%
  • Pauline corpus 30 verses · 12%
  • Revelation 22 verses · 9%
  • Hebrews 16 verses · 7%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 15 verses · 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: Took 36×, Take 23×, Receive 20×
  • American Standard Version: Took 35×, Take 20×, Receive 18×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Took 22×, Take 16×, Receive 15×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Having taken 34×, Receive 33×, Take 19×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G2983 across 270 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Took” 36×
  • “Take” 23×
  • “Receive” 20×
  • “He took” 12×
  • “Received” 12×
  • “Receiveth” 11×
  • “Having received” 7×
  • “Shall receive” 7×
  • “Have received” 6×
  • “Ye receive” 5×
  • “Ye shall receive” 5×
  • “Had received” 4×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 60 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 2 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G2983 across 264 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Took” 35×
  • “Take” 20×
  • “Receive” 18×
  • “He took” 15×
  • “Received” 15×
  • “Receiveth” 14×
  • “Shall receive” 9×
  • “Having received” 6×
  • “Ye receive” 6×
  • “Taketh” 5×
  • “They took” 5×
  • “Ye shall receive” 4×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 60 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 G2983 across 241 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Took” 22×
  • “Take” 16×
  • “Receive” 15×
  • “Receives” 12×
  • “He took” 9×
  • “Received” 7×
  • “Taking” 6×
  • “Will receive” 6×
  • “Had received” 5×
  • “You will receive” 5×
  • “Collect” 4×
  • “Married” 4×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 77 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 7 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G2983 across 299 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Having taken” 34×
  • “Receive” 33×
  • “Take” 19×
  • “Took” 19×
  • “Having received” 16×
  • “Received” 13×
  • “Receives” 12×
  • “Receiving” 8×
  • “It” 7×
  • “You received” 7×
  • “Will receive” 6×
  • “You will receive” 5×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 52 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


7 senses in Thayer's, in lexicon order

The 7 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 take with the hand, lay hold of, any person or thing in order to use it
  2. to take in order to carry away
  3. to take what is one's own, to take to one's self, to make one's own
  4. to associate with one's self as companion, attendant
  5. to take
  6. to regard any one's power, rank, external circumstances, and on that account to do some injustice or neglect something
  7. to receive (what is given), to gain, get, obtain, to get back

Word origin

Origin: a prolonged form of a primary verb, which is use only as an alternate in certain tenses

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 04:05,5

A prolonged form of a primary verb which is used only as an alternate in certain tenses; to take (in very many applications literally and figuratively [probably objective or active to get hold of; whereas G1209 is rather subjective or passive to have offered to one; while G138 is more violent to seize or remove ]): - accept + be amazed assay attain bring X when I call catch come on (X unto) + forget have hold obtain receive (X after) take (away up).

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


Forms in the corpus

The 46 distinct written forms G2983 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
λαβὼν labṑn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 13:31 36
ἔλαβον élabon Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 12:14 26
λαβεῖν labeîn Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 5:40 22
ἔλαβεν élaben Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 8:17 21
λαμβάνει lambánei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 7:8 18
λαβόντες labóntes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 20:11 14
ἐλάβετε elábete Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 10:8 13
λάβῃ lábē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Mark 10:30 8
λάβετε lábete Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 26:26 7
λήμψεται lḗmpsetai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 10:41 7
ἐλάβομεν elábomen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 16:7 7
λαβοῦσα laboûsa Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 13:33 6
λαμβάνων lambánōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 13:20 6
λήμψεσθε lḗmpsesthe Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 21:22 5
λαμβάνοντες lambánontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 17:24 5
λαμβάνετε lambánete Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 3:11 4
λήμψονται lḗmpsontai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 20:10 4
λαμβάνειν lambánein Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive John 3:27 4
λαμβάνουσιν lambánousin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 17:25 4
εἴληφεν eílēphen Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 Corinthians 10:13 3
λάβωσιν lábōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Acts 8:15 3
λαβών labṓn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Acts 26:10 3
εἴληφας eílēphas Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 3:3 2
λάβε lábe Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 10:8 2
λάβωμεν lábōmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Galatians 3:14 2
λαβέτω labétō Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 1:20 2
λαβοῦσαι laboûsai Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Matthew 25:1 2
λαμβάνομεν lambánomen Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural 1 John 3:22 2
λαμβάνω lambánō Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 5:34 2
ἔλαβες élabes Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular 1 Corinthians 4:7 2
εἰληφὼς eilēphṑs Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 25:24 1
εἴληφα eílēpha Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Revelation 2:27 1
λάβητε lábēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural Revelation 18:4 1
λάβοι láboi Verb, Aorist, Active, Optative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 25:16 1
λάβω lábō Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular John 10:17 1
λήμψεταί lḗmpsetaí Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular James 1:7 1
λαβόντα labónta Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Luke 19:15 1
λαβόντας labóntas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Revelation 19:20 1
λαμβάνεις lambáneis Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 20:21 1
λαμβάνετέ lambáneté Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 5:43 1
λαμβάνῃ lambánē Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Acts 8:19 1
λαμβανόμενον lambanómenon Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Neuter 1 Timothy 4:4 1
λαμβανόμενος lambanómenos Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Hebrews 5:1 1
λημψόμεθα lēmpsómetha Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Plural James 3:1 1
ἐλάμβανον elámbanon Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 8:17 1
ἔλαβε élabe Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 28:15 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2983, 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.

Derived from this word

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word λαμβανω appears 1,084 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 1,009 verses in 35 books.

1,084
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
1,009
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
35 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 35 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2983) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 1,009. 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 (G2983) 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

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English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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