λύω
to loose
‘to loose’ 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 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).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
3 verses where G3089 appears in the Aorist tense in the Book of Mark. 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.
Mark
- Mark 1:7 λῦσαι aor act inf He preached, saying, "After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and loosen.
- Mark 7:35 ἐλύθη aor pass ind 3sg Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was released, and he spoke clearly.
- Mark 11:2 λύσατε aor act impv 2pl and said to them, "Go your way into the village that is opposite you. Immediately as you enter into it, you will find a young donkey tied, on which no one has sat. Untie him, and bring him.
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 λυω centers on the idea of “to loose.” Where the King James Version says “loose,” newer translations reach for “untie” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 39 verses across 10 books of the Greek New Testament, among its moderately common vocabulary. Debuting at Matthew 5:19, it then recurs through the corpus. Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. Dig into 39-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3089 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 10 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
- #356
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 356 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 39 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 39 distinct verses.
- Gospels 21 verses · 54%
- Johannine 13 verses · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 12 verses · 31%
- Revelation 6 verses · 15%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 4 verses · 10%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 5%
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: Loose 9×, Unloose 3×, Be broken 2×
- American Standard Version: Loose 9×, Unloose 4×, Loosed 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Untie 8×, Will be destroyed 3×, Are you untying 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Untie 7×, Be broken 2×, Destroyed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3089 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 26 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 G3089 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 28 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 G3089 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 19 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 G3089 across 49 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 32 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 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 loose any person (or thing) tied or fastened
- to loose one bound, i.e. to unbind, release from bonds, set free
- to loosen, undo, dissolve, anything bound, tied, or compacted together
Word origin
Origin: a root word
A primary verb; to loosen (literally or figuratively): - break (up) destroy dissolve (un-) loose melt put off. Compare G4486 .
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 29 distinct written forms G3089 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3089, 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 λυω appears 16 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 16 verses in 8 books.
- 16
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 16
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 42:27 λύω
- Exodus 3:5 λύω
- Joshua 5:15 λύω
- Job 5:20 λύω
- Psalms 101:21 λύω
- Isaiah 5:27 λύω
- Jeremiah 47:4 λύω
- Daniel 3:92 λύω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3089) 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 42:27 λύω As one of them opened his sack to give his donkey food in the lodging-place, he saw his money. Behold, it was in the mouth of his sack.
- Exodus 3:5 λύω He said, "Don't come close. Take off your sandals from off your feet, for the place you are standing on is holy ground."
- Joshua 5:15 λύω The prince of Yahweh's host said to Joshua, Put off your shoe from off your foot; for the place whereon you stand is holy. Joshua did so.
- Job 5:20 λύω In famine he will redeem you from death; In war, from the power of the sword.
- Job 39:2 λύω Can you number the months that they fulfill? Or do you know the time when they give birth?
- Job 39:5 λύω "Who has set the wild donkey free? Or who has loosened the bonds of the swift donkey,
- Job 42:9 λύω So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did what Yahweh commanded them, and Yahweh accepted Job.
- Psalms 101:21 λύω
- Psalms 104:20 λύω You make darkness, and it is night, In which all the animals of the forest prowl.
- Psalms 145:7 λύω They will utter the memory of your great goodness, And will sing of your righteousness.
- Isaiah 5:27 λύω None shall be weary nor stumble among them; None shall slumber nor sleep; Neither shall the belt of their loins be untied, Nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:
- Isaiah 14:17 λύω who made the world as a wilderness, and overthrew the cities of it; who didn't let loose his prisoners to their home?"
- Isaiah 40:2 λύω Speak comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry to her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received of Yahweh's hand double for all her sins.
- Isaiah 58:6 λύω Isn't this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?
- Jeremiah 47:4 λύω because of the day that comes to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper who remains: for Yahweh will destroy the Philistines, the remnant of the isle of Caphtor.
- Daniel 3:92 λύω
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3089) 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.
