μολύνω
to defile
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
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.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G3435 appears in the Book of Revelation — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Revelation
- Revelation 3:4 ἐμόλυναν aor act ind 3pl Nevertheless you have a few names in Sardis that did not defile their garments. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.
- Revelation 14:4 ἐμολύνθησαν aor pass ind 3pl These are those who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were redeemed by Jesus from among men, the first fruits to God and to the Lamb.
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 defile” is the headline sense of the Greek verb μολυνω (molýnō). It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. It clusters heavily in Revelation, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. First canonically at 1 Corinthians 8:7, it enters the text early. It clusters with μελας, μελαν and μολυσμος under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3435 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 2 verses 67%
- 1 Corinthians 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Johannine 2 verses · 67%
- Revelation 2 verses · 67%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 33%
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: Defiled 2×
- American Standard Version: Defile 1×, Defiled 1×, Did 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Have not been defiled 1×, Have not soiled 1×, Is defiled 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Have 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3435 across 5 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 G3435 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3435 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3435 across 5 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.
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 pollute, stain, contaminate, defile
Word origin
Derived from μελας (mélas) (G3189) — black.
Probably from G3189 ; to soil (figuratively): - defile.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G3435 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μολύνεται molýnetai | Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | 1 Corinthians 8:7 | 1 |
| ἐμολύνθησαν emolýnthēsan | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Revelation 14:4 | 1 |
| ἐμόλυναν emólynan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Revelation 3:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3435, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μολυνω appears 10 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 10 verses in 7 books.
- 10
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 10
- 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 37:31 μολύνω
- Song of Solomon 5:3 μολύνω
- Isaiah 59:3 μολύνω
- Jeremiah 12:10 μολύνω
- Lamentations 4:14 μολύνω
- Ezekiel 7:17 μολύνω
- Zechariah 14:2 μολύνω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3435) 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 37:31 μολύνω They took Joseph's coat, and killed a male goat, and dipped the coat in the blood.
- Song of Solomon 5:3 μολύνω I have taken off my robe. Indeed, must I put it on? I have washed my feet. Indeed, must I soil them?
- Isaiah 59:3 μολύνω For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.
- Isaiah 65:4 μολύνω who sit among the graves, and lodge in the secret places; who eat pig's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
- Jeremiah 12:10 μολύνω Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
- Jeremiah 23:11 μολύνω for both prophet and priest are profane; yes, in my house have I found their wickedness, says Yahweh.
- Lamentations 4:14 μολύνω They wander as blind men in the streets, they are polluted with blood, So that men can't touch their garments.
- Ezekiel 7:17 μολύνω All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.
- Ezekiel 21:12 μολύνω Cry and wail, son of man; for it is on my people, it is on all the princes of Israel: they are delivered over to the sword with my people; strike therefore on your thigh.
- Zechariah 14:2 μολύνω For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city will be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. half of the city will go out into captivity, and the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3435) 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.
