ἀνακάμπτω
to return
‘to return’ 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).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 2 times (50%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 1 time (25%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 4 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G344 appears — 4 distinct verses across 4 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.
Matthew 1 verse
Luke 1 verse
Acts 1 verse
Hebrews 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.
At its core, ανακαμπτω (anakámptō) means “to return.” It is rare — just 4 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. The word gravitates to Matthew (25%), then Luke and Acts. It first appears in Matthew 2:12. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G344 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 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 4 distinct verses.
- Gospels 2 verses · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 50%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 25%
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: Again 1×, Have returned 1×, I will return 1×
- American Standard Version: Return 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Return 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Return 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G344 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G344 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G344 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G344 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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.
- to bend back, to turn back
- to return
Word origin
Derived from ανα (aná) (G303) — among.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G344 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀνακάμψαι anakámpsai | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Matthew 2:12 | 2 |
| ἀνακάμψει anakámpsei | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 10:6 | 1 |
| ἀνακάμψω anakámpsō | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Acts 18:21 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G344, 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
- αναβαινω anabaínō G305 to ascend
- αναβαλλομαι anabállomai G306 to delay
- αναβιβαζω anabibázō G307 to draw up
- αναβλεπω anablépō G308 to look up
- αναβοαω anaboáō G310 to cry out
- αναγγελλω anangéllō G312 to announce
- αναγενναω anagennáō G313 to be born again
- αναγινωσκω anaginṓskō G314 to recognize
- αναγκη anánkē G318 necessity
- αναγνωριζομαι anagnōrízomai G319 to recognize
- αναγω anágō G321 to lead up
- αναδεικνυμι anadeíknymi G322 to proclaim
- αναδεχομαι anadéchomai G324 to take up
- αναδιδωμι anadídōmi G325 to give forth
- αναζαω anazáō G326 to live again
- αναζητεω anazētéō G327 to search out
- αναζωννυμι anazṓnnymi G328 to gird up
- αναζωπυρεω anazōpyréō G329 to inflame
- αναθαλλω anathállō G330 to sprout up
- αναθεωρεω anatheōréō G333 to observe
- αναιρεω anairéō G337 to take away
- ανακαθιζω anakathízō G339 to sit up
- ανακαινιζω anakainízō G340 to renew
- ανακαινοω anakainóō G341 to make new
+51 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 77 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ανακαμπτω appears 11 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 9 verses in 7 books.
- 11
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 9
- 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
- Exodus 32:27 ἀνακάμπτω
- 2 Samuel 1:22 ἀνακάμπτω
- 1 Kings 12:20 ἀνακάμπτω
- 1 Chronicles 19:5 ἀνακάμπτω
- Job 39:4 ἀνακάμπτω
- Jeremiah 3:1 ἀνακάμπτω
- Zechariah 9:8 ἀνακάμπτω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G344) 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.
- Exodus 32:27 ἀνακάμπτω He said to them, "Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, 'Every man put his sword on his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and every man kill his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor."
- 2 Samuel 1:22 ἀνακάμπτω From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan didn't turn back, The sword of Saul didn't return empty.
- 2 Samuel 8:13 ἀνακάμπτω David got him a name when he returned from smiting the Syrians in the Valley of Salt, even eighteen thousand men.
- 1 Kings 12:20 ἀνακάμπτω It happened, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was returned, that they sent and called him to the congregation, and made him king over all Israel: there was none who followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only.
- 1 Chronicles 19:5 ἀνακάμπτω Then there went certain persons, and told David how the men were served. He sent to meet them; for the men were greatly ashamed. The king said, Stay at Jericho until your beards be grown, and then return.
- Job 39:4 ἀνακάμπτω Their young ones become strong. They grow up in the open field. They go forth, and don't return again.
- Jeremiah 3:1 ἀνακάμπτω They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, will he return to her again? Won't that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 15:5 ἀνακάμπτω For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? or who will bemoan you? or who will turn aside to ask of your welfare?
- Zechariah 9:8 ἀνακάμπτω I will encamp around my house against the army, That none pass through or return; And no oppressor will pass through them any more: For now I have seen with my eyes.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G344) 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.
