νηστεύω
to fast
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Present-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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
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”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 12 distinct
- Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 4 times (20%)
- Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 3 times (15%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive 2 times (10%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 2 times (10%)
- Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (10%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (5%)
+4 more forms (4 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 20 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3522 appears — 15 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 6 verses
- Matthew 4:2 νηστεύσας aor act ptcp nom sg masc When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.
- Matthew 6:16 νηστεύητε νηστεύοντες pres act subj 2pl pres act ptcp nom pl masc "Moreover when you fast, don't be like the hypocrites, with sad faces. For they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Most assuredly I tell you, they have received their reward.
- Matthew 6:17 νηστεύων pres act ptcp nom sg masc But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face;
- Matthew 6:18 νηστεύων pres act ptcp nom sg masc so that you are not seen by men to be fasting, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.
- Matthew 9:14 νηστεύομεν νηστεύουσιν pres act ind 1pl pres act ind 3pl Then John's disciples came to him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don't fast?"
- Matthew 9:15 νηστεύσουσιν fut act ind 3pl Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 2:18 νηστεύοντες νηστεύουσιν νηστεύουσιν pres act ptcp nom pl masc pres act ind 3pl pres act ind 3pl John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and they came and asked him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?"
- Mark 2:19 νηστεύειν νηστεύειν pres act inf pres act inf Jesus said to them, "Can the groomsmen fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they can't fast.
- Mark 2:20 νηστεύσουσιν fut act ind 3pl But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then will they fast in that day.
Luke 4 verses
- Luke 5:33 νηστεύουσιν pres act ind 3pl They said to him, "Why do John's disciples often fast and pray, likewise also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?"
- Luke 5:34 νηστεῦσαι aor act inf He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
- Luke 5:35 νηστεύσουσιν fut act ind 3pl But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then they will fast in those days."
- Luke 18:12 νηστεύω pres act ind 1sg I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.'
Acts 2 verses
- Acts 13:2 νηστευόντων pres act ptcp gen pl masc As they served the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them."
- Acts 13:3 νηστεύσαντες aor act ptcp nom pl masc Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
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, νηστευω (nēsteúō) means “to fast.” First canonically at Matthew 4:2, it enters the text early. With 15 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (40% of all occurrences). From the same root come νηστις and νηστεια. 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 G3522 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #622
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 622 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Gospels 13 verses · 87%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 40%
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: Fast 11×, Shall they fast 3×
- American Standard Version: Fast 10×, Will they fast 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Fast 8×, Fasting 3×, They will fast 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Fast 8×, Fasting 5×, Do 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3522 across 22 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3522 across 22 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3522 across 19 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3522 across 24 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 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 abstain as a religious exercise from food and drink: either entirely…
Word origin
Derived from νηστις (nēstis) (G3523) — fasting.
From G3523 ; to abstain from food (religiously): - fast.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 12 distinct written forms G3522 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 G3522, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word νηστευω appears 22 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 19 verses in 11 books.
- 22
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 19
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 38:26 νηστεύω
- Judges 20:26 νηστεύω
- 1 Samuel 7:6 νηστεύω
- 2 Samuel 1:12 νηστεύω
- 1 Kings 20:9 νηστεύω
- 1 Chronicles 10:12 νηστεύω
- Ezra 8:23 νηστεύω
- Esther 4:16 νηστεύω
- Isaiah 58:3 νηστεύω
- Jeremiah 14:12 νηστεύω
- Zechariah 7:5 νηστεύω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3522) 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 38:26 νηστεύω a beka a head, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for everyone who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty men.
- Judges 20:26 νηστεύω Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up, and came to Bethel, and wept, and sat there before Yahweh, and fasted that day until even; and they offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before Yahweh.
- 1 Samuel 7:6 νηστεύω They gathered together to Mizpah, and drew water, and poured it out before Yahweh, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against Yahweh. Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah.
- 1 Samuel 31:13 νηστεύω They took their bones, and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
- 2 Samuel 1:12 νηστεύω and they mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of Yahweh, and for the house of Israel; because they were fallen by the sword.
- 2 Samuel 12:16 νηστεύω David therefore begged God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night on the earth.
- 2 Samuel 12:21 νηστεύω Then said his servants to him, What thing is this that you have done? you did fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, you did rise and eat bread.
- 2 Samuel 12:22 νηστεύω He said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who knows whether Yahweh will not be gracious to me, that the child may live?
- 2 Samuel 12:23 νηστεύω But now he is dead, why should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.
- 1 Kings 20:9 νηστεύω Therefore he said to the messengers of Ben Hadad, Tell my lord the king, All that you did send for to your servant at the first I will do; but this thing I may not do. The messengers departed, and brought him word again.
- 1 Kings 20:27 νηστεύω The children of Israel were mustered, and were provisioned, and went against them: and the children of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country.
- 1 Chronicles 10:12 νηστεύω all the valiant men arose, and took away the body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh, and buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
- Ezra 8:23 νηστεύω So we fasted and begged our God for this: and he was entreated of us.
- Ezra 11:4 νηστεύω
- Esther 4:16 νηστεύω Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast you for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in to the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
- Isaiah 58:3 νηστεύω Why have we fasted, [say they], and you don't see? [why] have we afflicted our soul, and you take no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast you find [your own] pleasure, and exact all your labors.
- Isaiah 58:4 νηστεύω Behold, you fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness: you don't fast this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high.
- Jeremiah 14:12 νηστεύω When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and meal-offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.
- Zechariah 7:5 νηστεύω "Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3522) 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.
