νίπτω
to wash
‘to wash’ 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).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
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.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G3538 appears in the Book of Matthew — 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.
Matthew
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, νιπτω (níptō) means “to wash.” Its uses cluster heavily in John (69% of all occurrences). Spanning 13 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Matthew 6:17. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Dig into 13-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3538 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 →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #697
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 697 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 13 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 13 distinct verses.
- Gospels 12 verses · 92%
- Johannine 9 verses · 69%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 8%
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: Wash 8×, They wash 2×, Washed 2×
- American Standard Version: Wash 8×, They wash 2×, Washed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Wash 6×, Washed 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Wash 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3538 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 G3538 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G3538 across 17 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3538 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 wash
- to wash one's self
Word origin
Origin: to cleanse (especially the hands or the feet or the face)
To cleanse (especially the hands or the feet or the face); ceremonially to perform ablution : - wash. Compare G3068 .
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 13 distinct written forms G3538 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 G3538, 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 νιπτω appears 24 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 22 verses in 11 books.
- 24
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 22
- 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
- Genesis 18:4 νίπτω
- Exodus 30:18 νίπτω
- Leviticus 15:11 νίπτω
- Deuteronomy 21:6 νίπτω
- Judges 19:21 νίπτω
- 1 Samuel 25:41 νίπτω
- 2 Samuel 11:8 νίπτω
- 2 Chronicles 4:6 νίπτω
- Job 20:23 νίπτω
- Psalms 25:6 νίπτω
- Song of Solomon 5:3 νίπτω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3538) 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 18:4 νίπτω Now let a little water be fetched, wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.
- Genesis 19:2 νίπτω and he said, "See now, my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you will rise up early, and go on your way." They said, "No, but we will stay in the street all night."
- Genesis 24:32 νίπτω The man came into the house, and he unloaded the camels. He gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him.
- Genesis 43:24 νίπτω The man brought the men into Joseph's house, and gave them water, and they washed their feet. He gave their donkeys fodder.
- Genesis 43:31 νίπτω He washed his face, and came out. He controlled himself, and said, "Serve the meal."
- Exodus 30:18 νίπτω "You shall also make a basin of brass, and the base of it of brass, in which to wash. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it.
- Exodus 30:19 νίπτω Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in it.
- Exodus 30:20 νίπτω When they go into the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water, that they not die; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to Yahweh.
- Exodus 30:21 νίπτω So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they not die: and it shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his descendants throughout their generations."
- Exodus 38:27 νίπτω The one hundred talents of silver were for casting the sockets of the sanctuary, and the sockets of the veil; one hundred sockets for the one hundred talents, a talent for a socket.
- Leviticus 15:11 νίπτω "'Whoever he who has the discharge touches, without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.
- Leviticus 15:12 νίπτω "'The earthen vessel, which he who has the discharge touches, shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.
- Deuteronomy 21:6 νίπτω All the elders of that city, who are nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley;
- Judges 19:21 νίπτω So he brought him into his house, and gave the donkeys fodder; and they washed their feet, and ate and drink.
- 1 Samuel 25:41 νίπτω She arose, and bowed herself with her face to the earth, and said, Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.
- 2 Samuel 11:8 νίπτω David said to Uriah, Go down to your house, and wash your feet. Uriah departed out of the king's house, and there followed him a mess [of food] from the king.
- 2 Chronicles 4:6 νίπτω He made also ten basins, and put five on the right hand, and five on the left, to wash in them; such things as belonged to the burnt-offering they washed in them; but the sea was for the priests to wash in.
- Job 20:23 νίπτω When he is about to fill his belly, God will cast the fierceness of his wrath on him. It will rain on him while he is eating.
- Psalms 25:6 νίπτω Yahweh, remember your tender mercies and your loving kindness, For they are from old times.
- Psalms 57:11 νίπτω Be exalted, God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth.
- Psalms 72:13 νίπτω He will have pity on the poor and needy. He will save the souls of the needy.
- Song of Solomon 5:3 νίπτω I have taken off my robe. Indeed, must I put it on? I have washed my feet. Indeed, must I soil them?
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3538) 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.
