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ὁράω

to see

‘to see’ is one of 6 main senses fuller range ↓

G3708 Strong's Greek
horáō Transliteration
/hor-ah'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 683 appearances

Compare with another word →

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 see” is the headline sense of the Greek verb οραω (horáō). Where the King James Version says “seen,” newer translations reach for “saw” (Berean Standard Bible) and “behold” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Greek New Testament uses it across 626 verses — among the most common. First canonically at Matthew 1:20, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 6 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
behold
Modern gloss
to see
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G3708 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 →

626
distinct verses
The word appears in 626 distinct verses.
21 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 21 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 1:20
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 1:20.
Revelation 22:12
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:12.
#27
by frequency
Top 50 most frequent Greek words (rank 27 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 626 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 393 · 63%
  • Acts 84 · 13%
  • Pauline Epistles 37 · 6%
  • General Epistles 35 · 6%
  • Revelation 77 · 12%

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 626 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 393 verses · 63%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 209 verses · 33%
  • Johannine 165 verses · 26%
  • Revelation 77 verses · 12%
  • Pauline corpus 37 verses · 6%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 21 verses · 3%
  • Hebrews 14 verses · 2%

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: Seen 10×, See 8×, Take heed 5×
  • American Standard Version: Seen 10×, See 7×, Hath seen 6×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Saw 87×, See 51×, I saw 36×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Behold 224×, Having seen 76×, See 73×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G3708 across 67 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Seen” 10×
  • “See” 8×
  • “Take heed” 5×
  • “We have seen” 5×
  • “Hath seen” 4×
  • “Hath” 2×
  • “Have seen” 2×
  • “He had seen” 2×
  • “He hath” 2×
  • “He hath seen” 2×
  • “They saw” 2×
  • “Thou hast seen” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 19 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 G3708 across 66 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Seen” 10×
  • “See” 7×
  • “Hath seen” 6×
  • “We have seen” 4×
  • “I have seen” 3×
  • “Take heed” 3×
  • “Hath” 2×
  • “He had seen” 2×
  • “He hath” 2×
  • “He hath seen” 2×
  • “See that” 2×
  • “Seeing” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 19 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 G3708 across 445 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Saw” 87×
  • “See” 51×
  • “I saw” 36×
  • “He saw” 24×
  • “They saw” 18×
  • “Appeared” 12×
  • “You see” 10×
  • “I looked” 9×
  • “Seeing” 8×
  • “You saw” 8×
  • “You will see” 8×
  • “They had seen” 7×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 63 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 3 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G3708 across 730 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Behold” 224×
  • “Having seen” 76×
  • “See” 73×
  • “I saw” 42×
  • “He saw” 21×
  • “Saw” 21×
  • “Seeing” 15×
  • “You will see” 12×
  • “Seen” 11×
  • “Having seen this” 10×
  • “I looked” 10×
  • “They saw” 10×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 38 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 6 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.

  1. to see with the eyes
  2. to see with the mind, to perceive, know
  3. to see, i.e. become acquainted with by experience, to experience
  4. to take heed, beware
  5. to care for, pay heed to
  6. I was seen, showed myself, appeared

Word origin

Derived from οπτανομαι (optánomai) (G3700) — to look at.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 10:15,7

Properly to stare at (compare G3700 ) that is (by implication) to discern clearly (physically or mentally); by extension to attend to; by hebraism to experience ; passively to appear : - behold perceive see take heed.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 76 distinct written forms G3708 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἰδοὺ idoù Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 1:20 194
ἰδὼν idṑn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 2:16 58
εἶδον eîdon Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 18:26 46
ἰδόντες idóntes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 2:10 41
εἶδεν eîden Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 3:16 40
ἰδεῖν ideîn Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 11:8 37
ἴδε íde Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 25:20 33
ἴδον ídon Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Acts 22:18 26
ὤφθη ṓphthē Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 17:3 18
ἴδητε ídēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 13:14 11
ὄψεσθε ópsesthe Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 26:64 11
ἑώρακεν heṓraken Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular, Attic form Luke 1:22 9
ἴδωσιν ídōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 5:16 9
ὄψονται ópsontai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 5:8 9
ἴδετε ídete Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 28:6 8
ὁρᾶτε horâte Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 9:30 7
εἶδες eîdes Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 1:19 7
εἴδομεν eídomen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 2:2 6
ἰδοῦσα idoûsa Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Mark 14:67 6
εἴδετε eídete Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Luke 7:22 5
εἶδαν eîdan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 6:50 5
ἑωράκαμεν heōrákamen Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural, Attic form John 3:11 5
ἴδωμεν ídōmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Matthew 27:49 5
ὅρα hóra Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 8:4 5
ἴδῃ ídē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Luke 2:26 4
ὄψεται ópsetai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 3:6 4
ἑώρακα heṓraka Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular, Attic form John 1:34 3
ἑώρακας heṓrakas Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular, Attic form John 8:57 3
ἴδω ídō Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular Mark 12:15 3
Ἰδοὺ Idoù Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 10:16 3
ὄψεσθέ ópsesthé Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural John 16:16 3
ὄψῃ ópsē Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 27:4 3
εἴδαμεν eídamen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Mark 2:12 2
εἴδομέν eídomén Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Mark 9:38 2
εἶδόν eîdón Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 1:49 2
ἑωράκατε heōrákate Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural, Attic form John 5:37 2
ἑωρακὼς heōrakṑs Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine, Attic form John 14:9 2
ἰδού idoú Verb, Aorist, Middle, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 9:3 2
ἰδών idṓn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 1:12 2
ἴδαν ídan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 13:17 2
ἴδεν íden Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 5:2 2
Ἰδὼν Idṑn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:1 2
ὁρῶ horō̂ Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Mark 8:24 2
ὄψομαι ópsomai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 16:22 2
εἶδές eîdés Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Acts 26:16 1
εἶδα eîda Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Revelation 17:6 1
ἑωράκασιν heōrákasin Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural, Attic form John 15:24 1
ἑωράκατέ heōrákaté Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural, Attic form John 6:36 1
ἑωράκει heōrákei Verb, Pluperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular, Attic form Acts 7:44 1
ἑωρακέναι heōrakénai Verb, Perfect, Active, Infinitive Luke 24:23 1
ἑωρακότες heōrakótes Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine, Attic form John 4:45 1
ἑόρακα heóraka Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 1 Corinthians 9:1 1
ἑόρακαν heórakan Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Colossians 2:1 1
ἑόρακεν heóraken Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Colossians 2:18 1
ἑώρακάς heṓrakás Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular, Attic form John 20:29 1
ἑώρακέν heṓrakén Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular, Attic form John 6:46 1
ἑώρακαν heṓrakan Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 9:36 1
ἑώρων heṓrōn Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural John 6:2 1
ἴδητέ ídēté Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural Luke 13:35 1
ἴδῃς ídēs Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular John 1:33 1

The 60 most common forms are shown; 16 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.


Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3708, 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

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 15 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word οραω appears 1,200 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 1,119 verses in 37 books.

1,200
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
1,119
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
37 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 37 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3708) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 1,119. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3708) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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