παρατηρέω
to watch carefully
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Imperfect-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
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- 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
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Imperfect, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 2 times (33%)
- Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3906 appears — 6 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.
Mark 1 verse
Luke 3 verses
- Luke 6:7 παρετηροῦντο impf mid ind 3pl The scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him.
- Luke 14:1 παρατηρούμενοι pres mid ptcp nom pl masc It happened, when he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching him.
- Luke 20:20 παρατηρήσαντες aor act ptcp nom pl masc They watched him, and sent out spies, who pretended to be righteous, that they might trap him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the power and authority of the governor.
Acts 1 verse
Galatians 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.
παρατηρεω — transliterated paratēréō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to watch carefully.” Its uses cluster heavily in Luke (50% of all occurrences). With 6 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Debuting at Mark 3:2, it then recurs through the corpus. Sharing its root, it stands alongside παρα, παραβαινω and παραβαλλω. See the sense tree, 6-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3906 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Gospels 4 verses · 67%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 67%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 17%
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: They watched 3×
- American Standard Version: They watched 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: They watched 1×, They watched closely 1×, They were watching 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Closely 3×, Watching 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3906 across 5 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3906 across 6 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3906 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3906 across 11 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.
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 stand beside and watch, to watch assiduously, observe carefully
Word origin
Derived from παρα (pará) (G3844) — from.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G3906 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| παρετηροῦντο paretēroûnto | Verb, Imperfect, Middle, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Luke 6:7 | 2 |
| παρατηρήσαντες paratērḗsantes | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Luke 20:20 | 1 |
| παρατηρεῖσθε paratēreîsthe | Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural | Galatians 4:10 | 1 |
| παρατηρούμενοι paratēroúmenoi | Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Luke 14:1 | 1 |
| παρετήρουν paretḗroun | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Mark 3:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3906, 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
- παραβαινω parabaínō G3845 to neglect
- παραβαλλω parabállō G3846 to place beside
- παραβιαζομαι parabiázomai G3849 to compel
- παραβουλευομαι parabouleúomai G3851 to consult wrongly
- παραγγελλω parangéllō G3853 to announce
- παραγινομαι paragínomai G3854 to appear
- παραγω parágō G3855 to pass by
- παραδειγματιζω paradeigmatízō G3856 to make example
- παραδεχομαι paradéchomai G3858 to receive
- παραδιατριβη paradiatribḗ G3859 empty business
- παραδιδωμι paradídōmi G3860 to deliver
- παραδοξος parádoxos G3861 strange
- παραζηλοω parazēlóō G3863 to provoke
- παραθαλασσιος parathalássios G3864 by the sea
- παραθεωρεω paratheōréō G3865 to compare
- παραινεω parainéō G3867 to exhort
- παραιτεομαι paraitéomai G3868 to beg pardon
- παρακαθιζω parakathízō G3869 to sit beside
- παρακαλεω parakaléō G3870 to call beside
- παρακαλυπτω parakalýptō G3871 to cover up
- παρακαταθηκη parakatathḗkē G3872 deposit
- παρακειμαι parákeimai G3873 to lie beside
- παρακολουθεω parakolouthéō G3877 to follow after
- παρακουω parakoúō G3878 to disobey
+51 more words share this root (not shown).
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 79 — 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 παρατηρεω appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 2 Samuel 3:30 παρατηρέω
- Psalms 36:12 παρατηρέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3906) 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.
- 2 Samuel 3:30 παρατηρέω So Joab and Abishai his brother killed Abner, because he had killed their brother Asahel at Gibeon in the battle.
- Psalms 36:12 παρατηρέω There the workers of iniquity are fallen. They are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise.
- Psalms 129:3 παρατηρέω The plowers plowed on my back. They made their furrows long.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3906) 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.
