Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

ποιέω

to make

‘to make’ is one of 15 main senses fuller range ↓

G4160 Strong's Greek
poiéō Transliteration
/poy-eh'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 569 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.

ποιεω — transliterated poiéō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to make.” “doeth” is the historic King James Version rendering; modern versions use “do.” See the renderings breakdown. Spanning 514 verses in 26 books, it ranks among the most common words of the Greek New Testament. Debuting at Matthew 1:24, it then recurs through the corpus. Its lexical range runs to 15 senses. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
abide
Modern gloss
to make
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 G4160 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 →

514
distinct verses
The word appears in 514 distinct verses.
26 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 26 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 1:24
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 1:24.
Revelation 22:15
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:15.
#34
by frequency
Top 50 most frequent Greek words (rank 34 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 514 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 294 · 57%
  • Acts 65 · 13%
  • Pauline Epistles 78 · 15%
  • General Epistles 51 · 10%
  • Revelation 26 · 5%

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 514 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 294 verses · 57%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 145 verses · 28%
  • Johannine 138 verses · 27%
  • Pauline corpus 78 verses · 15%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 33 verses · 6%
  • Revelation 26 verses · 5%
  • Hebrews 18 verses · 4%

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: Do 100×, Make 31×, Did 30×
  • American Standard Version: Do 105×, Make 33×, Did 31×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Do 83×, Make 22×, Did 17×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Do 109×, Make 36×, Doing 32×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4160 across 586 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Do” 100×
  • “Make” 31×
  • “Did” 30×
  • “Doeth” 25×
  • “Made” 21×
  • “I do” 15×
  • “He did” 13×
  • “Ye do” 11×
  • “Done” 9×
  • “Had done” 9×
  • “Shall i do” 9×
  • “Doing” 8×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 110 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 16 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4160 across 583 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Do” 105×
  • “Make” 33×
  • “Did” 31×
  • “Doeth” 24×
  • “Made” 19×
  • “He did” 13×
  • “Had done” 11×
  • “I do” 11×
  • “Shall i do” 10×
  • “Ye do” 10×
  • “Doing” 9×
  • “Done” 8×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 123 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.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G4160 across 544 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Do” 83×
  • “Make” 22×
  • “Did” 17×
  • “Does” 15×
  • “Made” 13×
  • “Had done” 11×
  • “Perform” 10×
  • “Practices” 9×
  • “I am doing” 8×
  • “Are you doing” 7×
  • “Doing” 7×
  • “You do” 7×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 163 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 9 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G4160 across 624 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Do” 109×
  • “Make” 36×
  • “Doing” 32×
  • “Did” 31×
  • “Making” 16×
  • “I do” 15×
  • “You do” 14×
  • “Does” 13×
  • “Having done” 12×
  • “Having made” 12×
  • “Made” 12×
  • “Had done” 9×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 105 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


15 senses in Thayer's, in lexicon order

The 15 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. with the names of things made, to produce, construct, form, fashion, etc.
  2. to be the authors of, the cause
  3. to make ready, to prepare
  4. to produce, bear, shoot forth
  5. to acquire, to provide a thing for one's self
  6. to make a thing out of something
  7. to (make i.e.) render one anything
  8. to put one forth, to lead him out
  9. to make one do something
  10. to be the authors of a thing (to cause, bring about)

This word has an unusually long lexicon entry — 15 senses across its verb stems. The first 10 are shown above in lexicon order; the remaining 5 senses (more of the same, repeated under each stem) and the full sub-sense tree are in the Lexicon Entry tab.


Word origin

Origin: apparently a prolonged form of an obsolete primary

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 13:38,9

Apparently a prolonged form of an obsolete primary; to make or do (in a very wide application more or less direct): - abide + agree appoint X avenge + band together be bear + bewray bring (forth) cast out cause commit + content continue deal + without any delay (would) do (-ing) execute exercise fulfil gain give have hold X journeying keep + lay wait + lighten the ship make X mean + none of these things move me observe ordain perform provide + have purged purpose put + raising up X secure shew X shoot out spend take tarry + transgress the law work yield. Compare G4238 .

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


Forms in the corpus

The 77 distinct written forms G4160 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἐποίησεν epoíēsen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 1:24 71
ποιῆσαι poiē̂sai Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive Matthew 5:36 47
ποιεῖτε poieîte Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 5:47 34
ποιεῖ poieî Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 5:32 29
ποιῶν poiō̂n Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 7:21 28
ποιήσω poiḗsō Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Singular Matthew 19:16 25
ποιεῖν poieîn Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Matthew 6:1 24
ποιῶ poiō̂ Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Matthew 21:24 23
ποιήσας poiḗsas Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 19:4 21
ποιήσει poiḗsei Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 18:35 17
ἐποίησαν epoíēsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 17:12 16
ποιεῖς poieîs Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 21:23 13
ἐποίει epoíei Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 3:8 13
ποιοῦσιν poioûsin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 5:46 12
ποιήσατε poiḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 3:8 11
ἐποίησα epoíēsa Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 4:29 10
ποιήσῃ poiḗsē Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 5:19 9
ποίησον poíēson Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 8:9 8
ποιήσωμεν poiḗsōmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural Mark 9:5 8
ἐποιήσατε epoiḗsate Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 25:40 8
ποιοῦντες poioûntes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Luke 8:21 7
ποιῆτε poiē̂te Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Plural John 13:15 7
ποιήσαντες poiḗsantes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 21:6 6
ποιήσουσιν poiḗsousin Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 13:22 6
ἐποίησας epoíēsas Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 20:12 6
ποιοῦντα poioûnta Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 24:46 5
πεποίηκεν pepoíēken Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 5:19 5
ποιούμενος poioúmenos Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Luke 13:22 5
ποιοῦν poioûn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 3:10 5
ποιῇς poiē̂s Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 6:2 5
ποιήσομεν poiḗsomen Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 28:14 4
ποιήσωσιν poiḗsōsin Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 12:16 4
ποιοῦμεν poioûmen Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural John 11:47 4
ποιῶσιν poiō̂sin Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 7:12 4
ποιεῖσθαι poieîsthai Verb, Present, Middle, Infinitive 2 Peter 1:10 3
ποίει poíei Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Luke 10:28 3
ποιήσαντι poiḗsanti Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine Hebrews 3:2 3
ποιήσεις poiḗseis Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Philemon 1:21 3
ποιοῦντας poioûntas Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 13:41 3
ποιῇ poiē̂ Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular John 5:19 3
ἐποίησέν epoíēsén Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 1:49 3
ἐποίουν epoíoun Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 6:23 3
ποιοῦντι poioûnti Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Dative, Singular, Masculine James 4:17 2
πεποίηκα pepoíēka Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 13:12 2
πεποιηκώς pepoiēkṓs Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Acts 21:33 2
ποιήσετε poiḗsete Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 21:21 2
ποιείτω poieítō Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular Luke 3:11 2
ποιησάμενος poiēsámenos Verb, Aorist, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Acts 25:17 2
ποιησάτω poiēsátō Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular 1 Peter 3:11 2
ποιοῦμαι poioûmai Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Acts 20:24 2
ποιῶμεν poiō̂men Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural John 6:28 2
ἐποιήσαμεν epoiḗsamen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 7:22 2
πεποιήκαμεν pepoiḗkamen Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Luke 17:10 1
πεποιήκατε pepoiḗkate Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Mark 11:17 1
πεποιήκεισαν pepoiḗkeisan Verb, Pluperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Mark 15:7 1
πεποιηκέναι pepoiēkénai Verb, Perfect, Active, Infinitive John 12:18 1
πεποιηκόσιν pepoiēkósin Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Dative, Plural, Masculine Acts 3:12 1
πεποιηκότες pepoiēkótes Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine John 18:18 1
πεποιηκότος pepoiēkótos Verb, Perfect, Active, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Masculine John 12:37 1
πεποιημένων pepoiēménōn Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Hebrews 12:27 1

The 60 most common forms are shown; 17 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.


Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4160, 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 ποιεω appears 2,711 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2,345 verses in 38 books.

2,711
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
2,345
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
38 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 38 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4160) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 2,345. 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 (G4160) 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).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.