σιγάω
to be silent
‘to be silent’ 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).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- 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
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
2 verses where G4601 appears in the Aorist tense in the Book of Acts. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Acts
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 be silent” is the headline sense of the Greek verb σιγαω (sigáō). First canonically at Luke 9:36, it enters the text early. It appears 10 verses across 4 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Luke. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4601 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Luke 3 verses 30%
- Acts 3 verses 30%
- 1 Corinthians 3 verses 30%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 60%
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 40%
- Gospels 3 verses · 30%
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: Let 2×
- American Standard Version: Held their peace 2×, Keep silence 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Are to be silent 1×, Be silent 1×, Concealed 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be silent 3×, Let 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4601 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 G4601 across 11 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4601 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4601 across 12 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.
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 keep silence, hold one's peace
- to be kept in silence, be concealed
Word origin
Derived from σιγη (sigḗ) (G4602) — silence.
From G4602 ; to keep silent (transitive or intransitive): - keep close (secret silence) hold peace.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G4601 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σιγάτω sigátō | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular | 1 Corinthians 14:28 | 2 |
| ἐσίγησαν esígēsan | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Luke 9:36 | 2 |
| σεσιγημένου sesigēménou | Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Romans 16:25 | 1 |
| σιγάτωσαν sigátōsan | Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Plural | 1 Corinthians 14:34 | 1 |
| σιγήσῃ sigḗsē | Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 18:39 | 1 |
| σιγᾶν sigân | Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive | Acts 12:17 | 1 |
| σιγῆσαι sigē̂sai | Verb, Aorist, Active, Infinitive | Acts 15:13 | 1 |
| ἐσίγησεν esígēsen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 15:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4601, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σιγαω appears 10 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 10 verses in 6 books.
- 10
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 10
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 14:14 σιγάω
- Psalms 31:3 σιγάω
- Ecclesiastes 3:7 σιγάω
- Isaiah 32:5 σιγάω
- Lamentations 3:49 σιγάω
- Amos 6:10 σιγάω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4601) 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 14:14 σιγάω Yahweh will fight for you, and you shall be still."
- Psalms 31:3 σιγάω For you are my rock and my fortress, Therefore for your name's sake lead me and guide me.
- Psalms 38:3 σιγάω There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, Neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin.
- Psalms 49:21 σιγάω
- Psalms 82:2 σιγάω "How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked?" Selah.
- Psalms 106:29 σιγάω Thus they provoked him to anger with their deeds. The plague broke in on them.
- Ecclesiastes 3:7 σιγάω A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak;
- Isaiah 32:5 σιγάω The fool shall be no more called noble, nor the scoundrel be highly respected.
- Lamentations 3:49 σιγάω My eye pours down, and doesn't cease, without any intermission,
- Amos 6:10 σιγάω "When a man's relative carries him, even he who burns him, to bring bodies out of the house, and asks him who is in the innermost parts of the house, 'Is there yet any with you?' And he says, 'No;' then he will say, 'Hush! Indeed we must not mention the name of Yahweh.'
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4601) 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.
