σπλαγχνίζομαι
to have compassion
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
- Passive deponent
- Passive in form but active in meaning.
- Middle or Passive deponent
- Middle/passive in form but active in meaning.
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”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 6 times (50%)
- Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 4 times (33%)
- Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular 2 times (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4697 appears — 12 distinct verses across 3 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.
Matthew 5 verses
- Matthew 9:36 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd.
- Matthew 14:14 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg Jesus went out, and he saw a great multitude. He had compassion on them, and healed their sick.
- Matthew 15:32 σπλαγχνίζομαι pres mid/pass.dep ind 1sg Jesus summoned his disciples and said, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat. I don't want to send them away fasting, or they might faint on the way."
- Matthew 18:27 σπλαγχνισθεὶς aor pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc The lord of that servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.
- Matthew 20:34 σπλαγχνισθεὶς aor pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched their eyes; and immediately their eyes received their sight, and they followed him.
Mark 4 verses
- Mark 1:41 σπλαγχνισθεὶς aor pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc Being moved with compassion, he stretched out his hand, and touched him, and said to him, "I want to. Be made clean."
- Mark 6:34 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg Jesus came out, saw a great multitude, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.
- Mark 8:2 σπλαγχνίζομαι pres mid/pass.dep ind 1sg "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have stayed with me now three days, and have nothing to eat.
- Mark 9:22 σπλαγχνισθεὶς aor pass.dep ptcp nom sg masc Often it has cast him both into the fire and into the water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us, and help us."
Luke 3 verses
- Luke 7:13 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said to her, "Don't cry."
- Luke 10:33 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion,
- Luke 15:20 ἐσπλαγχνίσθη aor pass.dep ind 3sg "He arose, and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
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.
σπλαγχνιζομαι (splanchnízomai) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to have compassion.” Scripture first uses it in Matthew 9:36. It turns up in 12 verses across 3 books, an uncommon footprint. It concentrates in Matthew, which alone accounts for 42% of its uses. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4697 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #904
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 904 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Gospels 12 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 3 verses · 25%
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: Was moved with compassion 3×, Had compassion 2×, He had compassion 2×
- American Standard Version: Being moved with compassion 3×, He had compassion 3×, He was moved with compassion 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: He had compassion 4×, I have compassion 2×, Moved with compassion 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Having had compassion 3×, Felt compassion 2×, He felt compassion 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4697 across 12 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4697 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G4697 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G4697 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 be moved as to one's bowels…
Word origin
Derived from σπλαγχνον (splánchnon) (G4698) — bowels.
Middle voice from G4698 ; to have the bowels yearn that is (figuratively) feel sympathy to pity : - have (be moved with) compassion.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4697 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐσπλαγχνίσθη esplanchnísthē | Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Matthew 9:36 | 6 |
| σπλαγχνισθεὶς splanchnistheìs | Verb, Aorist, Passive deponent, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 18:27 | 4 |
| σπλαγχνίζομαι splanchnízomai | Verb, Present, Middle or Passive deponent, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Matthew 15:32 | 2 |
