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συνέχω

to hold together

‘to hold together’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓

G4912 Strong's Greek
synéchō Transliteration
/soon-ekh'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 12 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.

At its core, συνεχω (synéchō) means “to hold together.” Its uses cluster heavily in Luke (50% of all occurrences). With 12 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. First canonically at Matthew 4:24, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 5 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
constrain
Modern gloss
to hold together
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 G4912 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.
5 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 4:24
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 4:24.
Philippians 1:23
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Philippians 1:23.
#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 →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 7 · 58%
  • Acts 3 · 25%
  • Pauline Epistles 2 · 17%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 0 · 0%

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.

  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 9 verses · 75%
  • Gospels 7 verses · 58%
  • Pauline corpus 2 verses · 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: Am i straitened 1×, Constraineth 1×, Held 1×
  • American Standard Version: Am i straitened 1×, Constraineth 1×, Crush 1×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Suffering from 2×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are crowding around 1×, Being afflicted by 1×, Being afflicted with 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4912 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Am i straitened” 1×
  • “Constraineth” 1×
  • “Held” 1×
  • “I am in a strait” 1×
  • “In” 1×
  • “Keep” 1×
  • “Sick of” 1×
  • “Stopped” 1×
  • “Taken with” 1×
  • “They were taken” 1×
  • “Throng” 1×
  • “Was pressed” 1×

Plus other, less common renderings.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4912 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Am i straitened” 1×
  • “Constraineth” 1×
  • “Crush” 1×
  • “Held” 1×
  • “Holden” 1×
  • “Holden with” 1×
  • “I am in a strait” 1×
  • “In” 1×
  • “Keep” 1×
  • “Sick” 1×
  • “Stopped” 1×
  • “They were holden with” 1×

Plus other, less common renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G4912 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Suffering from” 2×

Plus 10 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 G4912 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Are crowding around” 1×
  • “Being afflicted by” 1×
  • “Being afflicted with” 1×
  • “Controls” 1×
  • “Holding” 1×
  • “I am distressed” 1×
  • “I am hard pressed” 1×
  • “Press in on” 1×
  • “Suffering” 1×
  • “They covered” 1×
  • “They were seized” 1×
  • “Was constrained” 1×

Senses in Thayer's

The 5 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. any whole, lest it fall to pieces or something fall away from it
  2. to hold together with constraint, to compress
  3. to hold fast
  4. metaph.
  5. of the soul

Word origin

Derived from συν (sýn) (G4862) — with.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 21:37,1

From G4862 and G2192 ; to hold together that is to compress (the ears with a crowd or siege) or arrest (a prisoner); figuratively to compel perplex afflict preoccupy : - constrain hold keep in press lie sick of stop be in a strait straiten be taken with throng.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 11 distinct written forms G4912 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
συνέχομαι synéchomai Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Luke 12:50 2
συνέξουσίν synéxousín Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 19:43 1
συνέσχον synéschon Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 7:57 1
συνέχει synéchei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular 2 Corinthians 5:14 1
συνέχοντες synéchontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Luke 22:63 1
συνέχουσίν synéchousín Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 8:45 1
συνείχετο syneícheto Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 18:5 1
συνείχοντο syneíchonto Verb, Imperfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 8:37 1
συνεχομένη synechoménē Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Luke 4:38 1
συνεχομένους synechoménous Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 4:24 1
συνεχόμενον synechómenon Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Acts 28:8 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4912, 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

+125 more words share this root (not shown).

Derived from this word

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 152 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word συνεχω appears 42 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 42 verses in 17 books.

42
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
42
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
17 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 17 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4912) 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.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4912) 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.