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συντρίβω

to break in pieces

also: break, shiver fuller range ↓

G4937 Strong's Greek
syntríbō Transliteration
/soon-tree'-bo/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 7 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.

“to break in pieces” is the headline sense of the Greek verb συντριβω (syntríbō). Scripture first uses it in Matthew 12:20. It appears 7 verses across 6 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Mark. Not a single-sense word, it carries 3 senses, among them “break” and “shiver”. See the sense tree, 7-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
break
Modern gloss
to break in pieces
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G4937 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 →

7
distinct verses
The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
6 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 12:20
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 12:20.
Revelation 2:27
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 2:27.
#1,358
by frequency
Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,358 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 5 · 71%
  • Acts 0 · 0%
  • Pauline Epistles 1 · 14%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 1 · 14%

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 7 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 5 verses · 71%
  • Johannine 2 verses · 29%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 14%
  • Pauline corpus 1 verse · 14%
  • Revelation 1 verse · 14%

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: Be broken 1×, Broken in pieces 1×, Brokenhearted 1×
  • American Standard Version: Are broken to shivers 1×, Be broken 1×, Broken in pieces 1×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Bruised 1×, Keeps mauling 1×, Shatter 1×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are shattered 1×, Bruised 1×, Crushing 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4937 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Be broken” 1×
  • “Broken in pieces” 1×
  • “Brokenhearted” 1×
  • “Bruised” 1×
  • “Bruising” 1×
  • “Shall” 1×
  • “Shall bruise” 1×
  • “Shall they be broken to shivers” 1×
  • “She brake” 1×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4937 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Are broken to shivers” 1×
  • “Be broken” 1×
  • “Broken in pieces” 1×
  • “Bruised” 1×
  • “Bruising” 1×
  • “Shall” 1×
  • “Shall bruise” 1×
  • “She brake” 1×

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G4937 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bruised” 1×
  • “Keeps mauling” 1×
  • “Shatter” 1×
  • “Shattered” 1×
  • “She broke open” 1×
  • “Will be broken” 1×
  • “Will soon crush” 1×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G4937 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Are shattered” 1×
  • “Bruised” 1×
  • “Crushing” 1×
  • “Had been shattered” 1×
  • “Having broken” 1×
  • “Will be broken” 1×
  • “Will crush” 1×

Senses in Thayer's

The 3 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. break, to break in pieces, shiver
  2. to put Satan under foot and (as a conqueror) trample on him
  3. to break down, crush

Word origin

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

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 22:19,1

From G4862 and the base of G5147 ; to crush completely that is to shatter (literally or figuratively): - break (in pieces) broken to shivers (+ -hearted) bruise.

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


Forms in the corpus

The 7 distinct written forms G4937 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
συντετριμμένον syntetrimménon Verb, Perfect, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 12:20 1
συντετρῖφθαι syntetrîphthai Verb, Perfect, Passive, Infinitive Mark 5:4 1
συντρίβεται syntríbetai Verb, Present, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Revelation 2:27 1
συντρίψασα syntrípsasa Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Mark 14:3 1
συντρίψει syntrípsei Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Romans 16:20 1
συντριβήσεται syntribḗsetai Verb, Future, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 19:36 1
συντρῖβον syntrîbon Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Neuter Luke 9:39 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4937, 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 συντριβω appears 179 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 170 verses in 29 books.

179
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
170
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
29 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 29 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4937) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 170. 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 (G4937) 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.