σχίζω
to split
‘to split’ is one of 3 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).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
Voice
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
2 verses where G4977 appears in the Aorist tense in the Book of Luke. 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.
Luke
- Luke 5:36 σχίσας σχίσει aor act ptcp nom sg masc fut act ind 3sg He also told a parable to them. "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old garment, or else he will tear the new, and also the piece from the new will not match the old.
- Luke 23:45 ἐσχίσθη aor pass ind 3sg The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.
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.
The Greek verb σχιζω centers on the idea of “to split.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 27:51. The Greek New Testament uses it across 9 verses — uncommon. Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. Sharing its root, it stands alongside σχισμα. 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 G4977 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #978
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 978 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 9 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 9 distinct verses.
- Gospels 7 verses · 78%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 4 verses · 44%
- Johannine 2 verses · 22%
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 rent 3×, Was divided 2×
- American Standard Version: Was rent 3×, Rent 2×, Was divided 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Was torn 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Was split 3×, Was divided 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4977 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G4977 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G4977 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G4977 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 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.
- to cleave, cleave asunder, rend
- to divide by rending
- to split into factions, be divided
Word origin
Origin: apparently a primary verb
Apparently a primary verb; to split or sever (literally or figuratively): - break divide open rend make a rent.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G4977 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἐσχίσθη eschísthē | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Matthew 27:51 | 6 |
| σχίσας schísas | Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Luke 5:36 | 1 |
| σχίσει schísei | Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Luke 5:36 | 1 |
| σχίσωμεν schísōmen | Verb, Aorist, Active, Subjunctive, 1st person, Plural | John 19:24 | 1 |
| σχιζομένους schizoménous | Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Mark 1:10 | 1 |
| ἐσχίσθησαν eschísthēsan | Verb, Aorist, Passive, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Matthew 27:51 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4977, 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 σχιζω appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 8 verses in 6 books.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 8
- 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
- Genesis 22:3 σχίζω
- Exodus 14:21 σχίζω
- 1 Samuel 6:14 σχίζω
- Ecclesiastes 10:9 σχίζω
- Isaiah 36:22 σχίζω
- Zechariah 14:4 σχίζω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4977) 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.
- Genesis 22:3 σχίζω Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went to the place of which God had told him.
- Exodus 14:21 σχίζω Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
- 1 Samuel 6:14 σχίζω The cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, and stood there, where there was a great stone: and they split the wood of the cart, and offered up the cattle for a burnt offering to Yahweh.
- Ecclesiastes 10:9 σχίζω Whoever carves out stones may be injured by them. Whoever splits wood may be endangered thereby.
- Isaiah 36:22 σχίζω Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.
- Isaiah 37:1 σχίζω It happened, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he tore his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh.
- Isaiah 48:21 σχίζω They didn't thirst when he led them through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them; he split the rock also, and the waters gushed out.
- Zechariah 14:4 σχίζω His feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in two, from east to west, making a very great valley. Half of the mountain will move toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4977) 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.
