σώζω
to save
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.
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
Case
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
7 verses where G4982 appears in the Aorist tense in the Book of Mark. 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.
Mark
- Mark 3:4 σῶσαι aor act inf He said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?" But they were silent.
- Mark 5:23 σωθῇ aor pass subj 3sg and begged him much, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands on her, that she may be made healthy, and live."
- Mark 8:35 σῶσαι σώσει aor act inf fut act ind 3sg For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's will save it.
- Mark 10:26 σωθῆναι aor pass inf They were exceedingly astonished, saying to him, "Then who can be saved?"
- Mark 13:20 ἐσώθη aor pass ind 3sg Unless the Lord had shortened the days, no flesh would have been saved; but for the sake of the chosen ones, whom he picked out, he shortened the days.
- Mark 15:30 σῶσον aor act impv 2sg save yourself, and come down from the cross!"
- Mark 15:31 ἔσωσεν σῶσαι aor act ind 3sg aor act inf Likewise, also the chief priests mocking among themselves with the scribes said, "He saved others. He can't save himself.
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, σωζω (sṓzō) means “to save.” It first appears in Matthew 1:21. It turns up in 99 verses across 18 books, a moderately common footprint. It clusters with σωμα, σωτηρ and σωφρων under a shared root. Dig into 99-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4982 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 →
- 99
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 99 distinct verses.
- 18 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 18 of 27 New Testament books.
- #156
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 156 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 99 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 99 distinct verses.
- Gospels 47 verses · 47%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 28 verses · 28%
- Pauline corpus 28 verses · 28%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 9 verses · 9%
- Johannine 6 verses · 6%
- Hebrews 2 verses · 2%
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: Save 30×, Be saved 11×, Shall be saved 10×
- American Standard Version: Save 29×, Shall be saved 8×, Saved 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Save 26×, Be saved 12×, Will be saved 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Save 24×, Be saved 12×, Will be saved 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4982 across 118 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 26 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 G4982 across 113 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 25 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 G4982 across 106 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 19 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 G4982 across 111 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 24 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 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 save, keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction
Word origin
Origin: "from a primary sos (contraction for obsolete saoz, "safe")"
From a primary word σῶς sō s̄ (contraction for the obsolete σάος saos safe); to save that is deliver or protect (literally or figuratively): - heal preserve save (self) do well be (make) whole.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 36 distinct written forms G4982 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4982, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σωζω appears 288 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 273 verses in 30 books.
- 288
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 273
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 30 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 30 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 19:17 σώζω
- Numbers 24:19 σώζω
- Deuteronomy 33:29 σώζω
- Joshua 8:22 σώζω
- Judges 2:16 σώζω
- 1 Samuel 4:3 σώζω
- 2 Samuel 3:18 σώζω
- 1 Kings 13:31 σώζω
- 2 Kings 6:26 σώζω
- 1 Chronicles 11:14 σώζω
- 2 Chronicles 14:10 σώζω
- Ezra 8:22 σώζω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4982) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 273. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 19:17 σώζω It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that he said, "Escape for your life! Don't look behind you, neither stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed!"
- Genesis 19:20 σώζω See now, this city is near to flee to, and it is a little one. Oh let me escape there (isn't it a little one?), and my soul will live."
- Genesis 19:22 σώζω Hurry, escape there, for I can't do anything until you get there." Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
- Genesis 32:9 σώζω Jacob said, "God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, Yahweh, who said to me, 'Return to your country, and to your relatives, and I will do you good.'
- Genesis 32:31 σώζω The sun rose on him as he passed over Peniel, and he limped because of his thigh.
- Genesis 47:25 σώζω They said, "You have saved our lives! Let us find favor in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants."
- Numbers 24:19 σώζω Out of Jacob shall one have dominion, Shall destroy the remnant from the city.
- Deuteronomy 33:29 σώζω Happy are you, Israel: Who is like you, a people saved by Yahweh, The shield of your help, The sword of your excellency! Your enemies shall submit themselves to you; You shall tread on their high places.
- Joshua 8:22 σώζω The others came forth out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they struck them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
- Joshua 10:33 σώζω Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua struck him and his people, until he had left him none remaining.
- Joshua 10:40 σώζω So Joshua struck all the land, the hill-country, and the South, and the lowland, and the slopes, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but he utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded.
- Judges 2:16 σώζω Yahweh raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who despoiled them.
- Judges 2:18 σώζω When Yahweh raised them up judges, then Yahweh was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented Yahweh because of their groaning by reason of those who oppressed them and vexed them.
- Judges 3:9 σώζω When the children of Israel cried to Yahweh, Yahweh raised up a savior to the children of Israel, who saved them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.
- Judges 3:31 σώζω After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad: and he also saved Israel.
- Judges 6:14 σώζω Yahweh looked at him, and said, Go in this your might, and save Israel from the hand of Midian: have not I sent you?
- Judges 6:15 σώζω He said to him, Oh, Lord, with which shall I save Israel? behold, my family is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.
- Judges 6:31 σώζω Joash said to all who stood against him, Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? he who will contend for him, let him be put to death while [it is yet] morning: if he be a god, let him contend for himself, because one has broken down his altar.
- Judges 6:36 σώζω Gideon said to God, If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken,
- Judges 6:37 σώζω behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there be dew on the fleece only, and it be dry on all the ground, then shall I know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken.
- Judges 7:2 σώζω Yahweh said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, My own hand has saved me.
- Judges 7:7 σώζω Yahweh said to Gideon, By the three hundred men who lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand; and let all the people go every man to his place.
- Judges 8:22 σώζω Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, Rule you over us, both you, and your son, and your son's son also; for you have saved us out of the hand of Midian.
- Judges 10:1 σώζω After Abimelech there arose to save Israel Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar; and he lived in Shamir in the hill-country of Ephraim.
- Judges 10:12 σώζω The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites, did oppress you; and you cried to me, and I saved you out of their hand.
- Judges 10:13 σώζω Yet you have forsaken me, and served other gods: therefore I will save you no more.
- Judges 10:14 σώζω Go and cry to the gods which you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.
- Judges 12:2 σώζω Jephthah said to them, I and my people were at great strife with the children of Ammon; and when I called you, you didn't save me out of their hand.
- Judges 13:5 σώζω for, behold, you shall conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb: and he shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
- 1 Samuel 4:3 σώζω When the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Why has Yahweh struck us today before the Philistines? Let us get the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of Shiloh to us, that it may come among us, and save us out of the hand of our enemies.
- 1 Samuel 7:8 σώζω The children of Israel said to Samuel, "Don't cease to cry to Yahweh our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines."
- 1 Samuel 9:16 σώζω Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man out of the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel; and he shall save my people out of the hand of the Philistines: for I have looked on my people, because their cry is come to me.
- 1 Samuel 10:1 σώζω Then Samuel took the vial of oil, and poured it on his head, and kissed him, and said, Isn't it that Yahweh has anointed you to be prince over his inheritance?
- 1 Samuel 10:27 σώζω But certain worthless fellows said, How shall this man save us? They despised him, and brought him no present. But he held his peace.
- 1 Samuel 11:3 σώζω The elders of Jabesh said to him, Give us seven days' respite, that we may send messengers to all the borders of Israel; and then, if there be none to save us, we will come out to you.
- 1 Samuel 14:6 σώζω Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, Come, and let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint to Yahweh to save by many or by few.
- 1 Samuel 14:23 σώζω So Yahweh saved Israel that day: and the battle passed over by Beth Aven.
- 1 Samuel 14:39 σώζω For, as Yahweh lives, who saves Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die. But there was not a man among all the people who answered him.
- 1 Samuel 14:47 σώζω Now when Saul had taken the kingdom over Israel, he fought against all his enemies on every side, against Moab, and against the children of Ammon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines: and wherever he turned himself, he put [them] to the worse.
- 1 Samuel 17:27 σώζω The people answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man who kills him.
- 1 Samuel 19:11 σώζω Saul sent messengers to David's house, to watch him, and to kill him in the morning: and Michal, David's wife, told him, saying, If you don't save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be slain.
- 1 Samuel 19:12 σώζω So Michal let David down through the window: and he went, and fled, and escaped.
- 1 Samuel 23:2 σώζω Therefore David inquired of Yahweh, saying, Shall I go and strike these Philistines? Yahweh said to David, Go, and strike the Philistines, and save Keilah.
- 1 Samuel 23:5 σώζω David and his men went to Keilah, and fought with the Philistines, and brought away their cattle, and killed them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.
- 1 Samuel 25:26 σώζω Now therefore, my lord, as Yahweh lives, and as your soul lives, seeing Yahweh has withheld you from blood guiltiness, and from avenging yourself with your own hand, now therefore let your enemies, and those who seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal.
- 1 Samuel 25:31 σώζω that this shall be no grief to you, nor offense of heart to my lord, either that you have shed blood without cause, or that my lord has avenged himself. When Yahweh shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember your handmaid.
- 1 Samuel 25:33 σώζω and blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, that have kept me this day from blood guiltiness, and from avenging myself with my own hand.
- 1 Samuel 27:1 σώζω David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me any more in all the borders of Israel: so shall I escape out of his hand.
- 1 Samuel 30:17 σώζω David struck them from the twilight even to the evening of the next day: and there not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who rode on camels and fled.
- 2 Samuel 3:18 σώζω now then do it; for Yahweh has spoken of David, saying, By the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4982) 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.
