ὑποστρέφω
to turn back
‘to turn back’ is one of 2 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).
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
7 distinct verses where G5290 appears in the Present tense, across 3 books. 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 3 verses
- Luke 2:43 ὑποστρέφειν pres act inf and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn't know it,
- Luke 8:39 ὑπόστρεφε pres act impv 2sg "Return to your house, and declare what great things God has done for you." He went his way, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.
- Luke 8:40 ὑποστρέφειν pres act inf It happened, when Jesus returned, that the multitude welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him.
Acts 3 verses
- Acts 8:28 ὑποστρέφων pres act ptcp nom sg masc He was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.
- Acts 13:34 ὑποστρέφειν pres act inf "Concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he has spoken thus: 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.'
- Acts 20:3 ὑποστρέφειν pres act inf When he had spent three months there, and a plot was made against him by Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he determined to return through Macedonia.
Hebrews 1 verse
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 υποστρεφω centers on the idea of “to turn back.” Luke dominates its distribution — 21 of 36 verses. Spanning 36 verses in 6 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Greek New Testament. Its earliest occurrence is Mark 14:40. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. 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 G5290 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 →
- 36
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 36 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #406
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 406 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 36 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 36 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 32 verses · 89%
- Gospels 22 verses · 61%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 3%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 3%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 3%
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: Returned 15×, Return 4×, Returning 3×
- American Standard Version: Returned 15×, Return 4×, Returning 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Returned 12×, They returned 9×, Return 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Returned 13×, Having returned 5×, They returned 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5290 across 36 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 G5290 across 33 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G5290 across 34 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5290 across 35 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.
Senses in Thayer's
The 2 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 turn about
- to return
Word origin
Derived from υπο (hypó) (G5259) — under.
Forms in the corpus
The 15 distinct written forms G5290 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 G5290, 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
- υπαγω hypágō G5217 to depart
- υπακουω hypakoúō G5219 to listen
- υπανδρος hýpandros G5220 under (married)
- υπανταω hypantáō G5221 to meet
- υπαρχω hypárchō G5225 to be at hand
- υπεικω hypeíkō G5226 to yield
- υπεναντιος hypenantíos G5227 adversary
- υπεχω hypéchō G5254 to sustain
- υπηρετης hypērétēs G5257 servant
- υπνος hýpnos G5258 sleep
- υποβαλλω hypobállō G5260 to instigate
- υπογραμμος hypogrammós G5261 example
- υποδεικνυμι hypodeíknymi G5263 to demonstrate
- υποδεχομαι hypodéchomai G5264 to welcome
- υποδεω hypodéō G5265 to bind on
- υποδικος hypódikos G5267 debtor
- υποζυγιον hypozýgion G5268 beast of burden
- υποζωννυμι hypozṓnnymi G5269 to undergird
- υποκατω hypokátō G5270 underneath
- υποκρινομαι hypokrínomai G5271 to pretend
- υπολαμβανω hypolambánō G5274 to welcome
- υποληνιον hypolḗnion G5276 wine pit
- υπομενω hypoménō G5278 to endure
- υπομιμνησκω hypomimnḗskō G5279 to remind
+15 more words share this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 41 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word υποστρεφω appears 12 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 12 verses in 7 books.
- 12
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 12
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 8:7 ὑποστρέφω
- Exodus 32:31 ὑποστρέφω
- Joshua 2:23 ὑποστρέφω
- Judges 3:19 ὑποστρέφω
- Esther 6:12 ὑποστρέφω
- Proverbs 23:5 ὑποστρέφω
- Daniel 6:19 ὑποστρέφω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5290) 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 8:7 ὑποστρέφω and he sent forth a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
- Genesis 8:9 ὑποστρέφω but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him into the ark; for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ark.
- Genesis 43:10 ὑποστρέφω for unless we had lingered, surely we would have returned a second time by now."
- Exodus 32:31 ὑποστρέφω Moses returned to Yahweh, and said, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made themselves gods of gold.
- Joshua 2:23 ὑποστρέφω Then the two men returned, and descended from the mountain, and passed over, and came to Joshua the son of Nun; and they told him all that had happened to them.
- Judges 3:19 ὑποστρέφω But he himself turned back from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand to you, king. He said, Keep silence. All who stood by him went out from him.
- Judges 7:15 ὑποστρέφω It was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation of it, that he worshiped; and he returned into the camp of Israel, and said, Arise; for Yahweh has delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
- Judges 14:8 ὑποστρέφω After a while he returned to take her; and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.
- Judges 21:23 ὑποστρέφω The children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of those who danced, whom they carried off: and they went and returned to their inheritance, and built the cities, and lived in them.
- Esther 6:12 ὑποστρέφω Mordecai came again to the king's gate. But Haman hurried to his house, mourning and having his head covered.
- Proverbs 23:5 ὑποστρέφω Why do you set your eyes on that which is not? For it certainly sprouts wings like an eagle and flies in the sky.
- Daniel 6:19 ὑποστρέφω Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste to the den of lions.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5290) 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.
