ἀπορέω
to be perplexed
‘to be perplexed’ 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 Present-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
- Present
- Ongoing or general action in present time (imperfective aspect).
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
1 distinct verse where G639 appears in the Imperfect tense, across 1 book. 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 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.
απορεω (aporéō) is a Greek verb most often rendered “to be perplexed.” It first appears in Mark 6:20. It turns up in 6 verses across 6 books, an uncommon footprint. Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. From the same root come Α, αβαρης and αβυσσος. 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 G639 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Gospels 3 verses · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 33%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 33%
- Johannine 1 verse · 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: Doubted 1×, Doubting 1×, I stand in doubt 1×
- American Standard Version: Perplexed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Perplexed 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Being perplexed 1×, Doubting 1×, He was 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G639 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G639 across 5 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G639 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G639 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 be without resources…
- to be at a loss with one's self, be in doubt
- not to know how to decide or what to do, to be perplexed
Word origin
Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G639 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀπορούμενοι aporoúmenoi | Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | John 13:22 | 2 |
| ἀπορεῖσθαι aporeîsthai | Verb, Present, Middle, Infinitive | Luke 24:4 | 1 |
| ἀπορούμενος aporoúmenos | Verb, Present, Middle, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 25:20 | 1 |
| ἀποροῦμαι aporoûmai | Verb, Present, Middle, Indicative, 1st person, Singular | Galatians 4:20 | 1 |
| ἠπόρει ēpórei | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Mark 6:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G639, 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
- αβαρης abarḗs G4 light
- αβυσσος ábyssos G12 abyss
- αγαμος ágamos G22 unmarried
- αγενεαλογητος agenealógētos G35 without genealogy
- αγενης agenḗs G36 ignoble
- αγναφος ágnaphos G46 unprocessed
- αγνοεω agnoéō G50 to be ignorant
- αγνωσια agnōsía G56 ignorance
- αγνωστος ágnōstos G57 unknown
- αγραμματος agrámmatos G62 unlearned
- αγρυπνεω agrypnéō G69 to watch
- αδαπανος adápanos G77 free
- αδελφος adelphós G80 brother
- αδηλος ádēlos G82 obscure
- αδης háidēs G86 hell
- αδιακριτος adiákritos G87 clear
- αδιαλειπτος adiáleiptos G88 continual
- αδικος ádikos G94 unjust
- αδοκιμος adókimos G96 unapproved
- αδολος ádolos G97 guileless
- αδυνατος adýnatos G102 weak
- αζυμος ázymos G106 unleavened
- αθανασια athanasía G110 immortal
- αθεμιτος athémitos G111 unlawful
+149 more words share this root (not shown).
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 177 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word απορεω appears 10 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 10 verses in 8 books.
- 10
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 10
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 32:8 ἀπορέω
- Leviticus 25:47 ἀπορέω
- Job 37:1 ἀποῥέω
- Psalms 1:3 ἀποῥέω
- Proverbs 31:11 ἀπορέω
- Isaiah 8:23 ἀπορέω
- Jeremiah 8:18 ἀπορέω
- Hosea 13:8 ἀπορέω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G639) 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 32:8 ἀπορέω and he said, "If Esau comes to the one company, and strikes it, then the company which is left will escape."
- Leviticus 25:47 ἀπορέω "'If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him has grown poor, and sells himself to the stranger or foreigner living among you, or to a member of the stranger's family;
- Job 37:1 ἀποῥέω "Yes, at this my heart trembles, And is moved out of its place.
- Psalms 1:3 ἀποῥέω He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper.
- Proverbs 31:11 ἀπορέω The heart of her husband trusts in her. He shall have no lack of gain.
- Isaiah 8:23 ἀπορέω
- Isaiah 24:19 ἀπορέω The earth is utterly broken, the earth is torn apart, the earth is shaken violently.
- Isaiah 51:20 ἀπορέω Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of Yahweh, the rebuke of your God.
- Jeremiah 8:18 ἀπορέω Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my heart is faint within me.
- Hosea 13:8 ἀπορέω I will meet them like a bear that is bereaved of her cubs, And will tear the covering of their heart. And there I will devour them like a lioness. The wild animal will tear them.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G639) 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.
