ἄρχομαι
to lead
‘to lead’ 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
- Middle deponent
- Middle in form but active in meaning.
- Middle
- The subject acts on or for itself, or with special interest in the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
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.
Every verse where G756 appears in the Book of Luke — 31 distinct verses. 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 3:8 ἄρξησθε aor mid subj 2pl Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and don't begin to say among yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father;' for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones!
- Luke 3:23 ἀρχόμενος pres mid ptcp nom sg masc Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli,
- Luke 4:21 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg He began to tell them, "Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
- Luke 5:21 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, "Who is this that speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?"
- Luke 7:15 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg He who was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother.
- Luke 7:24 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg When John's messengers had departed, he began to tell the multitudes about John, "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
- Luke 7:38 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg Standing behind at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
- Luke 7:49 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl Those who sat at the table with him began to say to themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"
- Luke 9:12 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg The day began to wear away; and the twelve came, and said to him, "Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and farms, and lodge, and get food, for we are here in a deserted place."
- Luke 11:29 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg When the multitudes were gathering together to him, he began to say, "This is an evil generation. It seeks after a sign. No sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah, the prophet.
- Luke 11:53 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl As he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be terribly angry, and to draw many things out of him;
- Luke 12:1 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg Meanwhile, when a multitude of many thousands had gathered together, so much so that they trampled on each other, he began to tell his disciples first of all, "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
- Luke 12:45 ἄρξηται aor mid subj 3sg But if that servant says in his heart, 'My lord delays his coming,' and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken,
- Luke 13:25 ἄρξησθε aor mid subj 2pl When once the master of the house has risen up, and has shut the door, and you begin to stand outside, and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us!' then he will answer and tell you, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'
- Luke 13:26 ἄρξεσθε fut mid ind 2pl Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drink in your presence, and you taught in our streets.'
- Luke 14:9 ἄρξῃ aor mid subj 2sg and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, 'Make room for this person.' Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place.
- Luke 14:18 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl They all as one began to make excuses. "The first said to him, 'I have bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please have me excused.'
- Luke 14:29 ἄρξωνται aor mid subj 3pl Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him,
- Luke 14:30 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg saying, 'This man began to build, and wasn't able to finish.'
- Luke 15:14 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg When he had spent all of it, there arose a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in need.
- Luke 15:24 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl for this, my son, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.' They began to celebrate.
- Luke 19:37 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl As he was now getting near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they had seen,
- Luke 19:45 ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg He entered into the temple, and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it,
- Luke 20:9 Ἤρξατο aor mid.dep ind 3sg He began to tell the people this parable. "A man planted a vineyard, and rented it out to some farmers, and went into another country for a long time.
- Luke 21:28 ἀρχομένων pres mid ptcp gen pl masc But when these things begin to happen, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near."
- Luke 22:23 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl They began to question among themselves, which of them it was who would do this thing.
- Luke 23:2 ἤρξαντο aor mid.dep ind 3pl They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting the nation, forbidding paying taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king."
- Luke 23:5 ἀρξάμενος aor mid ptcp nom sg masc But they insisted, saying, "He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee even to this place."
- Luke 23:30 ἄρξονται fut mid ind 3pl Then they will begin to tell the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and tell the hills, 'Cover us.'
- Luke 24:27 ἀρξάμενος aor mid ptcp nom sg masc Beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he explained to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
- Luke 24:47 ἀρξάμενοι aor mid ptcp nom pl masc and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
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.
αρχομαι — transliterated árchomai — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to lead.” It first appears in Matthew 4:17. With 84 verses in 7 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Luke (37% of all occurrences). Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G756 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 →
- 84
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 84 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #204
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 204 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 84 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 84 distinct verses.
- Gospels 72 verses · 86%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 41 verses · 49%
- Johannine 2 verses · 2%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 1%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%
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: Began 43×, He began 12×, Beginning 7×
- American Standard Version: Began 38×, He began 11×, Beginning 9×
- Berean Standard Bible: Began 44×, He began 9×, Beginning 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G756 across 84 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 G756 across 88 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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 G756 across 78 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.
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 the first to do (anything), to begin
- to be chief, leader, ruler
- to begin, make a beginning
Word origin
Derived from αρχω (árchō) (G757) — to rule.
Middle voice of G757 (through the implication of precedence ); to commence (in order of time): - rehearse from the) begin (-ning).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 18 distinct written forms G756 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 G756, 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
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. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
