ἀφίημι
to send away
‘to send away’ is one of 6 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.
- 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
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Imperative
- Expresses a command or request.
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Subjunctive
- Expresses probability, purpose, or possibility (the mood of contingency).
- 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”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
2 distinct verses where G863 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 2 verses
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, αφιημι (aphíēmi) means “to send away.” Ranging over 6 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Spanning 131 verses in 11 books, it ranks among the common words of the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (31% of all occurrences). It first appears in Matthew 3:15. 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 G863 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 →
- 131
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 131 distinct verses.
- 11 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 11 of 27 New Testament books.
- #115
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 115 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 131 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 131 distinct verses.
- Gospels 115 verses · 88%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 31 verses · 24%
- Johannine 19 verses · 15%
- Pauline corpus 5 verses · 4%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 3 verses · 2%
- Revelation 3 verses · 2%
- 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: Forgive 18×, Left 18×, Let 12×
- American Standard Version: Left 18×, Forgive 15×, Leave 12×
- Berean Standard Bible: Forgive 13×, Left 12×, Let 11×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Forgive 17×, Having left 17×, Leave 13×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G863 across 174 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 G863 across 169 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 38 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 G863 across 142 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 46 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 G863 across 184 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 42 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 6 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 bid going away or depart
- to send forth, yield up, to expire
- to let go, let alone, let be
- of teachers, writers and speakers
- to permit, allow, not to hinder, to give up a thing to a person
- to leave, go way from one
Word origin
Derived from απο (apó) (G575) — from.
From G575 and ἵημι hiē mi (to send ; an intensive form of εἶμι eimi (to go )); to send forth in various applications : - cry forgive forsake lay aside leave let (alone be go have) omit put (send) away remit suffer yield up.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 36 distinct written forms G863 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 G863, 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
- απαγγελλω apangéllō G518 to report
- απαγχομαι apánchomai G519 to strangle
- απαγω apágō G520 to lead away
- απαιρω apaírō G522 to take away
- απαιτεω apaitéō G523 to demand back
- απαλγεω apalgéō G524 to cease grieving
- απαλλασσω apallássō G525 to depart
- απαλλοτριοω apallotrióō G526 to estrange
- απανταω apantáō G528 to meet
- απαρνεομαι aparnéomai G533 to deny
- απαρτι apárti G534 henceforth
- απαρχη aparchḗ G536 to offer firstfruits
- απαυγασμα apaúgasma G541 brightness
- απειδω apeídō G542 to look away
- απειμι ápeimi G548 to depart
- απειμι ápeimi G549 to depart
- απειπομην apeipómēn G550 to declare
- απεκδεχομαι apekdéchomai G553 waiting for
- απεκδυομαι apekdýomai G554 to despoil
- απελαυνω apelaúnō G556 to drive away
- απελεγμος apelegmós G557 censure
- απελευθερος apeleútheros G558 freedman
- απελπιζω apelpízō G560 not despairing
- απεναντι apénanti G561 opposite
+85 more words share this root (not shown).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 112 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αφιημι appears 81 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 80 verses in 23 books.
- 81
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 80
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 23 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 23 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 4:13 ἀποἵημι
- Exodus 9:21 ἀποἵημι
- Leviticus 4:20 ἀποἵημι
- Numbers 14:19 ἀποἵημι
- Deuteronomy 15:2 ἀποἵημι
- Joshua 10:19 ἀποἵημι
- Judges 1:34 ἀποἵημι
- Ruth 2:16 ἀποἵημι
- 2 Samuel 15:16 ἀποἵημι
- 1 Kings 19:3 ἀποἵημι
- 2 Kings 4:27 ἀποἵημι
- 1 Chronicles 16:21 ἀποἵημι
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G863) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 80. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 4:13 ἀποἵημι Cain said to Yahweh, "My punishment is greater than I can bear.
- Genesis 18:26 ἀποἵημι Yahweh said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sake."
- Genesis 20:6 ἀποἵημι God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also withheld you from sinning against me. Therefore I didn't allow you to touch her.
- Genesis 35:18 ἀποἵημι It happened, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she named him Ben-oni, but his father named him Benjamin.
- Genesis 42:33 ἀποἵημι The man, the lord of the land, said to us, 'Hereby will I know that you are honest men. Leave one of your brothers with me, and take grain for the famine of your houses, and go your way.
- Genesis 45:2 ἀποἵημι He wept aloud. The Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard.
- Genesis 50:17 ἀποἵημι "So you shall tell Joseph, 'Now please forgive the disobedience of your brothers, and their sin, because they did evil to you.' Now, please forgive the disobedience of the servants of the God of your father." Joseph wept when they spoke to him.
- Exodus 9:21 ἀποἵημι Whoever didn't regard the word of Yahweh left his servants and his cattle in the field.
- Exodus 12:23 ἀποἵημι For Yahweh will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Yahweh will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you.
- Exodus 22:4 ἀποἵημι If the stolen property is found in his hand alive, whether it is ox, donkey, or sheep, he shall pay double.
- Exodus 32:32 ἀποἵημι Yet now, if you will, forgive their sin-- and if not, please blot me out of your book which you have written."
- Leviticus 4:20 ἀποἵημι Thus shall he do with the bull; as he did with the bull of the sin offering, so shall he do with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.
- Leviticus 4:26 ἀποἵημι All its fat he shall burn on the altar, like the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin, and he will be forgiven.
- Leviticus 4:31 ἀποἵημι All its fat he shall take away, like the fat is taken away from off of the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall burn it on the altar for a sweet savor to Yahweh; and the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.
- Leviticus 4:35 ἀποἵημι All its fat he shall take away, like the fat of the lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall burn them on the altar, on the offerings of Yahweh made by fire; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin that he has sinned, and he will be forgiven.
- Leviticus 5:6 ἀποἵημι and he shall bring his trespass offering to Yahweh for his sin which he has sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin.
- Leviticus 5:10 ἀποἵημι He shall offer the second for a burnt offering, according to the ordinance; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin which he has sinned, and he shall be forgiven.
- Leviticus 5:13 ἀποἵημι The priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin that he has sinned in any of these things, and he will be forgiven; and the rest shall be the priest's, as the meal offering.'"
- Leviticus 5:16 ἀποἵημι He shall make restitution for that which he has done wrong in the holy thing, and shall add a fifth part to it, and give it to the priest; and the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and he will be forgiven.
- Leviticus 5:18 ἀποἵημι He shall bring a ram without blemish from of the flock, according to your estimation, for a trespass offering, to the priest; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning the thing in which he sinned and didn't know it, and he will be forgiven.
- Leviticus 5:26 ἀποἵημι
- Leviticus 16:10 ἀποἵημι But the goat, on which the lot fell for the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before Yahweh, to make atonement for him, to send him away for the scapegoat into the wilderness.
- Leviticus 19:22 ἀποἵημι The priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before Yahweh for his sin which he has committed: and the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven him.
- Numbers 14:19 ἀποἵημι Pardon, Please, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and according as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.
- Numbers 15:25 ἀποἵημι The priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel, and they shall be forgiven; for it was an error, and they have brought their offering, an offering made by fire to Yahweh, and their sin-offering before Yahweh, for their error:
- Numbers 15:26 ἀποἵημι and all the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, and the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them; for in respect of all the people it was done unwittingly.
- Numbers 22:13 ἀποἵημι Balaam rose up in the morning, and said to the princes of Balak, Get you into your land; for Yahweh refuses to give me leave to go with you.
- Deuteronomy 15:2 ἀποἵημι This is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release that which he has lent to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother; because Yahweh's release has been proclaimed.
- Deuteronomy 26:10 ἀποἵημι Now, behold, I have brought the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, Yahweh, have given me. You shall set it down before Yahweh your God, and worship before Yahweh your God:
- Joshua 10:19 ἀποἵημι but don't stay; pursue after your enemies, and strike the hindmost of them; don't allow them to enter into their cities: for Yahweh your God has delivered them into your hand.
- Judges 1:34 ἀποἵημι The Amorites forced the children of Dan into the hill-country; for they would not allow them to come down to the valley;
- Judges 2:21 ἀποἵημι I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations that Joshua left when he died;
- Judges 2:23 ἀποἵημι So Yahweh left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered he them into the hand of Joshua.
- Judges 3:1 ἀποἵημι Now these are the nations which Yahweh left, to prove Israel by them, even as many [of Israel] as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
- Judges 3:28 ἀποἵημι He said to them, Follow after me; for Yahweh has delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. They went down after him, and took the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites, and didn't allow a man to pass over.
- Judges 16:26 ἀποἵημι and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, Allow me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house rests, that I may lean on them.
- Ruth 2:16 ἀποἵημι Also pull out some for her from the bundles, and leave it, and let her glean, and don't rebuke her.
- 2 Samuel 15:16 ἀποἵημι The king went forth, and all his household after him. The king left ten women, who were concubines, to keep the house.
- 2 Samuel 16:10 ἀποἵημι The king said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? Because he curses, and because Yahweh has said to him, Curse David; who then shall say, Why have you done so?
- 2 Samuel 16:11 ἀποἵημι David said to Abishai, and to all his servants, Behold, my son, who came forth from my bowels, seeks my life: how much more [may] this Benjamite now [do it]? let him alone, and let him curse; for Yahweh has invited him.
- 2 Samuel 20:3 ἀποἵημι David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in custody, and provided them with sustenance, but didn't go in to them. So they were shut up to the day of their death, living in widowhood.
- 1 Kings 19:3 ἀποἵημι When he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
- 2 Kings 4:27 ἀποἵημι When she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught hold of his feet. Gehazi came near to thrust her away; but the man of God said, Let her alone: for her soul is vexed within her; and Yahweh has hid it from me, and has not told me.
- 2 Kings 23:18 ἀποἵημι He said, Let him be; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria.
- 1 Chronicles 16:21 ἀποἵημι He allowed no man to do them wrong; Yes, he reproved kings for their sakes,
- 2 Chronicles 10:4 ἀποἵημι Your father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make you the grievous service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, lighter, and we will serve you.
- 2 Chronicles 10:10 ἀποἵημι The young men who had grown up with him spoke to him, saying, Thus shall you tell the people who spoke to you, saying, Your father made our yoke heavy, but make you it lighter to us; thus shall you say to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's loins.
- 2 Chronicles 28:14 ἀποἵημι So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the assembly.
- Ezra 6:7 ἀποἵημι let the work of this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God in its place.
- Job 10:1 ἀποἵημι "My soul is weary of my life; I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G863) 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.
