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βλέπω

to see

‘to see’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓

G991 Strong's Greek
blépō Transliteration
/blep'-o/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 132 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

βλεπω — transliterated blépō — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “to see.” Its English rendering has broadened — “see” classically, “seeing” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 116 verses in 16 books, it ranks among the common words of the Greek New Testament. Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 5:28. Thayer's distinguishes 3 senses for it. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
behold
Modern gloss
to see
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G991 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 →

116
distinct verses
The word appears in 116 distinct verses.
16 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 16 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 5:28
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 5:28.
Revelation 22:8
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:8.
#126
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 126 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 116 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 59 · 51%
  • Acts 13 · 11%
  • Pauline Epistles 22 · 19%
  • General Epistles 10 · 9%
  • Revelation 12 · 10%

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 116 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 59 verses · 51%
  • Johannine 28 verses · 24%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 26 verses · 22%
  • Pauline corpus 22 verses · 19%
  • Revelation 12 verses · 10%
  • Hebrews 8 verses · 7%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 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: See 19×, Take heed 11×, Seeth 8×
  • American Standard Version: See 13×, Seeing 9×, Take heed 9×
  • Berean Standard Bible: See 10×, See to it 7×, Seeing 6×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Seeing 21×, See 16×, Being seen 7×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G991 across 146 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “See” 19×
  • “Take heed” 11×
  • “Seeth” 8×
  • “Beware” 7×
  • “Seeing” 7×
  • “Seen” 5×
  • “We see” 5×
  • “Ye see” 5×
  • “He saw” 4×
  • “Look” 4×
  • “He seeth” 3×
  • “I see” 3×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 30 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.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G991 across 142 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “See” 13×
  • “Seeing” 9×
  • “Take heed” 9×
  • “Seeth” 8×
  • “Beware” 6×
  • “I see” 5×
  • “Look” 5×
  • “Saw” 4×
  • “Seen” 4×
  • “We see” 4×
  • “Behold” 3×
  • “He saw” 3×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 29 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 G991 across 128 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “See” 10×
  • “See to it” 7×
  • “Seeing” 6×
  • “You see” 5×
  • “Is seen” 4×
  • “Be on your guard” 3×
  • “Can see” 3×
  • “Do you see” 3×
  • “He sees” 3×
  • “I see” 3×
  • “Saw” 3×
  • “Sees” 3×

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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 4 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G991 across 147 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Seeing” 21×
  • “See” 16×
  • “Being seen” 7×
  • “He sees” 6×
  • “You see” 6×
  • “I see” 5×
  • “Look” 5×
  • “Watch” 5×
  • “Looking” 4×
  • “They see” 4×
  • “Watch out” 4×
  • “We see” 4×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 27 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 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.

  1. to see, discern, of the bodily eye
  2. metaph. to see with the mind's eye
  3. in a geographical sense of places, mountains, buildings, etc. turning towards any quarter, as it were, facing it

Word origin

Origin: a primary word

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 10:15,7

A primary verb; to look at (literally or figuratively): - behold beware lie look (on to) perceive regard see sight take heed. Compare G3700 .

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 27 distinct written forms G991 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
βλέπετε blépete Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 24:4 30
βλέποντες blépontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 13:13 12
βλέπων blépōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 5:28 12
βλέπει blépei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 8:23 10
βλέπειν blépein Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Matthew 12:22 10
βλέπεις blépeis Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Singular Matthew 7:3 9
βλέπωσιν blépōsin Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Plural Mark 4:12 7
βλέπομεν blépomen Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural John 9:41 5
βλέπουσιν blépousin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 13:13 5
βλέπω blépō Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Mark 8:24 5
βλεπόμενα blepómena Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Neuter 2 Corinthians 4:18 4
Βλέπετε Blépete Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Mark 13:9 3
βλέποντας blépontas Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine Matthew 15:31 2
βλέψετε blépsete Verb, Future, Active, Indicative, 2nd person, Plural Matthew 13:14 2
βλεπέτω blepétō Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 3rd person, Singular 1 Corinthians 3:10 2
βλεπομένων blepoménōn Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Neuter Hebrews 11:1 2
βλεπόντων blepóntōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Acts 1:9 2
βλέπε blépe Verb, Present, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Colossians 4:17 1
βλέποντα bléponta Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Acts 27:12 1
βλέπῃ blépē Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 3rd person, Singular John 5:19 1
βλέπῃς blépēs Verb, Present, Active, Subjunctive, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 3:18 1
βλέψον blépson Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Acts 3:4 1
βλεπομένη blepoménē Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Romans 8:24 1
βλεπόμενον blepómenon Verb, Present, Passive, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Hebrews 11:3 1
ἔβλεπεν éblepen Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Acts 9:8 1
ἔβλεπον éblepon Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural John 13:22 1
ἔβλεψα éblepsa Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Revelation 22:8 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G991, 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

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word βλεπω appears 108 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 97 verses in 27 books.

108
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
97
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
27 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 27 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G991) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 97. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G991) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.