to refuse to be persuaded, and so to withhold obedience: to disobey, or to reject a message by not believing it
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This verb is the flat opposite of the ordinary Greek word for being persuaded and won over (ἀπιστέω marks the parallel loss of faith). At its core it names a will that will not be moved: someone has heard what God says or what the good news announces, and refuses to yield to it.
That single refusal shows up in two shades, depending on what is being refused. When the thing refused is a command or a known truth, the word reads as disobedience, an outright "no" to what God has said. When the thing refused is the gospel's call to trust Christ, the same word reads as unbelief, a settled turning-away from the message. In the passages about the gospel the two shades fuse: to reject the good news is at once to disbelieve it and to disobey it, which is why English Bibles render the very same word "believe not" in one verse and "obey not" in the next.
So the word never describes a merely intellectual doubt or an honest failure to understand. It always carries a note of the will: a person who could be persuaded, and chooses not to be.
Nuances
1ato disobey God: to refuse compliance with a command or a truth he has made known
TranslatabilityApproximate
Rom 2:8Rom 10:21Rom 11:30Rom 11:31Heb 3:18Heb 11:31*1Pe 3:20
1bto refuse to believe the gospel: the unbelief toward the message about Christ that is itself a refusal to obey it
the refusal is an act of the will that will not be moved, not merely a missing convictionJhn 3:36Act 14:2
Both
both describe a rejection of the gospel and its call to trustAct 19:9
Only unbelieving
English "unbelieving" suggests a mental state or honest doubt, dropping the note of active refusal and disobedience
“obey not”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How apeitheō differs from similar Greek words
ἀπιστέωἀπιστέω is the failure of faith itself, to disbelieve or be unfaithful; ἀπειθέω is the willful refusal to be persuaded that hardens into disobedience. The two stand side by side in 1 Peter 2:7-8 and Hebrews 3:18-19.
The failure is one of the will: an active refusal to submit to what God commands or announces, not merely a mind left unconvinced. Paul sets it opposite obedience itself, describing people who "do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness" and a "disobedient and contrary" nation.Rom 2:8Rom 10:21
This defiance can be organized and turned against others, stirring up hostility rather than staying a private state of mind. Luke reports that those who refused the message roused the Gentiles and poisoned the wider crowd.Act 14:2Act 19:9
It carries the weight of rebellion that forfeits God's promise and draws judgment, the settled refusal that kept a generation out of God's rest and perished the world of Noah's day.Heb 3:181Pe 3:20
Both
Both name the negative response to the gospel and stand as the opposite of saving faith, each tied to whether a person receives life or condemnation.Jhn 3:36Mrk 16:16
In a single passage the two words describe the very same people who reject Christ the rejected stone, one word for their not believing and the next for their not obeying the word.1Pe 2:71Pe 2:8
The failure is one of credence: refusing to accept a report as true. The women's news of the resurrection struck the disciples as an idle tale, and they would not believe it.Luk 24:11Mrk 16:11
It shades into unfaithfulness, a breach of trust within a relationship rather than defiance of a command. Paul asks whether Israel's failure to keep faith cancels God's faithfulness, and reminds Timothy that "if we are faithless, he remains faithful."Rom 3:32Ti 2:13
It can be a wavering that lingers even amid gladness, not a hardened stance. The disciples "still disbelieved for joy" when Jesus stood among them, unable to credit what they were seeing.Luk 24:41
παρακούωπαρακούω is to disobey by refusing to listen or heed what is said; ἀπειθέω is to disobey by refusing to be persuaded by it.
Names a willful refusal to believe or obey God and his message, and Scripture ties divine wrath and judgment directly to it: the one who will not be persuaded stands under condemnation.Jhn 3:361Pe 2:8Heb 3:18
Marks a settled posture of rebellion against a truth already known, so whole groups are labeled "disobedient" as a standing characterization of where they stand toward God.Rom 10:21Rom 11:30Act 14:2
Both
Both describe someone who has heard a message and will not comply with it, a failure to heed what was communicated.Rom 10:21Mat 18:17
Describes refusing to heed a person or a community one is answerable to in a specific dispute, a failure to listen rather than open defiance of God, and the remedy is exclusion from the group.Mat 18:17
Can shade toward simply overhearing a remark and letting it pass without acting on it, hearing that goes right by rather than a deliberate stand against a command.Mrk 5:36
The refusal is of the will and conduct: declining to submit to a command or message, whether or not a word is ever spoken. Romans 2:8 describes those who "do not obey the truth," 1 Peter 3:1 speaks of a husband who "obeys not the word," and 1 Peter 4:17 warns those who "obey not the gospel."Rom 2:81Pe 3:11Pe 4:17
It shades directly into unbelief, refusing to trust God or his Son. John 3:36 sets it opposite believing, so the one who "believes not the Son" will not see life; in Romans 11:30 and 11:31 Israel is those who "have not believed" God.Jhn 3:36Rom 11:30Rom 11:31
Both
Both name active resistance to God rather than mere neglect, and Paul stacks them on the same people. In Romans 10:21 Israel is at once "disobedient" (the will that will not yield) and "gainsaying" (the mouth that answers back), so the two words describe one hardened refusal from two angles.Rom 10:21
The opposition is spoken: contradicting, arguing back, or denying a claim out loud. In Acts 13:45 the crowd "spoke against" what Paul said and contradicted him; in Luke 20:27 the Sadducees are the ones who say out loud there is no resurrection; in Titus 2:9 a servant is told not to talk back to his master.Act 13:45Luk 20:27Tit 2:9
It also names a person or thing that is the target of public verbal attack, the thing everyone talks against. The infant Jesus is set as "a sign spoken against" in Luke 2:34, and in Acts 28:22 the new sect is one that is everywhere spoken against.Luk 2:34Act 28:22
Says what was refused, and it is nearly always a message that had been delivered to the hearer: the Son, the truth, the word, the good news.Jhn 3:36Rom 2:81Pe 2:81Pe 4:17
Sits directly opposite believing and being won over, so the refusal is a matter of being unpersuaded rather than of breaking a rule. John sets the one who trusts the Son against the one who refuses him, and Paul contrasts refusing the truth with being talked into wrongdoing.Jhn 3:36Rom 2:8
Labels actual opponents inside a story, identifying the particular people who dug in against a preacher in a named town or in a remembered episode.Act 14:2Act 17:5Act 19:9Heb 11:311Pe 3:20Rom 15:31
Can be softened to an everyday domestic setting, describing a husband who simply will not be persuaded by the message his wife believes, with no note of wrath attached.1Pe 3:1
Both
Both cover the very same refusal, and Paul can swap between them inside a single sentence: his readers once refused God, and now mercy has reached them by way of Israel's refusal.Rom 11:30
Both draw the same two consequences, God's anger and being shut out. Anger comes on the sons of disobedience and stays on the one who refuses the Son, and the generation barred from the rest is described either way.Eph 5:6Heb 4:6Jhn 3:36Heb 3:18
Names refusal as a settled condition that marks out a whole class of people, most often in the fixed phrase "the sons of disobedience": a standing description of who these people are rather than a report of something they did on a particular day.Eph 2:2Eph 5:6Col 3:6
Can be spoken of as something people are shut up in or held inside, a condition God himself encloses everyone within so that he can show mercy to everyone.Rom 11:32
Works as a bare cause or a cautionary pattern with nobody named: the reason an earlier generation never entered the rest, and the specimen of failure a later reader might fall into.Heb 4:6Heb 4:11
Reports refusing as something people did, so it can be set inside a story: one act in the past (Hebrews 3:18, of the people who would not go in; 1 Peter 3:20, of the people in Noah's day), a refusal that dragged on while Paul kept teaching (Acts 19:9), or a refusal that once marked people who have since been shown mercy (Romans 11:30). The adjective never reports an act this way; it only says what someone is.Heb 3:181Pe 3:20Act 19:9Rom 11:30
Where the thing refused is the message about Jesus, English Bibles often render this word "do not believe" instead of "disobey": the one who will not have the Son in John 3:36, the people set against the missionaries in Acts 14:2, the hardened hearers in Acts 19:9. The adjective is never rendered that way.Jhn 3:36Act 14:2Act 19:9
Both
Both name a refusal aimed at God himself and at what he has said, and both put that refusal in the will rather than in a failure to understand: God holds out his hands all day long to a people who will not be won over (Romans 10:21), and people who claim to know God are exposed by lives that will not yield to him (Titus 1:16).Rom 10:21Tit 1:16
Both are commonly rendered "disobedient", and both can stand alone as a name for a whole group set against God, with nothing said about what was refused: the people in Judea Paul asks prayer about (Romans 15:31), and "the disobedient" that John the Baptist is sent to turn (Luke 1:17).Rom 15:31Luk 1:17
Labels a person's settled character, so it takes its place among other words for what someone is: beside "boastful" and "proud" in the lists of what a life turned from God looks like, where the charge is being defiant toward one's own parents (Romans 1:30,2 Timothy 3:2), and beside "foolish" and "led astray" in the picture of what believers used to be (Titus 3:3).Rom 1:302Ti 3:2Tit 3:3
Because it describes the kind of person someone is, it can be denied as praise: Paul tells Agrippa he was "not disobedient" to what he had been shown (Acts 26:19), naming the person he refused to become. Every use of the verb, by contrast, reports a refusal that actually happened.Act 26:19
It becomes a standing label for a group that has set itself against the message, not a report of one moment's decision. Luke writes of "the Jews who would not be won over" as a fixed party at Antioch and at Thessalonica, and Paul asks prayer for rescue from "those who refuse" in Judea. Nobody in the New Testament is labelled by πείθω as "the persuaded ones" in this way.Act 14:2Act 17:5Rom 15:31
The refusal it names can stretch across a whole lifetime or a whole generation, and it is spoken of as a settled history God has borne with: God stretches out his hands all day long to a people who will not come round, those who refused in the wilderness were shut out of his rest, and Noah's contemporaries refused through all the years the ark was being built.Rom 10:21Heb 3:181Pe 3:20
Not believing and not complying collapse into one act here, and a penalty is announced on it. John sets refusing the Son directly opposite believing in him and says God's anger stays on such a person; Peter says people trip over the stone because they will not go along with the word, and asks what the end will be for those who will not go along with God's good news. πείθω never carries a verdict like that.Jhn 3:361Pe 2:81Pe 4:17
Both
Both frame a person's response as a matter of being won over rather than merely commanded, so what is at stake is whether someone will give themselves to what is said. Romans 2:8 puts them in one breath and attaches each to the thing a person hands themselves over to: refusing to go along with the truth on one side, going along with wrongdoing on the other. This is why English renders both with "obey" as readily as with "be persuaded".Rom 2:8
They are the two outcomes of one act of preaching, and Acts reports them side by side in the same scene. At Thessalonica some were won over and the rest would not be; in the Ephesus synagogue Paul spent three months trying to bring people round, and some hardened themselves and refused. The same audience, the same message, told with one word for each result.Act 17:5Act 19:9Act 17:4Act 19:8
Both take "the truth" as the thing a person will or will not go along with, so the same failure can be stated with either word: Romans 2:8 describes people refusing to yield to the truth, and Galatians 5:7 asks who cut in on the Galatians so that they stopped yielding to it. The vocabulary is not cleanly split between the two words.Rom 2:8Gal 5:7
It is something one person does TO another, working on them until they come round, and the New Testament uses it freely of shabby pressure: the guards are promised that the governor will be squared away, the chief priests work the crowd into demanding Barabbas, and envoys get to the king's chamberlain before they get to the king. ἀπειθέω is never done to anyone; no one can make another person refuse.Mat 28:14Mat 27:20Act 12:20
It also names a settled confidence, resting on someone rather than being talked into something: Paul is sure God will finish the work he started, sure the one he has trusted can guard what was entrusted to him, and sure nothing can cut us off from God's love. Its opposite has no matching positive state to name.Php 1:62Ti 1:12Rom 8:38
It works in ordinary human decisions with nothing religious at stake, and the person won over can be won to the wrong side: an army officer goes with the ship's captain and owner rather than with Paul, a commander is warned not to let an ambush party talk him into anything, and the four hundred who threw in with Theudas came to nothing. ἀπειθέω is always about refusing God, his messenger, or his word.Act 27:11Act 23:21Act 5:36
apeitheō in the other biblical languages
סָרַרHebrew“to rebel”The Hebrew word for a stubborn, defiant people that stands behind Paul's "disobedient" in Romans 10:21 (quoting Isaiah 65:2); it pictures a turning-away in open defiance, where ἀπειθέω pictures a refusal to be persuaded.
The refusal is bound up with unbelief: to disobey is to refuse to be persuaded of the message, so it stands as the opposite of faith rather than a mere breaking of rules.Jhn 3:361Pe 2:8
Its object is characteristically the Christian proclamation: people disobey the word of God, the gospel, or the Son who is preached to them.1Pe 4:17Heb 11:31
Both
Both name a whole people set against God, spurning his appeal; Paul renders Isaiah's rebellious people with this Greek word, calling Israel a disobedient people in the very quotation of that verse.Isa 65:2Rom 10:21
Both describe an entire generation whose active, willful resistance to God provokes his judgment, not a lapse of weakness or ignorance.Psa 78:8Heb 3:18
It carries the physical picture of an ungovernable animal or a shoulder turned away that will not bear the yoke, a bodily image of being unled and unbending.Hos 4:16Zec 7:11
It names defiance in ordinary human relationships, not only toward God: the headstrong son his parents cannot control, or the loud, willful woman.Deu 21:18Pro 7:11
מָרָהHebrew“to rebel”The standard Hebrew verb for rebelling against God's word, especially in the wilderness; it stresses open defiance, while ἀπειθέω stresses withholding the trust and compliance that persuasion should have produced.
leans toward refusing to believe: the disobedience is a rejection of a message held out to be trusted, so it sits right next to unbeliefJhn 3:36Rom 11:301Pe 2:8
regularly describes the response to the preached gospel, naming those who hear the good news and will not be persuaded by itAct 14:2Act 19:91Pe 3:1
Both
both name a willful refusal to submit to God after his word has been made plain; New Testament writers reach for the Greek word where the Hebrew word voices Israel's rebellionDeu 9:23Rom 10:21
both single out a hardened pattern of resistance that brings God's judgment, not a single slipNeh 9:26Heb 3:18
pictures stubborn, repeated defiance of a known authority, most often Israel rebelling against God across a whole history of provoking himPsa 78:8Psa 106:7Ezk 20:8
covers a child or person openly rebelling against a parent or human leader, not only against GodDeu 21:18Jos 1:18
Frames the refusal as unbelief: rejecting the Son or the preached gospel is itself the act of disobeying, and it leaves God's wrath resting on the one who will not believe.Jhn 3:36Heb 3:181Pe 4:17
Describes hostile hearers who not only reject the message but harden against it and stir up others against the ones proclaiming it.Act 14:2Act 19:9Rom 15:31
Holds out that such refusal of the word can be overcome without argument, won over by the quiet conduct of believers.1Pe 3:1
Both
Both name a refusal to submit to God's rightful authority as culpable treason that brings his judgment down on the offender.Neh 9:26Ezk 2:3Jhn 3:36Rom 10:21
Both indict a covenant people who go on resisting God despite his repeated appeals through his messengers and his outstretched hand.Dan 9:5Jos 22:16Rom 10:21Heb 3:18
Denotes political revolt: a vassal or subject people throwing off the yoke of an overlord king, breaking the treaty and withholding further tribute.Gen 14:42Ki 18:72Ki 24:1Ezk 17:15
Serves as the charge of sedition leveled at those suspected of plotting insurrection against the reigning empire.Neh 2:19Neh 6:6
What scholars say about apeitheō
Formed from the alpha-privative on the πείθω root (to persuade, to be convinced/obey), ἀπειθέω denotes the refusal of the persuasion that ought to issue in trust and compliance. Standard lexicography treats it as fundamentally volitional: BDAG glosses "disobey, be disobedient," noting that in a number of NT contexts (esp. where the object is the gospel or the word) "disbelieve" is an equally valid rendering because the two coincide. Bultmann (TDNT, s.v. πείθω κτλ.) argues that in the NT the term deliberately unites unbelief (Unglaube) and disobedience (Ungehorsam): refusal to believe the kerygma is itself an act of disobedience toward God. Louw and Nida distribute the verb across the disobedience domain (§36.23) while recognizing the belief-related uses. The pairing with ἀπιστέω in 1 Peter 2:7-8 and with ἀπιστία in Hebrews 3:18-19 confirms that unbelief and disobedience are, for these writers, two faces of the same refusal.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἀπειθέωlexicon
R. Bultmann, "πείθω, πεποίθησις, πειθαρχέω, ἀπειθής, ἀπειθέω, ἀπείθεια," TDNT 6:1-11dictionary
J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, §36.23lexicon