apekdechomai

BDAG glosses the verb "await eagerly" and files all eight New Testament occurrences under a single head, noting that at 1 Pet 3:20 the subject is the divine forbearance rather than a hoping believer. Grundmann, treating the whole dechomai group in TDNT, reads the double compound as an intensification of ekdechomai in the direction of eschatological expectancy, and observes that seven of the eight occurrences are bound to the parousia and the completion of salvation (Rom 8:19, 23, 25; 1 Cor 1:7; Gal 5:5; Phil 3:20; Heb 9:28). Louw and Nida place the verb at 25.62, in the domain of hopeful expectation alongside prosdechomai and related verbs. Cranfield, on Rom 8:19-25, takes the verb there to denote a concentrated expectancy sustained through suffering, paired in the passage with apokaradokia and hypomone; Fee makes a comparable point at Phil 3:20, where the verb states the standing posture of a community whose commonwealth is in heaven. Attridge reads Heb 9:28 as casting the awaiting community in the position of Israel outside the sanctuary, waiting for the high priest to reappear. The intensifying force widely assigned to the double prefix should be held alongside the general caution voiced by Barr and later by Silva against deriving a compound's sense from its parts: much of the eagerness is supplied by the eschatological settings in which Paul deploys the verb.