to kill: to put someone to death, or to destroy something so completely that it no longer has any life in it
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its core this verb means to take a life. In the Gospels it is the word for the deliberate, often official, decision to do away with someone: the chief priests plotting against Jesus, kings ordering an execution, mobs and authorities putting prophets and apostles to death. It is rarely the word for an accident or a battlefield death and usually carries the sense of an intended killing, frequently with a legal or judicial edge.
The same verb also stretches to a figurative killing, where what is destroyed is not a body but a relationship or a way of life. Paul says sin used a commandment to kill him, the written law kills, and the cross killed the hostility between Jew and Gentile. In these places the word keeps its force of putting something to death once and for all; it has simply moved from a person to a power or a barrier.
The literal and figurative uses are not two different words. They share one idea, to bring life to an end, and the figurative sense works precisely because the literal one is so stark.
Nuances
1ato put a person to death; to kill, often by deliberate or official action
carries the deliberate, often violent putting to death that the Greek intends, which is why older English Bibles reach for slayLuk 11:49Act 3:15
Both
both name an intentional killingRev 2:13
Only slay
slay in English now sounds archaic or poetic, which can soften or distance a killing the text presents as deadly serious
“put to death”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How apokteinō differs from similar Greek words
φονεύωthe word behind the commandment do not murder; it names killing as the crime of murder, while this word is the broader to put to death, including lawful execution and figurative destroying
A broad word for putting to death by any means, including lawful execution and killing in conflict, carrying no automatic verdict of guilt.Mat 16:21Mrk 8:31Jhn 18:31
Used for destroying a person or even a thing figuratively, and for the threat against body and soul, not only for one unlawful act.Mat 10:28Luk 12:4
Both
Both describe one person taking the life of another, and both are used of the killing of the righteous.Mat 23:37Mat 23:35
The specific word for murder, the unlawful taking of life, and the term the commandment uses when it forbids killing.Mat 5:21Mat 19:18Rom 13:9
Frames killing as a moral crime that condemns the one who does it, set beside other sins like adultery and theft.Jas 2:11Jas 4:2
θανατόωto put to death, often the formal act of condemning and executing; close in sense but this word stresses the act of killing itself rather than the sentence behind it
Leans toward putting to death by sentence or handing over to die, the formal condemning of someone to death.Mat 26:59Mat 27:1Mrk 14:55
Carries a strong figurative use for being put to death to something, or putting sinful deeds to death, that the plainer word does not.Rom 7:4Rom 8:13
σφάζωto slaughter or butcher, as an animal or a sacrificial victim, with the violence of cutting the throat; this word names the killing without that picture of slaughter
A general word for killing by any method, used widely for executions, plots, and persecution, with no built-in picture of how it is done.Mat 16:21Mrk 12:8Act 7:52
Covers killing as a threat or intent, including the destruction of body and soul.Mat 10:28
Both
Both describe putting a person to death, and both are used of the martyrs slain for their witness.Rev 6:9Mat 24:9
The plain, general verb for slaying a person, the ordinary word the Gospels use for killing the prophets and messengers God sends.Mat 23:37Mat 21:35
The word for the foretold killing of Jesus and for taking a life outright, including the warning about the one who can kill the body.Mat 16:21Mat 10:28
Both
Both mean to put a person to death by deliberate design, and both describe the drive to kill Jesus.Luk 22:2Jhn 5:18
Reaches beyond killing to the broader idea of doing away with or taking up, so it can mean to adopt and raise a rescued child, or to abolish and set aside an arrangement.Act 7:21Heb 10:9
When it does mean kill, it clusters around official executions and organized plots: rulers destroying rivals and conspirators scheming to have someone put to death.Mat 2:16Act 9:23Act 12:2
Names the specific act of putting a person to death, the physical killing itself, as the means by which someone dies.Mrk 8:31Mat 26:4Act 7:52
Describes deliberate violence aimed at a particular victim, the act of slaying by hand, stoning, or execution.Mat 21:35Mat 23:37Jhn 18:31
Both
Both can describe putting a person to death: the one verse that holds both pairs them directly, killing the body alongside destroying the whole person.Mat 10:28
Both name lethal hostility toward Jesus, the religious leaders seeking either to kill him or to do away with him entirely.Mrk 14:1Mrk 11:18
Reaches far beyond killing to total ruin and being lost, used of things spoiling, food spoiling, and people perishing eternally, not only of death.Mat 9:17Jhn 3:16Luk 13:3
In its middle voice means to be lost or to go missing, as a sheep, coin, or son is lost and then found again, a sense killing never carries.Luk 15:4Luk 15:8Luk 15:24
Frames a plot or judgment as bringing someone to utter destruction, wiping them out rather than simply slaying one person.Mat 27:20Mat 22:7Mrk 12:9
It reports the outcome, that someone ends up dead, and says nothing about how it was done, so it covers a court sentence, a mob attack, or a plot carried out by any means.Jhn 18:31Mat 26:4Mat 21:39
It is the settled word for the killing of God's messengers and of his people, the language the New Testament uses for persecution and martyrdom.Mat 23:37Mat 24:9Rev 2:13
It works where no physical blow is in view at all, naming whatever brings death, including things that kill in a figure of speech.Rom 7:112Co 3:6Eph 2:16
Both
Both can describe an act that ends a human life, which is why English Bibles render one "killed" and the other "struck down" in much the same kind of scene.Act 7:24Act 7:52
Both are used of a death handed down as judgment, whether the agent is a human hand or heaven itself.Act 12:23Rev 9:18
It names the blow itself rather than its result, so the one struck may be left very much alive.Act 12:7Luk 22:50Mat 26:51
The one who strikes is often God or his angel, and what is struck can be a place or a whole people rather than a single victim.Rev 11:6Rev 19:15
It carries the wording of the Hebrew prophets into the Gospel story, since it is the word used when Zechariah's line about striking the shepherd is quoted.Mat 26:31Mrk 14:27
It covers a death with no wrongdoer at all. The tower at Siloam simply fell and killed the eighteen people standing under it, and in Revelation the killing is done by sword, famine, plague, and wild animals rather than by a guilty person.Luk 13:4Rev 6:8
It is the word for putting someone to death by right and by power, so it can be spoken of as an authority a person has or lacks. Israel's leaders tell Pilate their law does not permit them to put anyone to death, and Jesus tells his friends to fear the one who, having killed, can then throw a person into hell.Jhn 18:31Luk 12:5
It counts the dead, scaling from one victim to whole populations: a third of humanity killed, a quarter of the earth handed over to death.Rev 9:15Rev 9:18
Both
Both name a human life violently taken, and both fall on the innocent: the tenants killed the vineyard owner's son, and the faithful of earlier generations died by the slaughter of the sword.Mrk 12:8Heb 11:37
It names a killing as a sin, and appears in lists of the evils that come out of the human heart, standing beside adultery, theft, false witness, and envy. These are wrongs a person is called to repent of, not events to be reported.Mat 15:19Rom 1:29Rev 9:21
It works as the formal criminal charge a court holds against someone. Barabbas sat in prison for rioting and for a killing committed during the riot, and that charge is what the crowd asks Pilate to set aside.Mrk 15:7Luk 23:19Luk 23:25
apokteinō in the other biblical languages
הָרַגHebrew“to kill”the common Hebrew verb for killing or slaying a person, the nearest counterpart in the Old Testament
In the Gospels this is the word for putting Jesus to death: the repeated predictions that he would be handed over and killed, and the plots to do it.Mrk 8:31Mat 16:21Jhn 5:18
It carries a strong sense of killing God's messengers and his people: the prophets murdered before, the disciples warned they will be put to death, the martyred witnesses.Mat 23:37Luk 12:4Rev 11:7
It is used figuratively for what destroys spiritual life, with no physical death in view: sin killing a person, or the letter of the law that kills.Rom 7:112Co 3:6
Both
Both are the ordinary word for deliberately taking a human life by violence, the plain act of killing or slaying.Gen 4:8Mat 22:6
Both are used of killing God's prophets and faithful servants, the recurring charge that his messengers are put to death.1Ki 19:10Mat 23:37
It is the word for the first murder and for personal bloodshed between people: Cain killing Abel, Esau's plan to kill Jacob, Moses killing the Egyptian.Gen 4:8Gen 27:41Exo 2:14
It covers large-scale slaughter in war and in massacre: armies and cities put to the sword, whole groups wiped out.Jos 8:24Est 9:6Jdg 9:5
It is used of God himself slaying as an act of judgment.Amo 9:1Psa 78:31Isa 27:1
מוּתHebrew“to die”the basic Hebrew word to die or, when causative, to put to death; broader, covering any death, where this Greek word means specifically to kill
Always means one person taking another's life, the active deed of killing, never simply dying of oneself.Mat 16:21Mrk 12:8Act 7:52
Both
Both name the deliberate putting of a person to death; Hebrew uses the same root in its causative for executing or killing, where Greek uses this word.Exo 21:12Num 35:16Mat 26:4
Both are used for executing wrongdoers under sentence, the formal carrying out of a death penalty.Lev 24:16Deu 13:9Jhn 18:31
It is the plain, everyday word for putting a person to death, and it carries the running narrative of who killed whom: tenants who kill the owner's son, a crowd that seizes Paul and tries to kill him, soldiers ready to kill their prisoners.Mat 21:39Act 21:31Act 27:42
It names the settled decision of a group to have someone killed, the plotting and the sworn oath that come before the death itself.Mat 26:4Jhn 11:53Act 23:12
It carries a whole pattern of history: the repeated killing of the prophets and messengers God sends, treated as one long habit rather than a single crime.Mat 23:37Luk 11:47Act 7:52
It marks the limit of what a killer can reach: he can end the body and go no further, which is why Jesus tells his followers not to fear such people.Mat 10:28Luk 12:4
Both
Both name the deliberate taking of a human life, a death that someone intends and brings about, never an accident or a natural end.Psa 139:19Mat 26:4
Both can put God in the position of the one who takes life, and neither treats that as murder: the Hebrew poem accepts or asks for it, and the Greek saying names the one whose power to kill outreaches any human threat.Job 13:15Luk 12:5
Both describe the strong killing the defenseless, with the victim's innocence as the point of the sentence.Job 24:14Act 7:52
All three of its appearances sit in poetry, inside a speech or a prayer, and none of them reports a killing that actually happened; each imagines or wishes for a death rather than recording one.Job 13:15Job 24:14Psa 139:19
In two of its three appearances the one who takes life is God himself, and the speaker either submits to that possibility or asks for it outright.Job 13:15Psa 139:19
It is a rare word in Hebrew while being the ordinary word for killing in Aramaic, so it lands in these poems with a foreign, heightened ring that a common Hebrew verb for killing would not have.Job 13:15Job 24:14
It reaches past physical death to a killing with no body involved at all, where what is put to death is a power, a written code, or the hostility between two peoples.Rom 7:112Co 3:6Eph 2:16
It is at home in killing driven by private hatred, with no court or throne behind it: tenants murdering the heir to seize his inheritance, a crowd seizing a man in the temple, a band of conspirators binding themselves by oath.Mat 21:39Act 21:31Act 23:12
It carries the long story of God's messengers being put to death, from the prophets of Israel to the disciples warned what awaits them and the faithful witness killed for his testimony.Mat 23:37Luk 12:4Rev 2:13
Both
Both are the plain, everyday word for taking a human life in their own language, the Aramaic verb through the Aramaic chapters of Daniel and the Greek verb across the New Testament, which is why the Greek word is the natural counterpart when a New Testament writer tells the same kind of story. Neither one passes a verdict on the killing by itself; each simply reports that someone died at another's hand.Dan 5:30Mrk 12:5
Both cover an execution decided from above, where a ruler or a council settles that a particular person is to die and officers are sent to carry the order out.Dan 2:13Dan 2:14Jhn 18:31Luk 18:33
Both can also report a death that nobody intended, where the cause is a thing rather than a person: the flame of an overheated furnace, or a tower that falls on the people below it.Dan 3:22Luk 13:4
Its whole world is the throne room of a foreign empire, where killing is an instrument of royal policy: a single decree condemns an entire class of court officials, and a king is remembered for killing and for sparing exactly as he pleased.Dan 2:13Dan 5:19
It reports a sentence carried out on an empire rather than on a person: the heavenly court sits, the judgment is given, and the beast standing for that kingdom is killed.Dan 7:11
What scholars say about apokteinō
Standard lexica treat ἀποκτείνω as a single verb meaning to put to death, to kill, with a well attested figurative extension to destroying a power or relationship. BDAG distinguishes the literal sense (to kill, deprive of life) from the figurative (to destroy, render dead, as of sin, the law, or hostility), and notes its frequent use in the Gospels for the planned killing of Jesus and the prophets. The figurative use in Romans 7:11,2 Corinthians 3:6, and Ephesians 2:16 is recognized as a deliberate stretch of the same verb, not a separate word.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἀποκτείνωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἀποκτείνωlexicon
Schneider, G., "ἀποκτείνω," in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT), ed. H. Balz and G. Schneiderdictionary