StrongerBible

apoleipō

ἀπολείπω

GreekG0620“leave, remain, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 5:32Luk 16:182Ti 4:132Ti 4:20Tit 1:5Heb 4:6Heb 4:9Heb 10:26Jud 1:6
Compound of
apoἀπόaway from684G575
leipōλείπωto lack6G3007
Word studyah-po-LAY-poverb

What apoleipō means

to leave a person or thing behind and go on without it, so that what is left stays where it is

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Picture someone packing for a journey. Whatever does not go along is set down and stays put, still there after the traveler has gone. That is the picture inside this verb: not throwing a thing away, but going on without it. Paul uses it exactly that way in his last letters, leaving a cloak with a friend at Troas, leaving a sick companion behind at Miletus, and leaving Titus on Crete with a job to finish.

The same verb can be turned around to describe not the act of leaving but what has been left, and that is where Hebrews builds an argument on it. If God promised a rest and the first hearers never entered it, then the rest is still lying there unclaimed, so a sabbath rest is left for the people of God. Put the same wording in the negative and it becomes a warning: for someone who goes on sinning deliberately after knowing the truth, no sacrifice is left.

The third use is the darkest, and it is the same act aimed at something a person had no business leaving. In Jude 1:6 the angels leave behind the home that was properly theirs. The word is not a technical term for rebellion; it is the ordinary word for walking off and not coming back. What makes the sentence terrible is what they walked away from, not the verb.

Titus 1:5 shows that the writers heard the wordplay. Paul left Titus on Crete so that Titus could set right what had been left undone, the shorter verb for falling short (λείπω) standing right beside the longer one built from it.

Nuances

1ato leave a thing or a person behind in a place and move on
TranslatabilityDirect
2Ti 4:132Ti 4:20Tit 1:5
1bto be what is left over, and so to still stand or still be on offer
Heb 4:6Heb 4:9Heb 10:26
1cto walk away from a place or a post that was properly one's own
Jud 1:6

Uncategorized

Awaiting AI sense categorization.

2 verses
Mat 5:32Luk 16:18

What scholars say about apoleipō

BDAG divides ἀπολείπω into three uses: active, to leave behind (2 Tim 4:13, 20; Titus 1:5); passive, to be left or remain, especially the impersonal ἀπολείπεται of Heb 4:6, 9 and 10:26; and to abandon or desert (Jude 6). LSJ documents the same range across classical and Hellenistic Greek, where the passive regularly means to be left over or to survive, and Moulton and Milligan record the ordinary documentary use of the verb for property or persons left behind. Louw and Nida distribute the New Testament instances across three semantic domains (leaving behind, remaining in existence, and departing from) while still treating them as one lexeme. On Hebrews, Attridge and Ellingworth both read the impersonal ἀπολείπεται of Heb 4:9 as the writer's inference drawn from the preceding argument rather than a fresh premise, which is why the weight of the σαββατισμός clause rests on it. Bauckham reads Jude 6 against the Watchers tradition of 1 Enoch, where the angels' leaving of their proper οἰκητήριον is the desertion of an assigned station rather than a simple change of address. Two further tokens carry this Strong's number in the STEPBible tagging, Matt 5:32 and Luke 16:18, but the form there, ἀπολελυμένην, is the perfect middle/passive participle of ἀπολύω (G0630), which the same clauses tag as G0630 for ἀπολύων; the assignment is a numbering slip in the source data rather than a lexical claim, so those two verses are left unclassified.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. ἀπολείπωlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. ἀπολείπωlexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. ἀπολείπωlexicon
  • Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. ἀπολείπωlexicon
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1989), on Hebrews 4:1-11commentary
  • Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1993), on Hebrews 4:9commentary
  • Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 50 (Word, 1983), on Jude 6commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἀπολείπω

present passive indicative 3s

ἀπολείπεται

Heb 4:6, Heb 4:9, Heb 10:26

second-aorist active indicative 1s

ἀπέλιπον, ἀπέλιπόν

2Ti 4:13, 2Ti 4:20, Tit 1:5

perfect passive participle accusative f s

ἀπολελυμένην

Mat 5:32, Luk 16:18

second-aorist active participle accusative m p

ἀπολιπόντας

Jud 1:6