apostrephō

The standard lexica treat ἀποστρέφω as one verb with both transitive and middle/passive uses rather than as homonyms. BDAG (s.v.) sorts the New Testament data into transitive senses (turn back or put back, remove or take away, mislead or incite, turn someone from something) alongside a middle/passive use (turn away from, reject, repudiate, desert), and LSJ documents the same spread in classical and Hellenistic Greek, including the transitive "turn back" of returning an object and the middle "turn one's back on" of repudiating a person. The Septuagint background is heavy: ἀποστρέφω is a standard equivalent of שׁוּב and of סוּר, which is why Romans 11:26, quoting Isaiah 59:20 in its Greek form, can read "he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob" where the Hebrew speaks instead of those who turn from transgression. Discussions of the στρέφω word group in TDNT and EDNT note that the compound's theological weight in the New Testament lies in this directional contrast with ἐπιστρέφω, the verb of conversion. On the two Pastoral Epistles passages, Marshall observes that 2 Timothy 4:4 pairs the turning of the hearing away from truth with ἐκτρέπω, a swerving toward myths, so that the two verbs mark the exit and the destination of the same movement; on Hebrews 12:25 Attridge notes that the participle stands in parallel with παραιτέομαι earlier in the verse, which supports the sense of refusing a speaker rather than of physically departing. Luke 23:14 is the one verse whose reference is genuinely unclear: lexica gloss the participle there as misleading or inciting the people, and commentators differ over whether the charge Pilate reports is political sedition or religious subversion, though not over the verb's meaning.