to take leave of: to make a clean break, either by saying goodbye to people or by letting go of what you own
Five of the six times this word appears, somebody is leaving and stops to make the parting explicit. Jesus takes leave of the crowd before going up the mountain to pray (Mark 6:46). Paul says his goodbyes at Corinth before sailing for Syria (Acts 18:18), and again at Ephesus, with a promise to come back (Acts 18:21). Titus is not at Troas, so Paul takes his leave of the believers there and moves on to Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:13). The word marks the moment of parting itself, not the travel that follows.
The sixth use turns the same verb on property. Anyone who will not part with everything he owns cannot be a disciple (Luke 14:33). This is not a second word doing unrelated work: it is the same clean break, aimed at possessions instead of people. English needs two expressions here, "take leave of" and "renounce", and the single Greek word is the point. Letting go of what you own is pictured as a leave-taking, something you do once and then walk away from.
The request in Luke 9:61 sits right on the seam between the two. A man wants to follow Jesus but asks to go home and say goodbye to his family first, which sounds like plain courtesy and echoes Elisha asking Elijah for the same permission (1 Kings 19:20). Jesus refuses. Read next to Luke 14:33, the refusal is not about manners: the man wants to keep hold of one tie that the call asks him to release.
Neighboring Greek words divide up the same ground differently:
- ἀπολύω is what the person in charge does, releasing or sending others away, while this word belongs to the one who is departing.
- ἀσπάζομαι is the warm greeting or embrace exchanged when people meet or part, the gesture rather than the break.
- ἀφίημι is the broad verb for letting anything go, which is why Luke can also say the fishermen simply "left" everything and followed (Luke 5:11).