to come to be: to begin to exist, to happen, or to pass into a new state, as opposed to simply being
This is the verb of coming-into-being. Where one Greek word (εἰμί) names static existence (something simply is), this word names the transition into it: something starts to exist, an event occurs, a person turns into what they were not before. That single idea of becoming runs under every use, and context decides which English word fits.
The range fans out from there.
- A thing can come into being or be made
- a child can be born
- an event can take place
- a person or thing can become a certain way
- very often in the Gospels, a stretch of narrative can simply come to pass
The senses below are not separate words but the same motion seen against different backdrops, which is why the same form can mean "made", "happened", "became", or "was", depending on what surrounds it.
Two uses are worth singling out because readers meet them constantly. The storyteller's phrase rendered "and it came to pass" (or now "it happened") is a way of moving the action along, carried over from the Greek Old Testament. And the cry rendered "God forbid" or "by no means" is this verb wishing something would never come to be, the strongest refusal the language has.