StrongerBible

ekpherō

ἐκφέρω

GreekG1627bring out, carry out, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mrk 8:23Luk 15:22Act 5:6Act 5:9Act 5:10Act 5:151Ti 6:7Heb 6:8
Compound of
Word studyek-FEH-roverb

What ekpherō means

to carry out: to move a person or thing from inside a place to outside it, and, of ground, to send up what grows in it

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the everyday word for carrying, φέρω, with a prefix meaning "out of," and it means what its parts say: what was inside is moved outside. A father tells his servants to fetch the best robe out of the house (Luke 15:22). People carry the sick out of their houses and lay them on mats in the street (Acts 5:15). One letter turns it into a proverb, that we brought nothing into the world and can carry nothing out of it (1 Timothy 6:7), setting the word against its exact opposite, "to carry in" (εἰσφέρω).

In ordinary Greek this had also become the plain word for a funeral. To carry someone out was to take the body from the house to the grave, and the matching noun named the funeral procession itself. Luke uses it three times in a single scene: young men carry Ananias out and bury him, Peter warns his wife that the men who buried her husband will carry her out too, and minutes later they do (Acts 5:6, Acts 5:9, Acts 5:10). English "carried him out" reports the action, but the Greek word already says where they were going. Luke knew a second verb for the same custom (ἐκκομίζω), which he uses of the widow's son at Nain.

Two further uses stretch the same picture. When Jesus takes a blind man by the hand and brings him outside the village (Mark 8:23), the word supplies the movement out of a place, though here he guides the man rather than carries him, work usually done by the ordinary verb for leading someone out (ἐξάγω). And when Hebrews describes ground that drinks the rain and then puts up thorns and thistles (Hebrews 6:8), the word means "produce": what is in the soil comes out of it. That use was already at home in the Greek Old Testament, where the earth "brings out" vegetation on the third day of creation. One verse earlier the good ground is said to "give birth to" a useful crop (τίκτω), so the writer changes his picture along with his verdict on the field.

Nuances

1ato carry a person or thing out of the place it was in
TranslatabilityDirect
Luk 15:22Act 5:151Ti 6:7
1bto carry a dead body out for burial
Act 5:6Act 5:9Act 5:10
1cto take someone out of a place, guiding rather than carrying
Mrk 8:23
1dof ground: to send up what grows in it, to produce
TranslatabilityDirect
Heb 6:8

What scholars say about ekpherō

ἐκφέρω is a transparent compound of ἐκ and φέρω, attested from Homer onward, and it inherits the suppletive principal parts of the simplex (future ἐξοίσω, first aorist ἐξήνεγκα, second aorist ἐξήνεγκον). Both aorist stems surface in the eight New Testament occurrences: the participle ἐξενέγκαντες (Acts 5:6, 10) and imperative ἐξενέγκατε (Luke 15:22) beside the second-aorist infinitive ἐξενεγκεῖν (1 Tim 6:7), with the future ἐξοίσουσιν at Acts 5:9 and the present infinitive ἐκφέρειν at Acts 5:15. LSJ arranges the classical range under carrying out of a place; carrying out a corpse for burial, with the cognate ἐκφορά naming the funeral procession itself; bringing forth young or fruit, said of women, animals, and above all of soil; carrying off a prize; and uttering or publishing a word or an oracle. The last two are absent from the New Testament. BDAG groups the New Testament data as the removal of a person or object from an area (Luke 15:22; Acts 5:15; 1 Tim 6:7), the funerary use of carrying out a corpse (Acts 5:6, 9, 10), the leading out of a person (Mark 8:23), and the production of vegetation by the earth (Heb 6:8); EDNT arranges the same material similarly, and TDNT treats the compound only in passing under the φέρω article, a fair signal that it bears no independent theological weight. The funerary sense is standard Greek from the classical period and matches Latin efferre, "to carry out" for burial; on Acts 5:6 Barrett and Keener take the swift interment as ordinary Jewish practice of burial on the day of death rather than a punitive irregularity, while noting the conspicuous absence of mourning and of any notice to the widow. In the Septuagint ἐκφέρω is a frequent equivalent of the Hiphil of יצא, and at Gen 1:12 it renders the earth putting forth vegetation (ἐξήνεγκεν ἡ γῆ βοτάνην χόρτου), the idiom standing behind Heb 6:7-8. Attridge, Lane, and Koester all observe that Hebrews shifts from τίκτουσα in v. 7 to ἐκφέρουσα in v. 8, and that ἀκάνθας καὶ τριβόλους reproduces the Septuagint wording of Gen 3:18, so the worthless field is described in the language of the cursed ground. At 1 Tim 6:7 the verb stands in a gnomic antithesis with εἰσφέρω; Marshall, Knight, and Towner cite Job 1:21 and Eccl 5:15 as the nearest biblical background and note the close Greco-Roman moralist parallels to the same commonplace. At Mark 8:23 the verb belongs to a cluster of details (leading the man outside the village, the use of saliva, the two-stage healing, the instruction not to return to the village) that France and Marcus read as deliberate withdrawal from the crowd, closely parallel to Mark 7:33.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. ἐκφέρωlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. ἐκφέρωlexicon
  • Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, s.v. ἐκφέρωlexicon
  • Balz and Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT), s.v. ἐκφέρωtheological-dictionary
  • K. Weiss, "φέρω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 9theological-dictionary
  • C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (ICC)commentary
  • Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentarycommentary
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia)commentary
  • William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (WBC 47A)commentary
  • Craig R. Koester, Hebrews (Anchor Bible 36)commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible 28, 28A)commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC)commentary
  • Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (Anchor Bible 27)commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles (ICC)commentary
  • George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles (NIGTC)commentary
  • Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (NICNT)commentary

All attested forms of ἐκφέρω

aorist active participle nominative m p

ἐξενέγκαντες

Act 5:6, Act 5:10

aorist active imperative 2p

ἐξενέγκατε

Luk 15:22

aorist active indicative 3s

ἐξήνεγκεν

Mrk 8:23

future active indicative 3p

ἐξοίσουσίν

Act 5:9

present active infinitive

ἐκφέρειν

Act 5:15

present active participle nominative f s

ἐκφέρουσα

Heb 6:8

second-aorist active infinitive

ἐξενεγκεῖν

1Ti 6:7