to take hold of: to reach out and grasp a person or thing, usually by the hand, taking it into one's grip
In the New Testament this verb always carries the sense of taking hold for oneself, which gives it a personal, hands-on feel: someone reaches out and grasps another person, most often by the hand or the arm. It is a verb of contact and grip, not of watching from a distance.
What makes the word striking is that the same physical action can be an act of love or an act of violence, and only the scene tells you which. Jesus catches a sinking Peter and takes a blind man by the hand; soldiers and mobs lay hold of Paul and drag him off. The grip is identical, the intent opposite.
Across the New Testament the word stretches over a handful of settings:
- a helping or healing grasp, taking someone by the hand to raise, cure, or lead them
- a hostile seizing, laying hold of a person by force to arrest or attack them
- catching someone out, trapping them in something they say
- a figurative hold, laying firm claim to eternal life and making it one's own
Where κρατέω is about holding something fast once you already have it, this verb is the reach that first closes the hand; and where πιάζω is nearly always a hostile arrest, this word swings freely between rescue and capture.
Nuances
Whether the verb in Hebrews 2:16 means "take hold of to help, come to the aid of" or "take on, assume" (the human, not angelic, nature).
- majorityThe verb means to take hold of in order to help: the point is that Christ comes to the aid of the descendants of Abraham rather than of angels, matching the surrounding argument about Christ helping his people.; BDAG, s.v. ἐπιλαμβάνομαι; B. F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews; P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NIGTC)
- minorityThe verb means to take on or assume a nature: it refers to the incarnation, that Christ took human nature and not the nature of angels.; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews