kathistēmi

At its core this word pictures placing a person so that they now "stand" in a settled role. Someone with the standing to do it, a master, a king, God, or an apostle, sets another person over people, property, or an office.

The range runs from an everyday household to the highest offices:

• a trusted servant is set over the master's household (καθίστημι in Matthew 24:45)
• Joseph is made governor over Egypt
• Moses is challenged as to who made him a ruler and judge
• elders are appointed in every town and priests are installed to serve God

In every case the point is not the act of choosing so much as the result: the person is now fixed in a standing responsibility. The closely related verb χειροτονέω leans on the choosing or electing itself, while this word leans on the installing.

This is the same "cause to stand" idea turned inward: rather than placing someone in an office, an action places them in a state. Something makes them what they now are.

The pattern is that one cause produces a fixed result: one man's obedience makes many righteous, friendship with the world makes a person God's enemy, and a growing set of virtues renders a believer neither idle nor unfruitful. The word names the settling of a status or condition, not the making of an object.

A concrete travel sense: to see someone to where they are going. In its one New Testament use, the believers who took Paul out of danger brought him all the way to Athens. The bridge to the other meanings is the same underlying picture of setting a person down in a place, here a physical destination rather than a role or a state.