to live in a place as a settled resident; to settle down somewhere.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the ordinary word for having your home in a place and staying there. It is stronger than just being present somewhere: it pictures putting down roots, becoming a resident, belonging to a town or region. Because of that, the form that points to the act of moving in often means to settle, while the form that points to the ongoing state often means to be a resident.
The Gospels use it for Jesus settling in Nazareth and then in Capernaum, and Acts uses it constantly for the people who live in a particular city or land: the residents of Jerusalem, those living in Mesopotamia or Asia, the believers settled in Judea. In these phrases the word does little more than mark who calls a place home.
Revelation gives the same word a darker edge with the repeated phrase about those who dwell on the earth. There it is more than a geographical note: it labels a whole class of people who are at home in this world and set against God, the ones the judgments fall on. The verb itself still only means to live somewhere; the loaded sense comes from the whole expression and its setting.
Nuances
1ato be a resident of a place; the people who live in a city or region.
to take up residence within someone or something, of a presence that makes it its home; to indwell.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The same verb can describe a presence settling into a person or place and making it home, the way a resident settles into a house. This is no longer about geography but about who or what has taken up permanent residence.
The New Testament puts this word to its weightiest use here. Paul says the full presence of God has taken up residence in Christ, and he prays that Christ would make his home in the hearts of believers. Stephen and Paul both insist that the Most High does not settle into temples built by human hands, since no building can house him. Peter looks ahead to a renewed world in which righteousness is permanently at home.
The word is not reserved for God. It also describes an unclean spirit moving back in and settling into a person, and it marks the place where Satan has his seat. In every case the picture is the same: not a passing visit, but a presence that has come to stay.
Nuances
2aof God or the divine fullness: to dwell, to take up permanent residence in someone or something.
Mat 23:21Act 7:48Act 17:24Eph 3:17Col 1:19Col 2:92Pe 3:13
2bof a spirit or hostile power: to move in and settle into a person or place as its dwelling.
the plainer, more general verb for dwelling, used by Paul for what simply lives within a person such as sin or the Spirit, without the added sense of settling into a fixed placeRom 7:17Rom 8:91Co 3:16
covers the everyday sense of two people living together as a married couple under one roof1Co 7:121Co 7:13
σκηνόωto pitch a tent, to dwell as in a temporary shelter; this word instead pictures settled, lasting residence.
This is the ordinary, settled word for living somewhere as your fixed home. It is the verb the New Testament uses again and again for the people who live in a particular town, region, or in the world at large, the permanent residents of a place.Mat 2:23Act 2:5Act 9:32
Because it means a real, abiding residence, it is the word chosen for something or someone taking up a lasting home inside another. Paul uses it for the whole fullness of God making its permanent home in Christ, and for Christ settling down to live in the believer's heart.Col 1:19Col 2:9Eph 3:17
Both
Both can simply mean to live somewhere, and Revelation sets them side by side in one verse: those who live in the heavens are told to rejoice, while woe is pronounced on those who live on the earth. The contrast there is between two places of dwelling, not between two different kinds of dwelling.Rev 12:12
This word pictures dwelling the way you live in a tent, and it carries the echo of the tabernacle, the tent where God met his people in the wilderness. John uses it for the Word becoming flesh and pitching his tent among us, so that God's presence camped in our midst rather than simply residing in a building.Jhn 1:14
In Revelation it is the word for God spreading his presence over his people like a tent for shelter, and for the final promise that God's own dwelling is with people and he will live among them. It is the language of being sheltered under God's nearness, not just occupying an address.Rev 7:15Rev 21:3Rev 13:6
παροικέωto live somewhere as a resident foreigner or sojourner, the opposite emphasis to settling down as one who belongs.
Names settled, permanent residence: to live somewhere as one who belongs there, putting down roots in a place that is home.Mat 2:23Act 9:32
Used for inhabitants identified with their city or region, the established population of a place.Act 1:19Act 2:5Act 19:10
Extends to a settled, lasting presence in a figurative or heavenly sense, where someone or something takes up permanent dwelling.Eph 3:17Col 2:92Pe 3:13
Both
Both describe taking up residence in a place, and the same person can do both at once: one word for the temporary, alien stay and the other for the actual dwelling within it.Heb 11:9
Names living somewhere as an outsider: to stay in a place as a resident foreigner or sojourner, present but not belonging, with no permanent claim to the land.Luk 24:18
Names where someone lives: settled residence in a town, land, or region. It answers "who lives where," and is the word for being a permanent inhabitant of a place rather than a passing visitor.Mat 2:23Mat 4:13Act 9:32
Sums up whole populations as "the people living in" a city, a country, or the whole earth. It became a stock label for the inhabitants of the world, especially in Revelation.Act 2:5Act 19:10Rev 3:10Rev 13:8
Used for what makes its home in a place: God filling a temple, the fullness of God making its home in Christ, even evil spirits moving in to inhabit a person. The picture is taking up residence, not merely being present.Mat 12:45Act 7:48Col 1:19Col 2:9
Both
Both can describe one person taking up indwelling in another, but from opposite ends: the settled word pictures Christ moving in to make his home in the heart, while the abiding word pictures the believer staying in Christ and God staying in him. The first is residence established, the second is the relationship kept up.Eph 3:17Jhn 6:56
Means to stay put, to lodge somewhere for a time: the word for accepting hospitality, staying in a house or a town as a guest, and being asked to stay longer. The point is not where you reside but that you do not move on.Luk 19:5Luk 24:29Jhn 1:39Act 16:15
Means to last, to keep on, to endure: said of things that remain when others pass away, of a person continuing in a state, and of what abides forever. It is about persistence over time, not place.Jhn 12:341Co 13:13Heb 7:241Pe 1:23
Carries the deep relational sense of abiding: remaining in Christ, in his word, in his love, with the Father and Son making their home with the believer. This is a mutual staying-with, the heart of John's teaching, with no equivalent in the plain "live here" word.Jhn 15:4Jhn 15:71Jn 2:241Jn 4:16
katoikeō in the other biblical languages
יָשַׁבHebrew“to dwell”the main Hebrew verb for sitting, remaining, and dwelling, which this Greek word regularly renders.
Names settled, permanent residence as a fixed home, often set against merely staying somewhere as a stranger or sojourner.Heb 11:9Mat 2:23
Used for the divine fullness or Spirit taking up residence in a person, the language of God making a lasting home in someone.Eph 3:17Col 1:19Col 2:9
Builds a fixed phrase for the whole human race as the ones who live on the earth, often as those who face judgment.Rev 3:10Rev 13:8
Both
Both name settling down to live in a land, region, or city as one's dwelling place, and the Greek word regularly renders the Hebrew in this core sense.Gen 13:12Act 9:32
Both describe the people who inhabit a place, the settled population of a town or country.Gen 34:30Act 9:35
Routinely names ordinary human residence: where a person lives, the city or region they call home.Mat 2:23Act 9:32Act 19:10
Describes the divine fullness coming to live permanently in Christ, a claim about God taking up residence in a person.Col 1:19Col 2:9
Pictures Christ settling into the believer's heart as a steady, lasting presence rather than a passing visit.Eph 3:17
Both
Both mean to settle down and take up lasting residence in a place, not merely to pass through it.Gen 14:13Heb 11:9
Both carry the weighty sense of God himself coming to live among or within his people, the central hope the Greek word inherits from the Hebrew.Isa 57:15Eph 3:17
Is the standard word for God settling his presence among Israel, the dwelling that gave rise to the idea of God tabernacling with his people.Exo 25:8Exo 29:45Num 35:34
Names God settling his name or his glory in a chosen place, marking that site as his earthly home.Deu 12:11Zec 2:10
Extends to settled habitation of all kinds, including animals nesting and people living securely on the land.Psa 104:12Pro 1:33
It reports the move itself: someone leaves one place and takes up a home in another, as when Jesus came and settled in Nazareth, then left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum, or when Abraham went out of Chaldea and settled in Haran. The Aramaic word never describes anyone moving in; it only describes people already living somewhere.Mat 2:23Mat 4:13Act 7:4
It can sit inside the tension between being settled and being a stranger: Abraham keeps house in tents in the land he was promised, still a foreigner there, so the Greek word supplies the sense of having a place to live while the rest of the sentence takes the permanence back.Heb 11:9
It scales down to one town or one province, naming a local population by where it lives: everyone living in Jerusalem, everyone living in Lydda and Sharon, everyone living in the province of Asia. The Aramaic word almost always sweeps the whole earth instead of a single region.Act 4:16Act 9:35Act 19:10
It reaches inside a person or a building: Christ living in the heart, the full weight of God's own being at home in Christ, unclean spirits moving into a swept house of a life, and the God who refuses to be housed in a building people put up. The Aramaic word has no such inward use.Eph 3:17Col 2:9Mat 12:45Act 7:48
Its resident can be a quality or a power rather than a population: righteousness is at home in the new heavens and new earth, and Satan is said to live in the city where his throne stands.2Pe 3:13Rev 2:13
Both
Both carry the sweeping phrase "those who live on the earth", which names the whole human race rather than the residents of any one place. Daniel says the earth's dwellers count as nothing before God; Revelation says the earth's dwellers worship the beast and will meet the coming hour of testing. The Greek is the same idiom, word for word.Dan 4:35Rev 13:8Rev 3:10
For both, where people live is set by an authority above them. Nebuchadnezzar is told his rule reaches everywhere people live, and Paul says God made every nation to live across the whole face of the earth and fixed the boundaries of where each would settle.Dan 2:38Act 17:26
Its natural home is the address line of a royal letter: a king writes to all the peoples, nations, and languages living in the whole earth, and the word does nothing but label the addressees as everybody alive. No New Testament use of the Greek word heads a proclamation this way.Dan 4:1Dan 6:25
It covers animals sheltering at a tree, not only people in settlements: birds live in the branches of the great tree of the king's dream, and wild animals live under it. In the New Testament the Greek word never takes an animal as its subject.Dan 4:12Dan 4:21
What scholars say about katoikeō
The standard lexica (BDAG, LSJ) treat this as the intensified form of the simplex verb to dwell, denoting settled, permanent residence rather than transient presence, and distinguish a literal geographical sense (to inhabit, of populations) from a figurative sense of indwelling (of God, the divine fullness, or a spirit). BDAG notes the formulaic Revelation expression for the earth's inhabitants as a designation for hostile humanity. O. Michel in TDNT (s.v. oikos and cognates) treats the indwelling use, especially Paul's claim in Colossians that the whole pleroma dwells bodily in Christ and the prayer of Ephesians 3:17 that Christ dwell in the heart, as the theologically weighted application of an otherwise ordinary verb. Septuagint usage, where the word frequently renders the Hebrew verbs yashab and shakan, underlies the New Testament range.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. κατοικέωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. κατοικέωlexicon
O. Michel, "οἶκος, κατοικέω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 5:119-159dictionary