to fall asleep; used for ordinary sleep and, as a gentle picture of death, for dying
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its root this word names the everyday act of falling asleep. The Gospels use it that way for people who literally nod off: the soldiers who claim they slept while Jesus' body was taken, the disciples who doze in the garden, Peter sleeping in his cell the night before his rescue.
But the New Testament reaches for this word far more often as a soft image for death. To say that someone "has fallen asleep" is to say the person has died, while keeping alive the hope built into the picture: a sleeper can be woken. Paul returns to it again and again for believers who have died, and the wider Greek and Old Testament worlds already used sleep the same gentle way.
The image is chosen on purpose. Jesus calls the dead Lazarus "asleep" and then wakes him; Paul argues that because Christ has been raised as "the first," those who have "fallen asleep" will be raised too. Where the blunt verb for dying (ἀποθνήσκω) simply states the fact, this word reframes a believer's death as temporary rest before God rouses them again.
Nuances
1ato be asleep: ordinary bodily sleep
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 28:13Luk 22:45Jhn 11:12*Act 12:6
1bto fall asleep in death: to die, pictured as a rest from which God will wake the person
The settled New Testament euphemism for death: believers who have died are said to have fallen asleep, awaiting resurrection.Act 7:601Co 15:61Co 15:201Th 4:13
Both
Both name ordinary physical sleep, the plain nighttime rest of a person lying down.Mrk 4:38Act 12:6
Carries a figurative sense of spiritual and moral drowsiness: being unalert, complacent, or unready when watchfulness is demanded.Eph 5:141Th 5:61Th 5:7
Used of disciples caught physically asleep at the very moment their master needed them awake and watching.Mat 26:40Mrk 14:37Mrk 13:36
ἀποθνήσκωthe plain, direct verb for dying, stating the bare fact of death without the softening picture of sleep
Its literal, non-death meaning: ordinary physical sleep. This sense is entirely absent from the other word, which never means slumber.Mat 28:13Luk 22:45Act 12:6
As a death word it is a gentle euphemism carrying the hope of awakening: believers who have "fallen asleep" are not lost but await resurrection.1Co 15:201Th 4:13Act 7:60
Expresses the peaceful close of a life or a whole generation, the picture of "falling asleep" alongside the fathers who went before.Act 13:362Pe 3:4
Both
Both name the same physical death of a person. John sets them side by side for one event: Lazarus "sleeps" and then, plainly, Lazarus "is dead."Jhn 11:11Jhn 11:14
They stand together in one sentence where Christ "died" and believers "sleep," each stating the fact of death that resurrection will answer.1Th 4:14
The plain, universal verb for death: of anyone or anything, including animals, and of violent or unremarkable death alike, stated as bare fact.Mat 8:32Mrk 12:20Luk 20:29
Carries the weighted language of consequential and redemptive death: dying "for the people," dying "in your sins," the seed that must "die" before it bears fruit.Jhn 11:50Jhn 8:24Jhn 12:24
Means ordinary sleep, with no thought of death at all: the guards claim the body was stolen while they slept, Jesus finds the disciples sleeping from sorrow, and Peter is asleep in prison chained between two soldiers.Mat 28:13Luk 22:45Act 12:6
Speaks of death as sleep precisely because sleep can be broken, so the word itself carries the expectation of waking: Christ is the first of those who have fallen asleep, and God will bring the ones who fell asleep along with Jesus.1Co 15:201Th 4:14
Becomes the settled way of naming God's people who have already died, as a group the living are still connected to: the bodies of the sleeping holy ones, Stephen at his stoning, David after serving his own generation, and the believers at Corinth whom Paul says have fallen asleep.Mat 27:52Act 7:60Act 13:361Co 11:30
Because it can mean either sleep or death, it is genuinely open to being misheard: the disciples take Jesus at face value and answer that if Lazarus is only sleeping he will get better.Jhn 11:12
Sits inside teaching about the future, where it draws the line between those who have died before the Lord comes and those still alive: the living will not get there ahead of those who fell asleep, and not everyone will fall asleep at all.1Th 4:151Co 15:51
Both
Both can state that one particular person has died, and John's account of Lazarus uses each in turn: Jesus says the friend has fallen asleep, while the narrative calls the same man the dead one at the tomb and at the meal six days before Passover.Jhn 11:11Jhn 11:44Jhn 12:1
Both describe people who are then raised, so neither word by itself treats the death as the end of the story: the daughter reported dead before Jesus reaches the house, and the holy ones whose bodies came out of the opened tombs.Luk 8:49Mat 27:52
Both describe a state someone is now in rather than the moment of dying, which is why both are often rendered "is dead" or "has fallen asleep" instead of "died": the young man being carried out of town and the many at Corinth who have fallen asleep.Luk 7:121Co 15:6
Reports death as a settled, verifiable fact, which is why it turns up wherever someone is checking or confirming that a person really has died: Pilate wonders whether Jesus is already dead and sends for the officer to ask, the soldiers see for themselves that he is dead and skip breaking his legs, and the crowd that stoned Paul drags him out of the city assuming he is dead.Mrk 15:44Jhn 19:33Act 14:19
Used flatly of anyone at all, with no comfort or tenderness attached: the angel tells Joseph the men who wanted the child's life are dead, and the governor Festus refers offhandedly to a certain Jesus who had died.Mat 2:20Act 25:19
Labels the person in front of you as the dead one, so it functions almost as a title for a corpse: the only son being carried out of the town gate, the body lying in the tomb, the dead man walking out still bound in his wrappings.Luk 7:12Jhn 11:41Jhn 11:44
Stretches to a moral verdict on someone still breathing: the self-indulgent widow is called dead even while she goes on living.1Ti 5:6
koimaō in the other biblical languages
שָׁכַבHebrew“to lie down: lay down”the Hebrew verb behind the Old Testament death idiom "slept with his fathers," the same gentle picture of dying as lying down to rest
Names sleep proper: to be asleep or to fall asleep, the resting state of a body at night.Mat 28:13Act 12:6
Becomes the settled New Testament picture of the Christian dead as those who have fallen asleep and will be raised, so the sleep is temporary and ends in resurrection.1Co 15:201Th 4:14
Both
Both serve as a gentle euphemism for death, picturing it as repose: the Greek says a person has fallen asleep, the Hebrew that a person lies down with the ancestors.1Th 4:13Gen 47:30
Both describe simply settling down to sleep at rest, and the Greek word is the term the Septuagint often uses to render the Hebrew in this everyday sense.Luk 22:45Deu 24:13
Its core is the physical act of lying down, reclining in any posture for rest or sleep, not the state of being asleep.Gen 28:11Deu 6:7
Carries a sexual euphemism, to lie with a person, that the Greek word never bears.Gen 19:32Lev 18:22Lev 20:13
יָשֵׁןHebrew“to sleep”the Hebrew verb for sleeping, used of the sleep of death in the resurrection promise that the dead "who sleep in the dust" will awake
In the New Testament this became the tender, almost standard word for the death of believers, and it carries the hope of waking again at the resurrection rather than a final end.1Th 4:141Co 15:18
Both
Both name plain bodily sleep, a person lying down to rest.Gen 41:5Act 12:6
Both can picture death as sleep, the dead lying still as if at rest.Jer 51:391Co 15:20
The same spelling is also used for things that grow old or go stale, such as a long-standing skin disease or grain kept in storage, a sense that has nothing to do with sleeping.Lev 13:11Lev 26:10
As an event verb it marks the moment of dying, "fell asleep," giving a person's death a single point in time: Stephen fell asleep as he was stoned, David fell asleep after serving his own generation, and the ancestors long dead are those who fell asleep.Act 7:60Act 13:362Pe 3:4
Carries a fully worked hope of resurrection: the believing dead are only asleep in Jesus and will be raised and gathered at his coming, Christ being the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, so their grief is unlike that of people with no hope.1Th 4:141Co 15:20
Both
Both denote plain bodily sleep, people lying asleep and unaware: the whole of Saul's camp sunk in a deep sleep, and the disciples found sleeping in Gethsemane.1Sa 26:12Luk 22:45
Both supply the picture of death as a sleep from which the dead will one day wake: Daniel's promise that those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, and the New Testament's standard way of naming the Christian dead as those who have fallen asleep, waiting to be raised.Dan 12:21Co 15:20
A stative adjective naming the ordinary condition of a sleeping person in narrative, the plain picture of someone lying asleep and unaware: Saul asleep in the camp, or the child asleep at its mother's breast.1Sa 26:71Ki 3:20
Furnishes the taunt of a sleeping god, the deity pictured as asleep and needing to be roused, whether Baal who never answers or the LORD who is said to awake like a sleeper to rescue his people. The Greek verb is never turned to this use.1Ki 18:27Psa 78:65
What scholars say about koimaō
Standard lexica treat κοιμάομαι under one entry with two senses: literal sleep and, as a euphemism, death (BDAG; LSJ). The death sense is well attested in classical and Hellenistic Greek and in the Septuagint, where it renders the Hebrew idiom of "lying down with the fathers" (שָׁכַב). In the New Testament the euphemistic sense predominates, especially in Paul, where the perfect and aorist passive forms describe deceased believers (1 Cor 15; 1 Thess 4). The metaphor is theologically loaded rather than doctrinally technical: it presupposes resurrection as a waking, so that Christ is the ἀπαρχή ("firstfruits") of those who have fallen asleep. The Johannine Lazarus pericope (John 11:11-13) exploits the double meaning explicitly, the narrator glossing Jesus' κεκοίμηται as a reference to θάνατος.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. κοιμάομαιlexicon
LSJ, s.v. κοιμάωlexicon
Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT), s.v. κοιμάομαιdictionary