to grieve: to cause someone sorrow or pain, or to feel that sorrow oneself
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This verb covers the experience of grief from both directions. It can name the sorrow a person feels inside, and it can name the act of causing that sorrow in someone else. The two belong together: hurtful words or deeds by one person leave another person pained.
Most often in the New Testament it describes the feeling. It is the heaviness of the rich man who walks away from Jesus, the gloom of the disciples at the Last Supper, and the crushing sorrow that swept over Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It ranges from quiet disappointment to deep anguish.
When Paul writes to the Corinthians he uses it for the pain his stern letter caused them, and he distinguishes sorrow that God uses to turn people back to himself from sorrow that only wears a person down. The word itself does not settle which kind is meant; the situation does. In Ephesians the same verb is even applied to God, warning believers not to bring pain to the Holy Spirit by the way they treat one another.
Nuances
1ato feel grief: to be sorrowful, pained, or distressed
Names mourning as an outward, visible act, the demonstrative grief of the bereaved, regularly paired with weeping and wailing.Mrk 16:10Luk 6:25Jas 4:9
Carries a public, ceremonial weight, the lament raised over the dead or over a fallen city, and the corporate grieving of a community over its sin.Rev 18:111Co 5:2
ἀδημονέωthe anxious, unsettled distress of being troubled or in anguish, a restlessness alongside this word's plainer sorrow
The broad, ordinary word for grief and sorrow, being made sad by loss or bad news, as when the rich young man went away downcast.Mat 19:221Th 4:13
Can act on another person, meaning to grieve, hurt, or cause pain to someone else, a use the rarer word never has.2Co 2:2Eph 4:30
Names a sorrow that can turn to good, the godly grief that leads a person to repentance rather than to regret.2Co 7:92Co 7:11
Both
Both describe the inner pain of a soul in distress, and Matthew sets them side by side at Gethsemane so that together they convey the depth of Jesus' agony.Mat 26:37
Names an anguished, agitated distress, a soul in turmoil that goes well beyond ordinary sadness. It describes Jesus overwhelmed in Gethsemane, restless and pressed down under the weight of what is coming.Mrk 14:33
Carries an anxious, restless worry over other people and one's own situation, the unsettled feeling of being troubled about how others are faring.Php 2:26
Names the pain itself, the ache a person is actually feeling, with no reference to any earlier choice: the wealthy man walks away heavy-hearted, Jesus is weighed down in the garden, believers hurt under trials.Mat 19:22Mat 26:371Pe 1:6
Works between two parties: one person can inflict this pain on another, so it can be commanded against. Believers are told not to wound a fellow Christian over food, not to cause the Holy Spirit this pain, and Paul speaks of the man who hurt the whole congregation.Rom 14:15Eph 4:302Co 2:5
Sits on a scale opposite gladness, so it can flip into joy or even run alongside it. Jesus promises that this pain will become joy, and Paul says he is hurting and rejoicing at the same time.Jhn 16:202Co 6:102Co 2:2
Can be hurt on purpose, for the other person's good: Paul wrote a letter that would sting, aiming at their repentance rather than at their misery, and God can be the one who intends the sting.2Co 2:42Co 7:92Co 7:11
Both
Both belong to the aftermath of a wrong, and Paul sets them side by side: his letter hurt the Corinthians, yet he does not wish it unwritten.2Co 7:8
Both can stand next to a real change of life without being the word for that change: the pain Paul caused led the Corinthians to turn, and the son's backward look led him into the vineyard, but neither word names the turning itself.2Co 7:9Mat 21:29
Both can end badly as well as well, so neither is proof of a changed heart: Judas wished his betrayal undone and went out to die, and grief over trials or loss is simply pain unless something more follows.Mat 27:31Th 4:13
Always looks back at something already said, done, or sworn, and names wishing it undone: the son who had refused, Judas after handing Jesus over, an oath God will never take back.Mat 21:29Mat 27:3Heb 7:21
Can be truthfully denied of God: the promise sworn to the priest-king is one God will never reverse, a use no word for felt sorrow could carry.Heb 7:21
Describes reversing a stance rather than aching, so it is answered by what the person then does or refuses to do: the son goes and works, while the crowd sees John's ministry and still will not go back on its refusal to believe.Mat 21:29Mat 21:32
λυπέω can be done TO another person: to wound or sadden someone else. Paul speaks of making the Corinthians sorrowful, warns that a brother can be hurt over food, and tells readers not to grieve God's Holy Spirit. ὀδυνάω is never something one person inflicts on another; it names only the sufferer's own inner pain.2Co 2:2Rom 14:15Eph 4:30
λυπέω covers ordinary sadness across its whole range, including a grief that can be healthy and give way to joy. A sorrow that comes from God leads to repentance, and Jesus promises that his followers' grief will turn into joy.2Co 7:9Jhn 16:20
Both
Both words name the raw grief of loss and parting. λυπέω describes mourning over believers who have died, and ὀδυνάω describes the sorrow of friends who realize they will never see Paul's face again.1Th 4:13Act 20:38
ὀδυνάω is the sharper word for acute torment, strong enough to describe physical agony. The rich man in the parable begs for relief because he is racked with pain in the flame.Luk 16:24Luk 16:25
ὀδυνάω can name the gnawing distress of anxious searching. Mary tells Jesus that she and Joseph have been hunting for him in great anguish.Luk 2:48
As a verb it can be transitive: to CAUSE grief in someone else, to wound another person (or even God) with sorrow, something a word for a state can never do.Rom 14:15Eph 4:302Co 2:5
It can name a grief that turns out to be productive, the kind of sorrow that leads to repentance and is not regretted afterward.2Co 7:92Co 7:11
Both
Both name real inward grief in response to loss or bad news: the same rich ruler's reaction is told as being grieved in one Gospel and as very sorrowful in another.Mat 19:22Luk 18:23
In the Gethsemane scene the plain verb and the intensified adjective stand side by side for the same grief: Jesus began to be sorrowful, then declared his soul exceedingly sorrowful.Mat 26:37Mat 26:38
An intensified adjective: not merely sad but sorrowful to the utmost, grief pushed to its breaking point, as in the soul being sorrowful "even unto death."Mat 26:38Mrk 14:34
It marks a person already seized by that depth of sorrow, a settled overwhelmed condition rather than an act of grieving.Mrk 6:26Luk 18:23
lupeō in the other biblical languages
עָצַבHebrew“to hurt”the main Hebrew verb for grieving and hurting someone, the word behind "it grieved God at his heart" in Genesis, and what Greek translators often rendered with this term
One and the same Greek verb covers grief that is simply felt, with nobody blamed for causing it. A man walks away heavy after a hard demand, Jesus himself sinks into sorrow in the garden, mourners are told how to feel about their dead, and believers ache under trials nobody chose for them.Mat 19:22Mat 26:371Th 4:131Pe 1:6
The sorrow can do useful work inside the person who feels it, turning them around rather than only wearing them down, so Paul can look back on the pain he caused and be glad about what it produced.2Co 7:82Co 7:92Co 7:11
It works at the scale of ordinary life together, not only at the scale of national ruin: hurting a fellow believer over what is served at a meal, upsetting a congregation by letter, even causing the Holy Spirit pain.Rom 14:152Co 2:2Eph 4:30
The grief can sit alongside joy in the same person at the same moment, so the word describes a condition held together with its opposite rather than a blow struck from outside.2Co 6:10
Both
Both name grief as something one party does to another rather than a mood that just settles, and the Greek verb is the standard counterpart when the Hebrew one is carried over into Greek: captors wear a nation down, and Paul admits he caused a church real pain.Isa 51:232Co 2:5
In both, the grief is not the end of the account. The one who caused it moves on to mercy, and the pain is later looked back on as having accomplished something.Lam 3:322Co 7:9
Both describe a whole group sunk in sorrow together, not only a single sufferer: the women of a ruined city, and a table of disciples told that one of them will betray their teacher.Lam 1:4Mat 26:22
Someone is always doing it. The Hebrew word needs a doer, so the sorrow is pain being inflicted: friends grinding Job down with their words, captors telling a nation to lie flat so they can walk over it.Job 19:2Isa 51:23
Its most common doer is God, acting on purpose in judgment and yet against his own inclination, which gives the word a weight the Greek verb never has to carry: he brought the city low for her rebellion, he did it on the day of his burning anger, and he does not do it from the heart.Lam 1:5Lam 1:12Lam 3:33
The loss it names is public and shared, measured in emptied streets and cancelled festivals rather than in private mood: the young women of a ruined city bowed down, and worshippers cut off from the appointed feast.Lam 1:4Zep 3:18
It never names pain in the body. Every use is hurt felt in the mind and heart: dismay at bad news, the heaviness of walking away from something you wanted, the sting of being asked the same question a third time.Mat 17:23Mat 19:22Jhn 21:17
It carries a whole argument that grief can do good. A letter is written knowing it will hurt its readers, and the writer is later glad of the hurt, not because pain is good in itself but because this pain turned them around.2Co 7:82Co 7:92Co 7:11
God himself can be the one grieved: readers are warned that the way they speak to and treat each other wounds the Holy Spirit.Eph 4:30
It is the word for mourning the dead, and it gets used to reshape that mourning: grieve, but not the way people grieve who expect nothing beyond the grave.1Th 4:13
Both
Both reach inward to a hurt the face does not show, and both can hold that hurt alongside its opposite: laughter with an aching heart underneath, sorrow and joy carried at the same time.Pro 14:132Co 6:10
Both name hurt that one person inflicts on another, and in both the one who inflicts it is held to account for wounding people who did not deserve it.Ezk 13:22Rom 14:152Co 2:5
In both, the hurt can come from God's own hand or from hard circumstances he allows, and in neither is it the last word: the one who wounds also bandages, and grief that lasts a little while gives way to gladness.Job 5:181Pe 1:6Jhn 16:20
It starts with the body. Men are too sore from a fresh wound to defend themselves, dead flesh is still spoken of as hurting, and a sufferer names pain alongside poverty as part of one bodily condition.Gen 34:25Job 14:22Psa 69:29
It reaches beyond people to things: good farmland can be hurt, ruined by having stones thrown over it until it will grow nothing.2Ki 3:19
It can describe an object by what it does to you, so a thorn is called painful because of how it pricks whoever brushes against it.Ezk 28:24
What scholars say about lupeō
The standard lexica treat λυπέω as a single verb with two dimensions distinguished by voice: BDAG glosses the active as causing severe mental or emotional distress and the passive as experiencing sadness or distress, becoming sad or being distressed, with a range from mild vexation to deep anguish. In the Septuagint it regularly renders Hebrew verbs of pain and grief, notably עצב. Bultmann's TDNT article on λύπη/λυπέω develops the Pauline material, especially the contrast in 2 Corinthians 7 between grief that leads to repentance and grief that merely destroys, and treats Ephesians 4:30 as an anthropopathic extension of the verb to the divine Spirit.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. λυπέωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. λυπέωlexicon
Rudolf Bultmann, "λύπη, λυπέω," TDNT 4:313-324theological-dictionary