to send for someone: to dispatch messengers so that a particular person is brought to you
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is one action, not two. It joins a prefix meaning "after" to the ordinary verb for sending (πέμπω), and the result names the whole errand: you send people out, and the person you named comes back with them. Acts 10:5 sets the two verbs side by side, so the difference is easy to see. Cornelius is told to send men to Joppa, and then to send for a man called Simon. The men go; Simon is the one who must arrive.
The force of the summons comes entirely from who is sending. The word itself is neutral, and Acts uses it across the whole social range:
a devout army officer politely sends for a stranger he has never met (Acts 10:5, 10:22, 11:13)
a departing leader sends for his own congregation to say goodbye (Acts 20:1)
a Roman governor sends for a prisoner he is holding, over and over (Acts 24:24, 24:26)
hostile leaders beg a governor to send for a prisoner, planning an ambush on the road (Acts 25:3)
All nine uses fall in Acts, and Luke is the only writer in the New Testament who reaches for this word. Peter uses it twice in one breath in Acts 10:29, first for what was done to him and then for what Cornelius did: he came without argument when he was sent for, and now he wants to know why he was sent for. That doubling is the word at its plainest, describing the same errand from both ends.
it names the messengers as well as the order, so the person summoned is always somewhere else and has to make a journeyAct 10:5Act 11:13
Both
both can name a superior ordering a named person to be brought before himAct 24:26
Only summon
"summon" in English implies legal or official power over the person, which the Greek word neither carries nor requires
“call for”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How metapempō differs from similar Greek words
μετακαλέωThe other verb Luke uses for sending for someone at a distance, built on the verb for calling rather than the verb for sending. Acts tells the same story both ways, using this word in Acts 10:5 and its partner in Acts 10:32.
The sending is already inside this word, so it can carry the whole errand on its own with no messengers in view: Felix simply sent for Paul and listened to him (Acts 24:24), Paul sent for the disciples once the uproar in Ephesus had died down (Acts 20:1), and an angel told Cornelius to fetch Peter to his house (Acts 10:22).Act 24:24Act 20:1Act 10:22
Only this word is used from the summoned person's side: Peter says he came without objecting when he was sent for, and then asks the household why they sent for him (Acts 10:29).Act 10:29
It covers a summons issued again and again rather than once: Felix kept sending for Paul, all the more often, because he was hoping for money (Acts 24:26).Act 24:26
It also covers a summons that one party asks an official to issue over a prisoner in his custody: the leaders in Jerusalem asked Festus to have Paul brought up to them, while planning an ambush on the road (Acts 25:3).Act 25:3
Both
Both mean to have someone fetched from where they are so that they come to the one who wants them, and Acts uses each of Paul gathering people to himself in a single chapter: he sent for the disciples at Ephesus (Acts 20:1) and called for the elders of that same church at Miletus (Acts 20:17).Act 20:17Act 20:1
One and the same errand is told with either word: the angel tells Cornelius to send for Simon Peter in Joppa (Acts 10:5), Cornelius repeats the instruction as calling for the same man in the same town (Acts 10:32), and Peter's own retelling goes back to the first word again (Acts 11:13).Act 10:32Act 10:5Act 11:13
Both turn up in the one scene of Felix and Paul with nothing different happening: Felix sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus (Acts 24:24), then sent him away with a promise to call for him again when the time suited (Acts 24:25).Act 24:25Act 24:24
Neither word appears anywhere in the New Testament outside Acts, where both serve as the ordinary way of describing a summons sent out over a distance.Act 7:14Act 25:3
This is the calling half of the errand, so the text normally names the sending right beside it: Joseph sent word and then called for his father Jacob and the whole family (Acts 7:14), Cornelius is told to send to Joppa and call for Simon Peter (Acts 10:32), and Paul sent from Miletus to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church (Acts 20:17).Act 7:14Act 10:32Act 20:17
It is the word Acts uses when a whole group has to travel in from somewhere else to reach the one calling: seventy five relatives resettling in Egypt (Acts 7:14), and the Ephesian elders coming down the coast to meet Paul (Acts 20:17).Act 7:14Act 20:17
προσκαλέωTo call a person over to yourself, usually someone already close enough to hear you. This word instead sends messengers to bring in a person who is somewhere else.
The sending is part of the word: someone dispatches messengers on a trip to go get a person who is somewhere else, and the story names the men who go and the town they go to.Act 10:5Act 11:13
Fits official business with a prisoner: a Roman governor has Paul brought up out of custody for private hearings, and does it over and over.Act 24:24Act 24:26
Can be the favor one party asks a ruler to grant, moving a man from one city to another, here as cover for an ambush on the road.Act 25:3
Both
Both describe a person in authority calling someone to come to him, and the one called comes: a governor with a prisoner, a governor with an officer.Act 24:24Mrk 15:44
Luke uses both for the ordinary business of getting a needed person to show up during Paul's arrest and hearings.Act 25:3Act 23:17
In both, the calling is only the setup: the point of the scene is what the one who called says once the person arrives.Act 20:1Act 6:2
Used of God calling people to himself and calling workers to a job, a summons that is nothing like fetching someone from across town.Act 2:39Act 13:2Act 16:10
The one calling is already on the scene and simply draws people over to where he is, so the call and the coming happen face to face with no messenger in between.Mrk 3:13Mat 18:2Luk 18:16
Regularly gathers a whole crowd in close so they can hear teaching, as when Jesus calls them over and says "Hear and understand".Mat 15:10Mrk 7:14Mrk 8:34
Turns up inside Jesus' stories, where a master calls in a servant or a debtor to settle up with him.Mat 18:32Luk 15:26Luk 16:5
πέμπωThe plain verb for sending someone or something out. This word is its compound, and it turns the sending around: the errand ends with a person arriving rather than departing.
The traffic runs toward the one who gives the order: the person called for travels to the caller and shows up in front of him. Peter is fetched from Joppa to Cornelius's house, and Paul is brought in to stand before the governor.Act 10:29Act 11:13Act 24:24
What is wanted is a person's presence, not an errand run. Nobody is given a task to carry out somewhere else; they are called in so that something can happen once they arrive, whether a message, a hearing, or a last word before a journey.Act 10:22Act 20:1Act 24:26
Both
Both set another person in motion by a word of command, and they can pair up inside a single errand: Cornelius sends men off to Joppa precisely so that they will bring Simon Peter back to him.Act 10:5
Both let someone with standing move people around without moving himself. A governor has a prisoner brought in with one word and shipped off to the emperor with another, and never leaves his seat.Act 24:24Act 25:3Act 23:30Act 25:25
It moves things as readily as people: a book of prophecy goes out to seven churches, famine relief goes down to Judea, and money reaches Paul in prison.Rev 1:11Act 11:29Php 4:16
The person sent goes away from the sender and usually toward some third party, arriving with a job to do on the sender's behalf.Mat 2:8Luk 7:19Php 2:251Co 4:17
This is the word John uses again and again for the Father sending the Son, and for the Spirit being sent afterward. The whole weight of the one who sends stands behind the one who is sent, so refusing the messenger means refusing the sender.Jhn 5:24Jhn 6:44Jhn 14:26Jhn 20:21
metapempō in the other biblical languages
שָׁלַחHebrew“to send: depart”The broad Hebrew verb for sending. Hebrew has no single word for sending for a person, so it strings two verbs together, sending and then calling or fetching, where Greek can use this one compound.
The movement runs toward the sender, not away from him. The person called has to travel and arrive where the one who called him is waiting, so the story is finished only when he shows up.Act 10:29Act 11:13
It only ever calls for a person. Nothing else is sent with this word: no animal, no gift, no letter, no errand, just a human being asked to come.Act 20:1Act 24:26
It usually belongs to someone with the standing to have a person fetched, such as a Roman governor calling in a prisoner or leaders asking the governor to have a man brought over.Act 24:24Act 25:3
Both
Both are used when someone dispatches word so that a particular person is brought to him. Jacob does it to call his wives out to the field, Pharaoh does it to get Joseph out of the prison, and Felix does it to have Paul brought in for a hearing.Gen 31:4Gen 41:14Act 24:24
The Greek word packs into one verb what the Hebrew usually spreads over two: the Hebrew says "sent" and then adds a separate word for calling the person, while the Greek verb already means "sent for" on its own.Gen 27:42Act 10:5
It sends things and creatures out, not only people. Noah releases the raven and then the dove from the ark, and Judah promises to send a young goat as payment.Gen 8:7Gen 8:8Gen 38:17
It covers reaching out with the hand, the same motion of extending something away from yourself, whether to take fruit from a tree or to strike a boy.Gen 3:22Gen 22:12
It carries the hard sense of putting someone out for good: driving the man from the garden, dismissing Hagar with bread and water, escorting Abram out of the country.Gen 3:23Gen 21:14Gen 12:20
When a person is sent, the direction is normally outward, away from the sender and toward somebody else, as when Jacob sends Joseph off to check on his brothers.Gen 37:13Gen 37:14
What scholars say about metapempō
BDAG glosses μεταπέμπω as "send for, summon," noting that in the New Testament it appears only in the middle voice apart from the single aorist passive participle in Acts 10:29. The compound joins μετά with πέμπω, and LSJ documents the middle in classical Greek historians for a ruler or magistrate sending for a person, so the New Testament usage continues ordinary Hellenistic idiom rather than developing a distinctively Christian sense. All nine occurrences are Lukan and confined to Acts, four of them clustered in the Cornelius narrative and its retelling (Acts 10:5, 10:22, 10:29, 11:13), where commentators on Acts treat the repeated vocabulary as part of Luke's deliberate re-narration of the episode. The remaining occurrences fall in scenes of Roman judicial procedure (Acts 24:24, 24:26, 25:3), which is consistent with the register of the word in documentary and historiographical Greek. Louw and Nida classify it within the semantic domain of summoning a person into one's presence, alongside μετακαλέομαι and προσκαλέομαι.