to dry up: to lose moisture and so wither, shrivel, or run dry
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its core this verb describes what happens when something loses its water and dries out. A plant deprived of moisture shrivels and dies; a stream or a flow of blood runs dry; a limb shrinks and stiffens. The New Testament uses the one verb across all of these, because to the eye they are the same event: life or freshness draining away as the moisture goes.
The senses below are not different meanings but the same drying pictured in different subjects. Most occurrences are about plants, and several are vivid: the seed on rocky ground withers for lack of root, the cursed fig tree dries up from the roots, the pruned branch is thrown away and dries out. The image carries a steady lesson about things that flourish briefly and then perish.
A couple of uses stretch the picture. When the woman's bleeding stops, the same verb says her flow "dried up." When the great river is "dried up" to open a road, it is water, not a plant. And once the drying is good news: a harvest that has "dried" has ripened and is ready to be cut.
Names the drying as an event you can watch happen, often on the spot: the cursed fig tree shrivels immediately, and the disciples are startled by how fast it went.Mat 21:19Mat 21:20Mrk 11:20Mrk 11:21
Explains why shallow growth fails, because it tracks the moment the sun comes up and rootless plants lose the moisture they never stored.Mat 13:6Mrk 4:6Luk 8:6
Covers a flow of liquid stopping, not just a plant shriveling: a woman's bleeding halts at once, and a great river is emptied to clear a road.Mrk 5:29Rev 16:12
Can mark a welcome outcome rather than a loss, since a crop dried to full ripeness is exactly what tells the harvester to start reaping.Rev 14:15
Reaches past plants and water to a body seizing up, describing a boy who goes rigid in the grip of a fit.Mrk 9:18
Carries the picture of how briefly people last, with burning heat drying out the grass and the flower falling while the rich man is still going about his business.Jas 1:111Pe 1:24
Both
Both describe the same shriveled hand in the same scene: Mark first says the man's hand had dried up, then calls him the man with the dry hand two verses later, and Luke uses the label for the same kind of case.Mrk 3:1Mrk 3:3Luk 6:6
Both belong to the picture of plant life that has lost its sap and become fuel, whether branches that wither after being thrown out or wood that is already dry when the fire arrives.Jhn 15:6Luk 23:31
Works as a standing label for a person's lasting condition, listed beside "blind" and "lame" among the people waiting by the pool.Jhn 5:3Mat 12:10
Names dry ground as the opposite of water, the solid footing people cross on when the sea is out of the way or travel over on their way across the world.Heb 11:29Mat 23:15
Sets a fixed quality against its opposite, dry wood against living green wood, as a warning that what is coming will burn far more readily.Luk 23:31
μαραίνωto fade or waste away, losing bloom and vigor, where this verb is losing moisture and drying out
xērainō in the other biblical languages
יָבֵשׁHebrew“to wither”the standard Hebrew verb for drying up and withering, the word behind Isaiah's "the grass withers" that 1 Peter quotes
Reaches most often for living things losing their moisture and shriveling: a plant scorched by the sun, a fig tree cursed to the root, a hand shrunk and useless, a flow of blood that stops.Mat 13:6Mrk 11:20Mrk 3:1Mrk 5:29
Carries the gentler image of crops ripening to dryness, ready to be reaped, rather than a place reduced to ruin.Rev 14:15
Both
Both can name a body of water failing or being dried up so that a riverbed lies bare.Isa 44:27Rev 16:12
Both describe the plain loss of moisture, something once wet or alive going dry.Job 14:11Jas 1:11
Stretches beyond drying out to mean laying a place waste: a city, a land, or a people left in ruins and abandoned, an idea the Greek word does not carry.Ezk 6:6Jer 26:9Amo 7:9Zep 3:6
Where it does mean drying, it is mostly water on a large scale: the floodwaters receding, seas and rivers failing, God drying up the deep.Gen 8:13Isa 19:5Isa 51:10
What scholars say about xērainō
The lexicons treat ξηραίνω as a straightforward verb of desiccation with a stable range: active, to make dry (James 1:11, the sun drying the grass); passive, to become dry, wither, dry up. BDAG and LSJ record the same applications the New Testament shows: vegetation (Matt 13:6;Mark 4:6;Luke 8:6;John 15:6; the fig tree, Matt 21:19-20; Mark 11:20-21; 1 Pet 1:24), a bodily member (the withered hand, Mark 3:1), the drying of a fluid (Mark 5:29, the flow of blood; Rev 16:12, the Euphrates), and the epileptic boy's body going rigid (Mark 9:18). BDAG notes the specialized nuance at Rev 14:15, where ἐξηράνθη of the θερισμός marks the grain as ripe. Louw and Nida place it in the semantic domain of dryness. The verb regularly renders Hebrew יָבֵשׁ in the Septuagint, including at Isa 40:7, the source of the citation in 1 Pet 1:24.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ξηραίνωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ξηραίνωlexicon
Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domain 79lexicon