perileipomai

The basic sense is "to be left, to remain," but the survivorship coloring ("to be left alive after others have perished") is well-anchored in classical usage and activated by the Thessalonians context. The lexica divide: LSJ, Middle Liddell, Bailly, and Thayer privilege "remain over, survive," faithful to the classical citation-pattern (Homer Il. 19.230; Herodotus 1.82; Plato Tim. 23c; Euripides Hel. 426), while BDAG, Louw-Nida (85.64, the "Remain, Stay" subdomain), EDNT, and NIDNTTE prefer the neutral "remain, be left" to avoid prejudging Pauline eschatology; the disagreement is methodological rather than substantive. The compound is περί + λείπω, the prefix here adverbial-intensive ("over and above, as a residue") rather than locative, semantically near ὑπολείπομαι and καταλείπομαι. The verb is essentially absent from the documentary papyri (Moulton-Milligan), marking it as literary and historiographic. In the Greek Old Testament it is rare and never the technical remnant word (Hebrew שׁאר / שׁארית being rendered by κατάλειμμα, ὑπόλειμμα, λοιποί), but 4 Maccabees 12:6 and especially 13:18, with the identical participle οἱ περιλειπόμενοι and the same opposition between survivors and those who have died before, supply the closest verbal precedent for Paul. Mainstream commentators (Wanamaker NIGTC, Malherbe AB, Fee NICNT, Best Black's, Weima BECNT, Bruce WBC, Holtz EKK, Beale) overwhelmingly read οἱ περιλειπόμενοι as functionally synonymous with οἱ ζῶντες, a doublet designating Christians alive at the parousia in contrast to οἱ κοιμηθέντες, and uniformly reject the dispensationalist "left behind" reading. A Western text-critical witness (F G 0226vid) omits the participle in 4:17 as redundant, indirect ancient evidence that the two participles were felt to be near-synonyms.