to be moved with deep compassion, a mercy felt at the core of one's being that moves the one feeling it to act
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This verb names compassion at its most intense: a mercy that grips a person so deeply it is felt physically, the way we still speak of something being gut-wrenching. It is built from a word for the inner organs, the heart and lungs and liver, which Greek-speaking Jews had come to treat as the seat of the strongest feelings. The point of the imagery is not the body but the depth: this is not polite sympathy but mercy that takes hold of someone at the center.
In the New Testament the word always carries a second feature. The compassion never stays a feeling; it spills over into action every time. The one moved with it heals, feeds, raises the dead, forgives a crushing debt, or runs to embrace a returning son. Feeling and deed are fused: the emotion is the spring from which the rescue flows.
The two senses below are the same compassion seen in two settings. In the gospel stories it is almost always the compassion of Jesus himself, the inner ground of what he does for the crowds and the suffering. In his parables it belongs to a character who plainly stands in for God, so that the listener is meant to see the divine mercy enacted in human shape. The core feeling is identical; only the frame differs.
Nuances
1athe compassion of Jesus in the gospel narratives, the inner mercy from which his healing, feeding, and raising flow
Mat 9:36Mat 14:14Mat 15:32Mat 20:34Mrk 1:41*Mrk 6:34Mrk 8:2Mrk 9:22*Luk 7:13
Mrk 1:41
Whether Jesus was moved with compassion (σπλαγχνισθείς) or angered (ὀργισθείς) when he touched the leper. Most manuscripts and printed editions read "moved with compassion," but Codex Bezae and several Old Latin manuscripts read "becoming angry." If "angry" were original, this verse would not be an occurrence of this verb at all, so the word's classification here depends on the variant.
contestedThe original reading is "moved with compassion" (σπλαγχνισθείς); the diversity of the manuscript evidence outweighs the internal arguments, and the witnesses to "angry" cluster in a single Latin-influenced line of transmission.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC), 115-118; B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., 65; P. J. Williams, "An Examination of Ehrman's Case for ὀργισθείς in Mark 1:41," NovT 54 (2012) 1-12
contestedThe original reading is "becoming angry" (ὀργισθείς), the harder reading that later scribes softened to "moved with compassion"; the surrounding stern language and Mark's willingness elsewhere to show Jesus angry favor it.; B. D. Ehrman, "A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus," in Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (NTTS 33, 2006) 120-141; J. Marcus, Mark 1-8 (AYB), 206, 209; A. Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia), 177-178
1bthe compassion of a character in Jesus' parables who stands in for God, the same divine mercy transposed into a story
names a mercy felt in the depths of one's being, far stronger than the calm phrase suggests, and in the Gospels almost always the compassion of Jesus or of a figure who stands for GodMat 9:36Luk 7:13
Both
both point to a merciful response to people who are suffering or lostMrk 6:34
Only had compassion
in English "had compassion" sounds gentle and a little distant, easily heard as mere sympathy that need not act
“moved with compassion”
splagchnizō1 distinctshared1moved with compassion1 distinct
the Greek word, by its root, locates the feeling in the inner organs, the seat of the strongest emotion, so the mercy is depicted as physically feltMrk 1:41
Both
both stress that the compassion is not static feeling but something that prompts a responseMat 20:34
Only moved with compassion
"moved" rightly catches that the feeling stirs to action, but the English word does not carry the visceral, gut-deep picture the Greek root holds
“took pity”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“felt compassion”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How splagchnizō differs from similar Greek words
ἐλεέωthe ordinary word for showing mercy, focused on the help actually given to someone in need; this verb names the deep inner compassion that moves a person to give that help.
This word names the gut-level compassion that rises at the sight of people in need, the inner stirring that comes first and then moves a person to act. It points to what is felt, not yet to what is done.Mat 9:36Mrk 6:34
Jesus speaks it of his own heart, declaring "I feel compassion for the crowd" before he provides for them. It is the only word here that describes the welling up of mercy from within the one who shows it.Mat 15:32Mrk 8:2
In the parables it falls on the figure who stands for God, and it is the hinge that turns feeling into costly action: the Samaritan stops and pays, the father runs to embrace.Luk 10:33Luk 15:20
Both
Both belong to the healing scenes where someone helpless meets Jesus: the sufferer cries out for mercy and Jesus is moved with compassion and heals. The two words describe the two sides of the same encounter.Mrk 10:47Mrk 1:41Mat 20:34
Both describe one and the same act of mercy in the parable of the unforgiving servant: the king is moved with compassion and so he has mercy on his servant and cancels the debt. The compassion felt and the mercy shown are the single response of God-like generosity.Mat 18:33Mat 18:27
This is the word people cry out when they beg Jesus for help: "have mercy on me." It names the rescue itself, the help asked for and given, not the feeling behind it.Mat 9:27Mat 20:30Luk 18:38
It is the standard word for God's saving mercy in the letters, the mercy by which God chooses and rescues whole peoples. The feeling word is never used this way.Rom 9:15Rom 11:321Pe 2:10
It can be commanded as something people do to one another, a kindness shown and a duty owed, rather than only a stirring that wells up inside.Jud 1:22Mat 18:33Rom 12:8
οἰκτείρωto feel tender pity, the gentler and more general word for being sorry for someone; this verb is more intense and, in the Gospels, almost always tied to a rescuing act that follows.
Names a deep, gut-level compassion felt in a specific moment as a response to seeing concrete distress, such as a crowd left like sheep without a shepherd or a grieving mother at her son's funeral.Mat 9:36Luk 7:13
Always moves at once into a concrete saving act, so the feeling and the deed are fused: the compassion immediately teaches and feeds the hungry, heals the sick, forgives the debtor, or runs to embrace the returning son.Mrk 6:34Mat 18:27Luk 15:20
Both
Both are New Testament Greek words for compassion that draw on the same Hebrew compassion language behind the Old Testament, so by the first century they had become close partners for the mercy of God.Rom 9:15Mat 14:14
Both name a mercy that does not stay inward but reaches the one in need: God's declared compassion in Romans and Jesus' felt compassion in the Gospels each result in real help given.Rom 9:15Mat 20:34
Names mercy as God's own sovereign freedom to grant it: in its single New Testament appearance it is God's first-person declaration to Moses, "I will have compassion on whom I have compassion," a statement about the divine right to show mercy rather than a scene of felt emotion.Rom 9:15
Carries the steadier tone of "tender mercies" as a settled gracious disposition, the standing kindness God chooses to extend, with no necessary picture of a gut reaction in a particular moment.Rom 9:15
Names the felt response itself, the moment of being moved to the core, not a body part. It is something a person does, never a thing a person has.Mat 9:36Mrk 6:34
In the Gospels it is almost always Jesus' own compassion, and the few times it describes someone else it is a parable figure who stands in for God. It is the Gospel writers' signature word for divine mercy in action.Luk 7:13Mat 18:27Luk 15:20
The feeling regularly comes first and then breaks out into a rescuing deed: moved, then he heals, raises, feeds, or forgives. The emotion and the action it triggers are fused.Mat 20:34Mat 15:32Luk 10:33
Both
Both belong to the same family and both reach back to the old picture of compassion welling up from deep inside a person, the inner parts as the source of tender mercy.Luk 7:13Luk 1:78
Both are used of God or of Christ, naming a mercy that is not cool detachment but warm affection felt at the deepest level.Luk 15:20Php 1:8
Names the inward parts of a person, the gut-level seat where the deepest affections are felt, rather than the act of feeling. It is the place compassion comes from, pictured as something that can be opened wide or shut tight.1Jn 3:172Co 6:12
Because it names a place inside the person, it can be refreshed, comforted, or stirred up by others, and a beloved person can even be called one's own inward parts, one's very heart.Phm 1:7Phm 1:122Co 7:15
It keeps a plain physical sense the verb never has: the literal inner organs of the body, which can spill out.Act 1:18
It ranges across the whole New Testament, in Luke, Paul, and John, including being attached to Christ as the place his affection comes from, while the verb stays shut inside the Synoptic Gospels.Php 1:8Luk 1:78Col 3:12
splagchnizō in the other biblical languages
רָחַםHebrew“to have compassion”the main Hebrew verb for showing compassion, tied to the imagery of a mother's love for the child of her womb; this Greek verb revives that same deep, bodily picture of mercy in a Greek word.
In the New Testament this is almost always Jesus' own compassion, or the compassion of a parable figure who stands in for God. It became the Gospels' near-signature word for the mercy God shows in person, rather than a verb used freely of everyone.Mat 9:36Mrk 6:34Luk 7:13
It is the inward stirring that comes first and immediately issues in a concrete rescuing deed: he feels it and then heals, feeds, or forgives. The feeling and the act are fused in a single moment.Mrk 1:41Mat 15:32Mat 18:27
In the parables it falls on the unexpected outsider, the Samaritan and the waiting father, to expose a God-like mercy that crosses the boundaries the hearers assumed.Luk 10:33Luk 15:20
Both
Both locate mercy in the body's core, the Hebrew in the womb and inward parts, the Greek in the gut, so both name compassion as something felt deep in a person and not a cool decision of the will.Jer 31:20Mrk 1:41
Both are supremely the mercy of God that bends down toward the helpless and moves to rescue and restore them; the Greek word is in fact the later reawakening of this same Hebrew picture of divine compassion.Psa 103:13Mat 14:14
This is the standing Old Testament verb for God's mercy, said of the LORD again and again across the law and the prophets as the covenant God who relents toward his people and gathers them back.Exo 33:19Deu 13:17Isa 49:13
It is built on the word for womb, so it pictures mercy as a mother's or father's love for the child of one's own body, a tenderness bound up with kinship.Isa 49:15Psa 103:13
Its withholding is itself a covenant threat: God can declare that he will NOT have compassion, naming a child Lo-Ruhamah, "not pitied." The Greek verb is never turned negative like this.Hos 1:6Jer 13:14Isa 9:17
רַחֲמִיםHebrew“compassion”the Hebrew noun for compassion or tender mercies, literally the plural of the word for womb; the Greek compassion words grew up as a way to carry this Hebrew sense into Greek.
What scholars say about splagchnizō
Standard lexica and theological dictionaries (BDAG; LSJ; Spicq, TLNT; Köster, TDNT VII) agree that pagan Greek used the noun group for sacrificial entrails and as the seat of violent feelings such as anger, anxiety, and desire, but almost never for pity. The shift to compassion happened inside Greek-speaking Judaism, above all in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, where the word group replaced the older Greek mercy terms as the rendering of the Hebrew compassion word and could even be predicated of God. The New Testament inherits the verb as a near-technical marker of divine compassion enacted by Jesus: it occurs exactly twelve times, all in the Synoptic Gospels, every time of Jesus or of a parable character who represents God. Major critical commentary (Davies-Allison and Luz on Matthew; Marcus and France on Mark; Fitzmyer, Bovon, and Marshall on Luke) describes it as deep compassion that issues in saving action, an affective ground of messianic deeds rather than an isolated bodily sensation.
In-depth research
This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.
Sources
H. Köster, "σπλάγχνον κτλ.," TDNT VII.548-559theological-dictionary
C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, 3:273-275theological-dictionary
BDAG, s.v. σπλαγχνίζομαιlexicon
LSJ, s.v. σπλάγχνον, σπλαγχνεύωlexicon
M. Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, s.v. σπλάγχνονtheological-dictionary
W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC), 2:147-149, 2:802commentary
U. Luz, Matthew (Hermeneia), 2:54-56, 2:475-476commentary
J. Marcus, Mark (AYB), 1:206-209, 408-410; 8-16:654-656commentary
R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC), 115-118, 268-269, 367-368commentary
J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (AB), 887, 1090commentary
F. Bovon, Luke (Hermeneia), 1:76-77, 2:56-58, 2:425-427commentary
K. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 2nd ed., 70-75, 142, 357-358monograph
F. Mirguet, "Compassion in the Making," CHS Research Bulletin 1.2 (2013)article