to pick and gather: to take things up one at a time, off a plant or out from among other things, and collect them.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Every use of this word puts hands to work item by item. Someone reaches into a plant for grapes or figs, walks a field pulling weeds, or sits on a beach picking good fish out of a full net. The picture is never a crowd being called together or a heap being swept up; it is a person taking one thing at a time and putting it where it belongs.
Matthew 13:30 shows the point in a single sentence by using two different verbs. The weeds are picked out one by one, and then the wheat is brought in with the broader verb for gathering (συνάγω). Most English versions use "gather" for both, so the contrast the sentence is built on goes quiet.
That note of picking out is what makes the word fit these parables so well. In the field the weeds are picked out and burned; in the net the good fish are picked out and kept. Something is being separated from the mixture it grew up in, and the word carries the sorting without having to say it.
Nuances
1ato pick fruit off a plant.
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 7:16Luk 6:44
1bto pick out from among other things and collect what has been picked, whether to throw it away or to keep it.
Mat 13:28Mat 13:29Mat 13:30Mat 13:40Mat 13:41Mat 13:48
carries the idea of taking items up one at a time, usually picking them out of a mixture.Mat 13:30Mat 13:48
describes hands working on a plant or in a field, never the summoning of people.Mat 7:16
Both
both describe bringing scattered things together into one place.Mat 13:41
Only gather
in English, gathering often describes people assembling for a meeting or a service, which this Greek verb never means.
English "gather" can suggest sweeping everything together at once, which blurs the careful picking out.
“pick”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“collect”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“gather up”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How sullegō differs from similar Greek words
συνάγωthe broad verb for bringing things or people together into one place, with no note of picking items out one by one; Matthew 13:30 sets the two side by side.
Always picking things off or out of the place where they sit: fruit pulled from a bush, weeds pulled out of a standing field of wheat.Mat 7:16Luk 6:44Mat 13:28
Carries a sorting edge. The picking pulls one kind away from another so the unwanted part can be burned and only the good is kept.Mat 13:40Mat 13:41Mat 13:48
Someone is always doing the picking to something else. The word never describes a group coming together on its own, and what is picked has no say in it.Mat 13:29Mat 13:41
Both
Both name the plain act of bringing scattered things together at harvest, and Jesus sets them side by side in one sentence: pick out the weeds first, then bring the wheat into the barn.Mat 13:30
Both belong to the same picture of a final sorting, one crop pulled out to be burned and the other brought in to be kept.Mat 13:30
The ordinary word for people coming together in one place: a crowd packed around a door, a council of leaders in session, believers meeting to pray.Mrk 2:2Mat 26:3Act 4:31Mat 18:20
Reaches into hospitality, where taking a person in is rendered "welcomed" or "took me in": a stranger brought under someone's roof rather than left outside.Mat 25:35Mat 25:38Mat 25:43
Covers storing what has been collected, putting a crop safely into a barn or saving the leftover pieces so nothing is wasted.Mat 3:12Mat 6:26Luk 12:18Jhn 6:12
Used of massing for battle, with kings and nations called together to one spot for war.Rev 16:14Rev 19:19Rev 20:8
τρυγάωthe specific verb for harvesting grapes at vintage; Luke 6:44 puts it next to this word's more general picking.
Its object is often not a crop at all. It is the word for pulling up the weeds that came up among the wheat, and for picking the good fish out of a net that dragged in everything.Mat 13:28Mat 13:29Mat 13:48
It carries the idea of picking one thing out of a mixture, so it is the natural word for separating what will be kept from what will be thrown away.Mat 13:30Mat 13:40Mat 13:41
Nothing in it says the thing gathered is ready. Workers ask to go after the weeds long before harvest, and the owner tells them to wait.Mat 13:29Mat 13:30
Both
Both name taking fruit off a plant, and one saying sets them side by side for exactly that: figs are not gathered from thorns, and grapes are not picked from a briar.Luk 6:44
Both turn up in pictures where the gathering settles what happens to whatever is taken in, whether it is bundled up to be burned or carried off to be crushed.Mat 13:30Rev 14:19
It belongs to the grape harvest in particular, and what it takes in goes straight to the winepress rather than into a basket or a barn.Rev 14:19
It assumes the fruit is ready. The order to start comes precisely because the grapes have reached their peak, so the timing is part of the word rather than an added detail.Rev 14:18
θερίζωto reap a standing crop with a blade, taking the whole field at once rather than selecting item by item.
It covers picking things off a plant by hand, item by item, the way someone would pull figs or grapes off a bush. Nothing is cut down and no field is cleared.Mat 7:16Luk 6:44
Its usual job is separating one kind of thing out of a mixture: weeds out of the standing wheat, the good fish out of a full net, the people who cause harm out of a kingdom. The care of the sorting is the whole point, since pulling too eagerly would tear up the crop along with the weeds.Mat 13:28Mat 13:29Mat 13:41Mat 13:48
What gets picked up this way is often carried off to be destroyed rather than kept. In the parable of the weeds a different word is used for putting the wheat safely in the barn, while this one is reserved for the bundles headed to the fire.Mat 13:30Mat 13:40
Both
Both are plain farming words for taking in what the ground has produced, and English Bibles can render either one "gather", which hides how differently they work.Mat 6:26Mat 7:16
Both are used for the close of the age, when what has been growing is finally dealt with: one for the moment the crop of the earth is cut, the other for the clearing out of what does not belong.Rev 14:16Mat 13:40
This is the word that answers sowing. It almost always stands opposite planting, so it names the return that comes back from what was put into the ground, whether the point is that God feeds birds who never plant, or that a hard master takes a crop he never seeded.Mat 6:26Mat 25:24Luk 12:24Luk 19:21Jhn 4:37
Because of that link with planting, it turns into a way of talking about consequences: a person gets back the same kind of thing they put in, and the return is worth waiting for.2Co 9:6Gal 6:7Gal 6:8Gal 6:91Co 9:11
It is skilled, paid labor done at a set moment with a blade. Hired workers earn wages for it, and it waits until the crop has dried and is ready to be cut.Jhn 4:36Jhn 4:38Jas 5:4Rev 14:15
sullegō in the other biblical languages
לָקַטHebrew“to gather”the Hebrew verb for picking up and gleaning what lies scattered on the ground, as Ruth does behind the reapers; the old Greek translation of the Old Testament regularly renders it with this word.
In the New Testament this word is tied to sorting and separation: the collecting is done to pull the bad out from the good and set it aside, above all the weeds pulled from the wheat and bundled to be burned.Mat 13:30Mat 13:41Mat 13:48
It is used for trying to get good fruit off the wrong plant, gathering grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, so the point is often that nothing worth collecting is there at all.Mat 7:16Luk 6:44
Both
Both name gathering scattered things by picking them up one at a time, the slow hand-work of collecting what lies spread across a field.Rut 2:3Mat 13:28
Both are used of gathering a crop off the plant, grapes and grain in the Old Testament word and grapes and figs in the Greek, so the Greek word naturally renders this kind of harvesting.Isa 27:12Mat 7:16
This is the ordinary word for gleaning: the poor going through a harvested field to pick up the grain the reapers left behind, a practice the law protects for them.Rut 2:2Lev 19:9Lev 23:22
It reaches beyond crops to picking up almost anything scattered by hand: the daily manna off the ground, stones piled into a heap, and money collected up.Exo 16:4Gen 31:46Gen 47:14
The picking is part of a sorting job: what is collected is being separated out from what stays behind, whether weeds pulled out of a wheat field or the good fish kept back from a full net.Mat 13:30Mat 13:48
It carries a picture of final reckoning, with harvesters sent out at the end to collect everything that will be burned.Mat 13:40Mat 13:41
It covers picking fruit off a plant, which is why it works as a test of what a plant really is: nobody collects grapes off a thornbush or figs off a bramble.Mat 7:16Luk 6:44
Both
Both words mean stooping to pick up small scattered things one at a time by hand and piling them up, not reaping a standing field or hauling off a load.Num 15:32Mat 13:30
The Greek word is the one the early Greek translators of the Hebrew Scriptures reached for when this Hebrew word came up, so the plain physical action behind both is the same even though the settings are not.1Ki 17:10Mat 13:28
Every use sits inside hardship or force: slaves told to go find their own straw once the supply is cut off, and a starving widow picking up a couple of sticks for one last meal.Exo 5:71Ki 17:12
What is picked up is fuel or building material scraped off the open ground, never fruit and never food.Exo 5:12Num 15:32
The picking can be aimed at people rather than objects, calling a whole nation to gather itself the way someone gathers scattered stalks off a field.Zep 2:1
What scholars say about sullegō
The lexica are unanimous: BDAG glosses the compound as "collect, gather (in), pick," listing the produce texts (Mt 7:16;Lk 6:44) and the Matthean parables (Mt 13:28-30, 40-41, 48) under one entry, and LSJ documents the same range across classical and Hellenistic Greek, where the verb is also used of levying troops and, in the middle voice, of collecting oneself. Neither of the extra-biblical uses appears in the New Testament. The compound of syn- with the "gather" sense of legō keeps the selective force of the simplex: the object is picked out item by item, which is why the Septuagint uses it for the gleaning verb laqat in Ruth 2. Commentators on Matthew 13 note the deliberate lexical pairing in v. 30, where sullegō governs the weeds and synagō the wheat, a contrast retained in the interpretation at vv. 40-41 and paralleled by the sorting of the dragnet in v. 48.