to come together into one place: for people to gather or assemble as a group
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
The word is built from two ordinary pieces, a part meaning "with, together" and a part meaning "to come," so at its heart it simply pictures separate people moving until they are in one place. Most often it describes a crowd or a group forming: onlookers who rush to Jesus, leaders who assemble to put him on trial, a congregation that meets.
In Paul's letters to Corinth this becomes almost a fixed way of naming the church's meetings. His repeated phrase "when you come together" treats the assembling of believers as a recognizable event with its own conduct and problems. Across all these scenes the picture is the same: scattered people converging until they form one gathered body.
to go along with someone: to accompany a person on a journey or errand
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
When the word is joined to a person rather than a place, its focus shifts from a crowd forming to one or more people traveling alongside another. The sentence typically names who is being accompanied: the brothers who go with Peter, the disciples who travel with Paul, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee.
Luke uses the word this way again and again in Acts, where companionship on the road matters for the story: witnesses who were with the apostles from the beginning, or a helper who did or did not stay with the mission. The togetherness of the word is still present, but here it is the closeness of fellow travelers rather than the massing of a crowd.
to come together as husband and wife: for a couple to begin married life
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
In one place, the opening of Matthew's Gospel, the word carries the quiet, formal sense a couple beginning their life together. Matthew says that Mary was found to be pregnant before she and Joseph "came together," that is, before they had begun to live as husband and wife. "Coming together" was a discreet way to speak of a married couple's union, and the point of the verse is that Mary's pregnancy came first, apart from any relations between the two.
in Greek the same verb can also mean to travel alongside someoneAct 10:23
in Greek it can also be a discreet way to speak of a couple beginning married lifeMat 1:18
Both
both describe separate people converging into one placeMrk 3:20
Only come together
the English phrase sounds like any casual convergence and does not hint at either accompaniment or marriage
“assemble”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“gather”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“accompany”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“go with”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How sunerchomai differs from similar Greek words
συνάγωthe word for actively gathering people or things together, where someone does the collecting; this word instead describes the people themselves coming together.
sunerchomai in the other biblical languages
קָהַלHebrew“to gather”the main Hebrew verb for assembling as a congregation; it shares this word's sense of a group gathering as one body.
יָעַדHebrew“to appoint”the Hebrew verb for meeting by appointment at a set place or time, close to this word's assembling sense but stressing a prearranged meeting.
It can name a meeting as a recognized event, a body that convenes and then has its own conduct and problems. Paul's repeated phrase for the Corinthians assembling treats the gathering itself as the occasion under discussion.1Co 11:171Co 11:201Co 14:23
The togetherness can attach to a person instead of a place, so the word describes travelling alongside someone rather than massing anywhere: the brothers who go with Peter, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee.Act 10:23Act 1:21Luk 23:55
The gathering can be hostile or plainly disorderly: a council convening to condemn a man, or a mob so confused that most of them do not know why they came.Mrk 14:53Act 19:32Act 22:30
Two people are enough for it. In Matthew's opening it is a discreet way of saying that a couple had not yet begun married life.Mat 1:18
Both
Both describe scattered people converging until they stand massed in one place, which is why English Bibles read "flow to" for the Hebrew verb and "come together" for the Greek one. The Greek verb is the natural New Testament wording for the scene the Hebrew verb paints, minus the water.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Mrk 6:33Act 2:6
In both, the crowd moves because of what waits at the far end, so the gathering itself measures the pull of a place or a person: the good things God gives in one case, a healer worth walking to in the other.Jer 31:12Luk 5:15Act 5:16
It is built on the ordinary Hebrew word for a river, so the crowd is pictured as moving water: a mass in steady one directional motion, not simply people who have shown up.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1
Its scenes are nation sized and set in God's promised future: whole peoples going up to the LORD's mountain in the last days, exiles brought home to the good things God gives. It never describes a local crowd on a particular day.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12
It can be turned around into a picture of traffic that stops. Once Babylon's god is broken, the nations simply do not pour toward him anymore, and the drying up of the stream is the judgment.Jer 51:44
The same three letters carry a second use with no movement in it at all, describing a face that brightens at what it sees, which English Bibles render "radiant".Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
What scholars say about sunerchomai
συνέρχομαι is a compound of the preposition σύν with ἔρχομαι, well attested from classical Greek through the Koine. Standard lexica (BDAG) distinguish three uses: assembling as a group, going along with or accompanying a person (regularly with a dative), and, at Matthew 1:18, marital union, a euphemistic usage paralleled in the documentary papyri (Moulton and Milligan). The Corinthian correspondence gives the assembly sense a near-technical role for the Christian gathering (1 Corinthians 11 and 14). Louw and Nida separate the group-assembly and accompaniment uses into distinct semantic domains.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. συνέρχομαιlexicon
Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. συνέρχομαιlexicon
Moulton & Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. συνέρχομαιlexicon
J. Schneider, 'ἔρχομαι, συνέρχομαι κτλ.', in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2theological-dictionary