to obey: to heed and carry out what an authority says, as the answer of someone who has listened to a voice.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The word is built from two smaller pieces: "under" and "hear." At its root it means to listen as someone placed under a voice, and then to do what that voice says. Obedience here is not blind compliance; it is the response of a hearer to a word spoken to them. That is why the same verb can describe a child heeding a parent, a household worker heeding a master, and a person answering God.
Because the word joins hearing and doing, the New Testament writers use it across a wide field:
everyday authority in the home, where children and household servants heed those set over them
the response of a person to the Christian message, where "obeying the gospel" comes very close to "believing" it
the yielding of wind, sea, and even unclean spirits to Jesus, whose command they cannot resist
The first two are the willing answer of a person; the last is the forced submission of forces that have no choice. A close relative, ὑποτάσσω ("to be subject"), pictures ranking oneself under an order or a structure, while this word pictures hearing a voice and acting on it. The plain verb ἀκούω ("to hear") is the raw material: obedience is hearing that has gone all the way to doing.
Nuances
1ato obey or heed a person or God who has rightful authority; to submit the way a servant submits to a master.
1bto obey the gospel or the faith: to respond to the Christian message with believing surrender, the language the New Testament uses for coming to faith.
TranslatabilityPartial
Act 6:7Rom 10:16*2Th 1:8
Rom 10:16
Whether obeying the gospel names the same act as believing it, or an obedience that follows from faith. Because Paul parallels "not all obeyed the gospel" with Isaiah's "who has believed our report," this verse is treated as decisive for how the wider phrase "the obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5; 16:26) should be read.
contestedTo obey the gospel is to believe it: faith and obedience name one and the same response, so the phrase means the obedience that is faith.; Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1; Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (1980); N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013)
contestedObedience is the fruit that flows from and accompanies faith, distinct from faith itself, so the phrase means the obedience that faith produces.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, International Critical Commentary (1975); Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (1996); Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, BECNT (1998)
contestedThe wording is deliberately two-sided and means both at once: the obedience that is faith and the obedience that faith produces.; Don B. Garlington, The Obedience of Faith, WUNT 2/38 (1991); James D. G. Dunn, Romans, Word Biblical Commentary 38A (1988)
1c(of wind, sea, spirits, or other forces) to yield to a command; to submit to an authority one has no power to resist.
Mat 8:27Mrk 1:27Mrk 4:41Luk 8:25Luk 17:6
2
to answer a knock at the door: to come to the gate in response to a caller, listening to find out who is there.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the word's older, everyday sense, and it survives in the New Testament only once. In the ancient world the person who kept the door would listen at a knock to find out who was calling before unbarring the gate. That is exactly the scene when a servant girl comes to the door after Peter knocks: she listens, recognizes his voice, and in her joy runs off to tell the others without even opening it.
Here the usual translation "obey" would be wrong; the girl is not obeying anyone, she is answering the door. Older English Bibles rendered it "hearken," which keeps the note of listening; "answer the door" catches the action better for a modern reader.
the word grounds obeying in listening: it is the answer of a hearer to a voice addressed to them, so it reaches its fullest form in people responding to God's word.Rom 10:16Heb 11:8
Both
both name doing what a rightful authority directs.Eph 6:1Col 3:20
Only obey
English "obey" can suggest cold compliance with a rule or an order, and it says nothing about hearing; it can miss the relational, listening-first note the Greek carries.
“answer”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“hearken”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How hupakouō differs from similar Greek words
ὑποτάσσωto be subject, to rank oneself under an order or structure. It pictures position rather than response, while obeying pictures hearing a voice and acting on it.
At root it is hearing a voice and acting on what it says, so it fits responding to a specific command or spoken word. Even the winds and the sea "obey" Jesus when he speaks to them.Mrk 4:41Heb 11:8
Because the sense is hearing-and-heeding, it is the word for answering a summons: Rhoda comes "to answer" the knock at the gate.Act 12:13
It describes taking a message to heart and acting on it, so the New Testament speaks of obeying the gospel as a proclamation that must be heeded.Rom 10:162Th 1:8
Since it is about heeding whatever voice one listens to, it can be used with a bad object: giving sin the compliance owed to a master.Rom 6:12Rom 6:16
Both
Both spell out the proper response of those under authority in the household codes, and both are applied to servants toward their masters: one asks servants to heed the master's word, the other asks them to keep their place under him.Eph 6:5Col 3:22Tit 2:91Pe 2:18
At root it is placing oneself under an ordering, so it names an ongoing position of being subject rather than the doing of any one command: wives are told to take their place under their own husbands.Eph 5:22Col 3:18
It fits an arrangement of ranks in society, so it is the word for the citizen's place under governing authorities.Rom 13:11Pe 2:13
Because it is about who is set under whom, it describes cosmic order: God has put all things under Christ's feet, and even the creation was placed under futility.1Co 15:27Rom 8:20
It can mark being under control or in proper order without any command being heeded: the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, and the fleshly mind refuses to sit under God's law.1Co 14:32Rom 8:7
πείθωto be persuaded and so to comply. It stresses being won over by an argument, while obeying stresses answering a voice with action.
Centers on obedience: the act of submitting to a command or an authority, doing what one is told.Eph 6:1Col 3:20Rom 6:16
Frames the response as hearing and then heeding, answering a voice or summons, even when no argument has been made.Act 12:13Heb 11:81Pe 3:6
Both
Both can name a person yielding and falling into line behind someone, where being won over and complying with them come to the same thing.Act 5:36Act 6:7
Obedience: heeding a command so completely that you act on it, said of children, servants, and wives under authority.Eph 6:1Col 3:201Pe 3:6
Even wind, sea, and tree submit to a command, obeying the one who speaks.Mat 8:27Mrk 4:41Luk 17:6
Responding to the gospel with submission, so that believing is spoken of as obeying the message.Act 6:7Rom 10:162Th 1:8
The narrow everyday sense of coming to answer a knock at the door, stepping to the voice that calls.Act 12:13
Both
Both describe a word or command reaching a person who is called to take it to heart, not merely register it, so that ordinary "hearing" already leans toward heeding.Mat 17:5Rom 6:17
ὑπακούω is the compliance side: to hear an authority and actually carry out what it says. It covers children heeding parents and servants heeding masters (Ephesians 6:1, 6:5), stretches to Abraham answering God's call to leave home (Hebrews 11:8), and even reaches wind and sea "obeying" Jesus (Mark 4:41) or a servant girl coming to answer a knock at the door (Acts 12:13).Eph 6:1Heb 11:8Mrk 4:41Act 12:13
Both
Both verbs are built on the verb "to hear" and make hearing the hinge of how a person answers an authoritative word: one names heeding it, the other refusing it. Each measures someone by what they do with what they have heard, so the two are exact opposites inside the same picture of hearing and response. Refusing the church in Matthew 18:17 and not obeying the gospel in Romans 10:16 are the two poles of that one act.Mat 18:17Rom 10:16
παρακούω is the refusal side of hearing: to take in a command or correction and deliberately pay it no heed, which amounts to disobedience. In Matthew 18:17 the offender "refuses to listen" first to the witnesses and then to the whole assembly, and in Mark 5:36 Jesus pays no attention to the discouraging report that the girl has died.Mat 18:17Mrk 5:36
Names the concrete act of one party heeding another's authority, often nature or subordinates submitting to a specific command: the winds and sea obey Christ, children obey parents, servants obey masters, Abraham obeys and departs.Mat 8:27Eph 6:1Col 3:22Heb 11:8
Can carry the plain everyday sense of heeding a summons, stretching to answering a knock at the door rather than any moral submission.Act 12:13
Both
Both describe yielding to a master's authority: in Romans 6:16 a person is the slave of the one they obey, and that yielding issues in the settled state of obedience that leads to righteousness.Rom 6:16
Names obedience as a settled disposition and hallmark of the believer, not a single act: the state of life the gospel aims to produce among the nations and the mark of a whole community.Rom 1:5Rom 16:191Pe 1:14
Points to Christ's own redemptive obedience as a decisive fact of salvation, a use the concrete verb never carries.Rom 5:19Heb 5:8
Names carrying out what is commanded: the active doing of the thing ordered. Even the wind, the sea, and unclean spirits "obey" Jesus by instantly executing his word.Mat 8:27Mrk 1:27
Reaches beyond persons to a message: one can "obey the faith" or "obey the gospel", heeding a proclamation as a demand that calls for a response.Act 6:7Rom 10:16
Both
Both describe the right response of those set under authority, falling into line beneath a rightful leader.Eph 6:1Heb 13:17
Pictures yielding or giving way: ceasing to resist and deferring to another, rather than performing a particular order. Believers are told to "submit" to their leaders.Heb 13:17
hupakouō in the other biblical languages
שָׁמַעHebrew“to hear: hear”the Hebrew verb that means both to hear and to obey in one word (as in "Hear, O Israel"). Greek splits the two ideas across hearing and obeying; this word is the one the ancient Greek Old Testament reached for when it wanted the obedience side of the Hebrew term.
Obedience is the whole point of the Greek verb, not one stretch of a wider word for hearing. It is the ordinary term for the compliance owed inside a household, where children answer to parents, household workers answer to masters, and a wife is held up as answering her husband.Eph 6:1Col 3:221Pe 3:6
It describes how a person answers the Christian message, so that "obeying" the good news comes very close to receiving or believing it. That use has no counterpart in the Aramaic verb, whose reports are court news rather than a message calling for surrender.Act 6:7Rom 10:162Th 1:8
It can name obedience given to the wrong master. Paul warns against letting sin's cravings be obeyed, and says a person becomes the slave of whatever they obey, so the word carries no built in approval of the one being obeyed.Rom 6:12Rom 6:16
It stretches to forces with no will of their own, which bend to a command they cannot resist: wind and sea, unclean spirits, and even a tree that would pull up its own roots at a word.Mat 8:27Mrk 1:27Luk 17:6
In one place it slides out of obedience altogether and means coming to answer a knock, when a servant girl goes to the gate after Peter knocks. That is as close as the Greek verb ever gets to plain listening, and it is still about answering rather than perceiving a sound.Act 12:13
Both
Both can mean giving a ruler the compliance a command calls for, and that is the one place the two words genuinely meet. In Daniel's vision every ruling power will serve and obey the one handed an everlasting kingdom, and in Hebrews rescue belongs to all who obey the Son. When the ancient Greek translators needed this compliance sense of the Aramaic verb, the Greek verb here is what they reached for.Dan 7:27Heb 5:9
In both words obeying keeps hearing inside it. The Aramaic verb is simply the word for hearing, used of compliance, and the Greek verb is built out of the verb for hearing, so obedience is pictured as answering a voice rather than being forced. Abraham obeys by going out when he is called, and Daniel's ruling powers comply with the one whose kingdom is announced.Heb 11:8Dan 7:27
Its everyday use is plain physical hearing, a sound striking the ear with no compliance carried by the word itself. When the royal band plays, the crowd hears the music, and the bowing that follows is commanded by other words in the sentence.Dan 3:5Dan 3:7Dan 3:10
It covers getting word about a person or an event by report. Belshazzar tells Daniel twice that he has heard of his gifts, and Darius hears what has been done to Daniel and is left distressed.Dan 5:14Dan 5:16Dan 6:14
It can name hearing as a working ability, and so be denied of something lifeless: the gods of silver, wood, and stone that cannot see or hear or know. The Greek verb cannot be used that way, because nothing is being asked to obey.Dan 5:23
All of its appearances sit inside a royal court, where what gets heard is a signal, a decree, or a report moving toward or away from a throne. The Greek verb ranges much wider, through homes, churches, and open country.Dan 3:15Dan 6:14
What scholars say about hupakouō
ὑπακούω is a transparent compound of ὑπό ("under") and ἀκούω ("hear"), and the standard lexica agree its core sense is to hearken as a subordinate and so to obey. BDAG divides the verb into obeying or being subject to (with a subcategory for the compelled obedience of hostile powers and the elements, e.g. Mark 4:41), granting a request, and answering a knock at the door (Acts 12:13, backed by Plato and Xenophon); Louw-Nida places the door-answering use in a separate domain of household activity, glossing the theological sense as "to obey on the basis of having paid attention to." In the Septuagint the verb chiefly renders Hebrew שָׁמַע, and by choosing the compound rather than plain ἀκούω the translators flagged the obedience pole of a Hebrew verb that already fused hearing and doing (the Shema; Israel's "we will do and we will hear" at Sinai). Kittel (TDNT) and Spicq (TLNT) stress that biblical obedience is therefore relational and auditory, the response of a hearer to a personally addressed word, and that Christ's ὑπακοή reverses Adam's παρακοή. In Paul the word group runs in three registers: Christ's own obedience (Romans 5:19;Philippians 2:8), the human response to the gospel that is virtually synonymous with faith (Romans 10:16;2 Thessalonians 1:8), and ongoing compliance in the community and household (Ephesians 6:1, 5; Colossians 3:20, 22), where several commentators distinguish it from ὑποτάσσω as active hearing-and-doing under authority rather than structural subordination. The Synoptic storm-stilling scenes (Matthew 8:27;Mark 4:41;Luke 8:25) use it of nature obeying Jesus, an authority the Old Testament reserves to God, which commentators such as France and Marcus read as a claim about Jesus' identity. The sharpest disagreements (the sense of ὑπακοὴ πίστεως framing Romans, the genitive in 2 Corinthians 10:5, and the reading of Sarah in 1 Peter 3:6) are hermeneutical and theological rather than lexical.
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
BDAG (Bauer-Danker), s.v. ὑπακούωlexicon
Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, §36.15 and §46lexicon
LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones), s.v. ὑπακούωlexicon
Gerhard Kittel (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1, article ἀκούω κτλ.theological dictionary
Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, vol. 3, s.v. ὑπακοή / ὑπακούωtheological dictionary
Moisés Silva (ed.), New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (2014)theological dictionary
James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. ὑπακούωlexicon
C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, International Critical Commentary (1975)commentary
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (1996)commentary
C. K. Barrett, Acts, International Critical Commentary (1994-1998)commentary
R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, NICNT (2002)commentary