StrongerBible

hupeikō

ὑπείκω

GreekG5226“submit, yield, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

Heb 13:17
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradehoo-PAY-koverb

What hupeikō means

to yield: to stop resisting and give way to someone, deferring to them once they have won you over

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

The picture behind this word is physical. It first described a soldier who stops fighting and gives ground, a traveler who steps aside to let another pass, or a tree that bends in a storm instead of snapping. From that concrete image the Greek came to mean a moral yielding: a person who could keep resisting but chooses instead to give way and defer to another.

It appears only once in the New Testament, in Hebrews 13:17, where believers are told to be persuaded by their leaders and then to yield to them. It is paired there with the verb for being won over (πείθω), and the two are not the same command. The first asks readers to be convinced by what their leaders teach; this word asks them to then act on it and actually give way in practice. As older commentators put it, you obey when you already agree, and you yield when you would have preferred otherwise.

The writer of Hebrews could have used the ordinary words for falling in line under authority, either the verb of formal subordination (ὑποτάσσω) or the everyday word for obeying (ὑπακούω), but reached instead for this rarer, more polished term. The leaders in view are described as shepherds who keep watch over people's souls and who will answer to God for them, so the yielding it asks for is the teachable, trusting kind, not the surrender of a subject to an office.

Heb 13:17

Disputed

How strongly the verb urges submission in Hebrews 13:17: a soft, teachable yielding, or a full subordination equivalent to the stronger verb ὑποτάσσω.

  • majorityThe author deliberately chose ὑπείκω over ὑποτάσσω to signal teachable pliancy toward accountable shepherds rather than structural subordination; the yielding follows from being persuaded and the leaders are framed as soul-watchers who will give account.; Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1993), 722-24.; Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, AB 36 (Doubleday, 2001), 570-71.; David A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude (Eerdmans, 2000), 505-7.
  • minorityὑπείκω is substantially equivalent to ὑποτάσσω, urging wholehearted acceptance of pastoral authority; the two imperatives together stress thorough adherence to the leaders' oversight.; Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2012), 706-9.; Philip E. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Eerdmans, 1977), 585-87.

What scholars say about hupeikō

ὑπείκω (from ὑπό "under" + εἴκω "to yield") is a classical Greek verb attested continuously from Homer onward, with a concrete sense of retiring or withdrawing (LSJ sense I: battlefield retreat, ceding a seat or the road) and a developed metaphorical sense of yielding, deferring, or submitting to gods, elders, argument, or authority (LSJ sense II, under which LSJ files Heb 13:17). It is a New Testament hapax legomenon, absent from the canonical Septuagint (occurring in the Greek Old Testament only at 4 Maccabees 6:35, of reason refusing to yield to the passions), from the documentary papyri, and from the Apostolic Fathers, which marks it as part of Hebrews' cultivated literary register rather than workaday koine. BDAG glosses "yield, give way, submit" (properly of combatants); Louw-Nida place it in the authority-relation domain (36.18) alongside πείθομαι and ὑποτάσσομαι; Thayer preserves the martial background ("to resist no longer, but to give way"). Commentators agree on the core sense but debate its force. Most Hebrews specialists (Ellingworth, Koester, deSilva, Bruce, Johnson, Lane) argue that the author's choice of ὑπείκω over ὑποτάσσω, which he uses elsewhere in 2:5, 8 and 12:9, is deliberately softer, denoting teachable pliancy toward accountable leaders rather than structural subordination; others (Cockerill, Hughes, Montefiore) treat it as substantially equivalent to ὑποτάσσω. The pairing with πείθεσθε and the framing of the leaders as soul-watchers who will give account are widely taken to place the exhortation in a pastoral, persuasion-based register, with a possible classical parallel in Plato's Crito 51b, where the citizen is to defer to the fatherland after being persuaded.

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 (Danker, ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ὑπείκω.lexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with rev. supp. (1996), s.v. ὑπείκω.lexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (1989), 36.18.lexicon
  • Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1993), 722-24.commentary
  • Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, AB 36 (Doubleday, 2001), 570-71.commentary
  • William L. Lane, Hebrews 9-13, WBC 47B (Word, 1991), 553-56.commentary
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1989), 401-2.commentary
  • Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2012), 706-9.commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ὑπείκω

present active imperative 2p

ὑπείκετε

Heb 13:17