so that, with the result that: it attaches a consequence to what just happened, naming the effect that the action produced or was meant to produce
This is the older and more basic job of the word: it links a cause to its consequence. Something happens, and the word points to what follows from it, the way "so that" or "with the result that" does in English. A storm rises, so that the boat is being swamped; the crowds are so large that Jesus gets into a boat; the disease is healed, so that the mute man speaks.
Most of the time the result actually came about, and the word simply reports it. In a smaller group of passages the consequence is the aim of the action rather than a finished fact, so the word leans toward "in order to." Where it does this, careful translators and scholars disagree about whether to read plain result or genuine purpose, and a few verses (Luke 4:29, Romans 7:6, Matthew 27:1) sit right on that line. Even in those cases the word keeps its consecutive backbone: it is still pointing from a cause to what comes out of it, only with the outcome held up as the goal.
This use almost always sits inside a sentence, attached to the clause before it, and the verb that follows is usually an infinitive (the "to do" form). It is the most common way the word is used across the Gospels and in narrative.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether this word can express genuine purpose ("in order that") rather than only result, including intended or anticipated result.
- minorityThe word is fundamentally a result word; the apparent purpose cases are best described as intended or conceived result, still within the result category rather than true purpose.; Burton, Ernest De Witt. Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek. 3rd ed. T&T Clark, 1898, §§234-237.; Robertson, A. T. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. 4th ed. Broadman, 1934, pp. 999-1003.; LSJ, s.v. ὥστε.
- majorityBy the time of the New Testament the word had developed a genuinely purposive use with the infinitive, especially in everyday documents; the older distinction between result and purpose had eroded.; Blass, F. and A. Debrunner. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament. Trans. R. Funk. University of Chicago, 1961, §391(3).; BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. ὥστε.; Muraoka, Takamitsu. 'Purpose or Result? ὥστε in Biblical Greek.' Novum Testamentum 15 (1973): 205-219.; di Bartolo, Giuseppina. Studien zur griechischen Syntax dokumentarischer Papyri der römischen Zeit. Papyrologica Coloniensia XLIV, 2021.