ἐπιστρέφω (epistréphō) means to turn, return, turn back, or cause someone to turn. Many uses describe ordinary movement: a person turns around, returns to a house or town, turns toward someone, or looks back.
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Reader summary
Full entry for ἐπιστρέφω (G1994) · Open the biblical lexicon
ἐπιστρέφω (epistréphō) means to turn, return, turn back, or cause someone to turn. Many uses describe ordinary movement: a person turns around, returns to a house or town, turns toward someone, or looks back.
The BSB source-word alignment has 36 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include return (3), turn (3), Turning (3), returns (2), turned (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 10:13. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (11), Luke (7), Mark (4), Matthew (4).
G1994 means to turn, return, turn back, or cause someone to turn. Many uses describe ordinary movement: a person turns around, returns to a house or town, turns toward someone, or looks back. Other passages use the same directional language for restoration, repentance, conversion, or bringing another person back from error. The verb does not mean conversion in every occurrence, and it does not by itself divide repentance into a bodily turn opposed to an inward change of mind.
The subject, destination, object, and surrounding command determine whether the movement is physical, relational, moral, or theological. Direction must be read from context.
The thirty-six forms include ordinary returns and bodily turns, transitive acts of turning someone, and theological turns toward God or away from error. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Revelation preserve ordinary movement uses. Luke 1 describes John's ministry turning people and relationships. Luke 22 speaks of Peter turning back after denial. Acts repeatedly describes people turning to the Lord or God, while Galatians warns about turning back to weak principles.
James describes bringing a wanderer back, and Peter uses return language for coming back to the Shepherd and for a dog returning to vomit. Context supplies the moral direction.
I will return to the house I left
The verb describes return within Jesus' warning about an unclean spirit. The lexical movement is ordinary even though the larger teaching is moral.
Many of the sons of Israel he will turn back to the Lord their God
John's ministry is described transitively as turning people toward the Lord, with prophetic context governing the claim.
Her spirit returned, and at once she got up
Return language belongs to the girl's restoration to life. It is not conversion vocabulary in this verse.
When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers
Jesus speaks of Peter's restoration after failure. The passage supports return within discipleship without turning every ordinary use into repentance.
Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away
Repenting and turning are paired in Peter's appeal. The pairing supports complementary actions in this sentence without imposing a rigid lexical psychology.
Then turning toward the body, he said, Tabitha, get up
Peter physically turns toward Tabitha. This ordinary movement use checks conversion-only definitions.
You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God
The source, destination, and new service are stated explicitly, making this a clear conversion use.
Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death
The verb is transitive and describes helping a wanderer return from error, not controlling another person's conscience.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Turning to God or away from sin; moral conversion or repentance, not merely physical turning around.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 39 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I turn back to
Read verseI turn back to
Read verseI turn back to
Read verseI turn back to
Read verseI turn back to
Read verseI turn back to
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
How this verb appears across 35 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 36 lexical occurrence verses.
ἐπιστρέφω is built from these roots:
Describes repentance and faith directed toward the Lord.Acts 11:19-26
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The verb is pastorally useful because direction matters, but its full distribution prevents slogans. Peter physically turns toward Tabitha, people return to houses and towns, and John turns to see the voice in Revelation. The same ordinary verb can then describe Israel turning to the Lord, Gentiles turning from idols, Peter turning back after denial, or a wanderer being brought back from error.
Acts 3 pairs repentance and turning, but the passage does not authorize a universal formula in which one Greek word is purely mental and the other purely bodily. A faithful sermon asks what the person turns from, whom or what they turn toward, and what new allegiance or action follows. It can call for real change without reducing repentance to visible performance, coercing instant recovery, or denying the repeated restoration needed in discipleship.
Acts.3.19
G1994 occurs transitively and intransitively. A subject may turn or return, or an agent may turn another person. Prepositions, complements, and narrative direction identify the source and destination. Compound etymology does not create a technical repentance sense, and morphology alone does not distinguish first conversion from later restoration.
Greek return language often carries the prophetic call to return to the Lord, and New Testament writers use that inherited directional imagery. Yet G1994 also retains ordinary movement senses. Canonical return theology should therefore be built where the passage names God, sin, idols, error, covenant response, or restoration as the direction of travel.