ἐξέκλιναν, (exeklinan) in Romans 3:12: Verb Third Person Plural Aorist Active Indicative
ἐξέκλιναν, (exeklinan) in Romans 3:12
Textual Witness
The witness reads exeklinan in Romans 3:12 within the clause pantes exeklinan, matching the surrounding plural statement.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form strengthens the verse's collective and completed force, helping readers hear a sweeping statement about turning away in the past.
How To Communicate It
This grammar supports plain communication: the sentence is about a plural subject that turned away, not about a single person or an ongoing process.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- The verb form does not change the lemma into another word.
- Do not turn person, number, or tense into claims that exceed the sentence.
What Does The Label Mean?
Verb: the form names an action or state, and here it presents the action of turning away in the sentence.
Aorist: commonly views the action as a whole event. It should not be treated as automatically punctiliar or automatically past in every context.
Active: presents the subject as doing or carrying the action.
Indicative: presents the verbal idea as an assertion or statement in the clause.
Third person: the form speaks about someone or something rather than directly as I/we or you.
Not applicable: this verb form is not using noun case to mark its sentence role.
Plural: the form is grammatically plural, so it points to a plural subject in the clause, here matched by pantes.
Not applicable: this verb form does not use grammatical gender to make its point.
What The Form Does In This Verse
πάντες
The verb is governed by the sentence structure and agrees with the plural subject, presenting a completed action in the past.
It states the action attributed to the subject: all turned away, which advances the verse's universal indictment.
It does not, by itself, specify the cause, duration, or moral detail beyond the action of turning away in context.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The plural aorist verb carries the action that all have turned away in Paul's indictment.
Plural predicate in universal indictment. states the shared action of turning away. Attached to the subject all. Governed by the plural subject in the citation. The verb advances the indictment, while the full verse and argument define its moral scope.
What action is attributed to the whole group? The verb says they turned away.
Direct: The active indicative directly supplies the action "turned away."
The aorist reports the action as a whole and does not by itself explain cause, duration, or sequence.
Aorist means once-for-all: The aorist presents the action in the citation without adding a special once-for-all nuance.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witness reads exeklinan in Romans 3:12 within the clause pantes exeklinan, matching the surrounding plural statement.
The lemma ekklino means to turn aside or turn away, and the surface form keeps that lexical idea in this occurrence.
The plural verb fits with pantes and supports a general statement about many or all in the verse, without adding extra nuance by itself.
In context, the form helps express that the verse describes universal turning aside, followed by the paired claim that all were made useless.
Within the verse's broader scriptural witness, the form contributes to a concise summary of human deviation rather than a detailed narrative.
For translation and teaching, the form can be rendered as they turned away or all turned away, keeping the collective force of the clause.
Do not derive a separate theological category from the tense or person alone, and do not treat the form as overriding the verse's wider argument.