To testify
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μαρτυρέω means to testify, to bear witness, to give evidence of what one has seen or knows to be true. In the ancient world, a martys (witness) was a courtroom figure — someone whose testimony carried evidential weight because they had firsthand knowledge.
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Full entry for μαρτυρέω (G3140) · Open the biblical lexicon
μαρτυρέω means to testify, to bear witness, to give evidence of what one has seen or knows to be true. In the ancient world, a martys (witness) was a courtroom figure — someone whose testimony carried evidential weight because they had firsthand knowledge.
The BSB source-word alignment has 76 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include testify (13), testified (6), testifies (3), can testify (2), I testify (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 23:31. Its strongest book concentrations include John (33), Acts (11), Hebrews (8), 1 John (6).
This entry includes 9 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
μαρτυρέω means to testify, to bear witness, to give evidence of what one has seen or knows to be true. In the ancient world, a martys (witness) was a courtroom figure — someone whose testimony carried evidential weight because they had firsthand knowledge. The New Testament takes this legal background and expands it into the central activity of the church: the disciples are called to be witnesses to what they have seen, heard, and know to be true about Jesus Christ.
The Johannine literature gives μαρτυρέω its deepest theological register. John's Gospel is structured around chains of testimony: John the Baptist testifies about Jesus, the Father testifies about the Son, the Scriptures testify to him, the works testify, the Spirit testifies, and the disciples testify. This courtroom framework is not incidental — John is building a sustained legal case for the identity of Jesus. The resurrection appearances, the empty tomb, the testimonies of eyewitnesses are pieces of evidence in an argument. This is why John closes his Gospel by emphasizing the reliability of the beloved disciple's witness: we know that his testimony is true (John 21:24).
The most consequential development of the word's meaning is from witness to martyr. This semantic shift — already beginning in the New Testament period and complete by the second century — reflects something profound: for many believers, the ultimate test of their witness was whether they would maintain it under the threat of death. A witness who recants under pressure is no witness at all. A witness who maintains testimony at the cost of their life has proved its value. The English word 'martyr' is simply the Greek μαρτυρέω transliterated — a permanent reminder that bearing witness to Christ has always carried risk.
The local Greek index currently counts about 76 NT occurrences for μαρτυρέω, with especially heavy concentration in the Johannine literature. John's Gospel constructs a forensic theology in which multiple witnesses — Father, Spirit, Scripture, works, Baptist — all converge in testimony to Christ. Acts uses the word family to describe the church's apostolic mission. Hebrews 11 uses it for the commendation the OT faithful received.
You pore over the Scriptures because you presume that by them you possess eternal life. These are the very words that testify about Me,
Jesus makes the entire Hebrew Scripture a witness to himself. This is the hermeneutical principle behind Christian reading of the Old Testament: the Scriptures are not primarily a rule book or a history — they are a testimony. To search them without finding Christ is to miss their central testimony. This verse has shaped Christian hermeneutics for two millennia.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The commission to witness is explicitly Spirit-empowered and geographically unbounded. The disciples do not manufacture their own testimony — they receive power and then bear witness. Acts is the story of this commission being carried out, and the word martyreō shapes the whole narrative structure of the book.
This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who has written them down. And we know that his testimony is true.
John's closing verse is a statement about the epistemological foundation of the Gospel itself: it rests on eyewitness testimony whose reliability is affirmed by those who knew the witness. The historical and apostolic grounding of the gospel claim is not incidental — it is the basis on which the testimony can be trusted.
This is why the ancients were commended.
Hebrews uses μαρτυρέω for the commendation the OT faithful received — God bore witness to them through their faith. This use shows the word operating in both directions: we bear witness to God, and God bears witness to the faithful. The cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1) are those who have themselves received divine commendation through their testimony.
If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is God's testimony which he has testified concerning his Son.
The Father's testimony about the Son is the ultimate warrant for faith. Human testimony is valuable but always potentially unreliable; divine testimony carries absolute weight. 1 John grounds the believer's assurance not in personal experience alone but in the reliable witness of God himself.
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. To testify is to publicly affirm what one has directly witnessed or personally knows to be true.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 79 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I witness, testify
Read verseI witness, testify
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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.
How this verb appears across 75 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 3 selected witnesses from 76 lexical occurrence verses.
μαρτυρέω is built from this root:
King's mission defined by truth proclamation.
Foundation of apostolic authority.
Emphasizes eyewitness confirmation of Jesus’ death. John 19:31–42
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
μαρτυρέω gives preachers a way to talk about the nature of the Christian mission without either reducing it to social activism or over-spiritualizing it. Witness is grounded testimony — not opinions, not preferences, not vague spiritual feelings, but actual testimony to what has been seen, heard, and experienced. The disciples were witnesses because they had been with Jesus, had seen the resurrection, and had something to report.
This is the pastoral backbone of evangelism. Christians are not called to argue people into the kingdom or to perform convincingly enough to make faith attractive. They are called to testify — to report what they have encountered with Christ. The testimony is the evidence; the Spirit takes that testimony and does the convicting work. This relieves preachers and evangelists of a weight they were never meant to carry. The witness is responsible for faithfulness in testimony; the Spirit is responsible for its reception.
The connection to martyrdom is also pastorally significant. In contexts where Christian witness carries real social or physical risk, the word μαρτυρέω carries its full weight: faithful testimony is worth maintaining even under pressure, because what is being witnessed to is true, and truth-telling is itself an act of love toward those who hear it.
Acts.1.8
μαρτυρέω comes from the noun μάρτυς (witness) with the -εω verb ending denoting the activity of the noun. The semantic shift from 'witness' to 'martyr' in English (via the Greek through Latin) reflects the early church's experience that bearing witness to Christ could lead to death. By the time of Polycarp's martyrdom (mid-second century), the word had already taken on its secondary meaning. This shift is a permanent semantic monument to the cost of the early church's testimony.
The OT establishes the witness context: Israel was called to be God's witness among the nations (Isa 43:10), the two-witness rule governed legal reliability (Deut 19:15), and the Psalms testify to God's character and works across the generations. The NT takes this testimony culture and concentrates it on the person of Jesus: the apostles are witnesses not to principles but to events — the life, death, and resurrection of a specific person.
The legal grounding (Deut 19:15 is cited or echoed at multiple points in the Gospels) gives the apostolic testimony its evidentiary force. Revelation uses the testimony vocabulary eschatologically: those who hold to the testimony of Jesus are the church's faithful, and the final witness is Christ himself, the faithful witness (Rev 1:5).
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