Care or anxiety names a concern whose object and effect the passage must explain. Peter tells readers to cast their anxiety on God because He cares for them, placing the invitation beside humility, alertness and shared suffering.
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Reader summary
Full entry for μέριμνα (G3308) · Open the biblical lexicon
Care or anxiety names a concern whose object and effect the passage must explain. Peter tells readers to cast their anxiety on God because He cares for them, placing the invitation beside humility, alertness and shared suffering.
The BSB source-word alignment has 6 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include [the] worries (2), worries (2), anxiety (1), concern (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 13:22. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (2), 1 Peter (1), 2 Corinthians (1), Mark (1).
Care or anxiety names a concern whose object and effect the passage must explain. Peter tells readers to cast their anxiety on God because He cares for them, placing the invitation beside humility, alertness and shared suffering. Paul speaks of his daily concern for all the churches among the pressures he bears. Jesus describes worries, riches and pleasures choking the word in the seed comparison.
These uses include entrusted anxiety, concern for other people and cares that obstruct fruitful hearing. The noun is therefore not a diagnosis of every anxious feeling or proof that every concern is sinful. Hear what occupies the person, how the passage responds and where trust or attention is directed. God's care should be announced as the reason to bring burdens to Him, rather than used to accuse a suffering person because distress has not immediately disappeared.
Anxiety entrusted to God's care, Paul's concern for churches and worries choking the received word have different objects and effects. The surrounding teaching distinguishes dependence, responsibility and obstructed hearing without assigning one judgment to every concern.
Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
Casting anxiety on God is grounded in His care and follows the summons to humility, with alertness and shared suffering still present in the next verses rather than a promised absence of all distress.
Apart from these external trials, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
Paul names daily pressure from concern for all the churches after describing external hardships, making the concern's communal object explicit rather than labeling every burden as faithlessness.
The seeds that fell among the thorns are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the worries, riches, and pleasures of this life, and their fruit does not mature.
Worries, riches and pleasures choke those who have heard the word so that fruit does not mature; the seed comparison assesses that obstructing movement rather than offering a clinical account of every anxious person.
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. Anxiety that divides attention away from what matters most, especially spiritual priorities.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
6 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
care, worry, anxiety
Read versecare, worry, anxiety
Read versecare, worry, anxiety
Read versecare, worry, anxiety
Read versecare, worry, anxiety
Read versecare, worry, anxiety
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 this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 5 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 6 lexical occurrence verses.
μέριμνα is built from this root:
Encourages deliberate entrusting of burdens to God’s faithful care.1 Peter 5:5-11
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Peter gives the reason for entrusting anxiety to God: He cares for His people. The surrounding words still call for alertness and recognize suffering shared by others, so the invitation does not require pretending that danger or distress has vanished. Paul uses the same noun for his daily concern for the churches, preserving a burden directed toward people he serves.
Jesus' seed comparison names another movement, where worries join riches and pleasures in choking the received word and preventing mature fruit. These contexts must not be reduced to one condemnation of concern. Teaching should distinguish responsible attention to others, burdens brought to God's care and preoccupations that obstruct hearing. It should preserve the actual warning while refusing to diagnose a particular person, blame continuing distress or claim that every anxious feeling proves a lack of faith.
The passages guide trust and attention without supplying an individualized treatment plan.
1Pet.5.7
The licensed Greek noun includes care and anxiety, with the object and contextual effect distinguishing its uses. Paul's concern for churches and the seed accounts' obstructing worries must both remain visible. An unproved story about a divided mind is not needed to establish the word's meaning or judge someone's spiritual condition.
Psalm 55:20-23 calls the praying person to cast a burden on the Lord within an account of betrayal and trust. That Hebrew setting provides a concrete comparison for entrusted care without making the words one canonical identity or promising that every modern distress, treatment need or danger will immediately disappear.