To kill
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Ἀναιρέω can mean to take away, remove, abolish, or put someone to death. The violent sense appears when Herod kills Bethlehem's boys, leaders plot Jesus' death, lawless hands crucify Him, and the Lord destroys the lawless one.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἀναιρέω (G337) · Open the biblical lexicon
Ἀναιρέω can mean to take away, remove, abolish, or put someone to death. The violent sense appears when Herod kills Bethlehem's boys, leaders plot Jesus' death, lawless hands crucify Him, and the Lord destroys the lawless one.
The BSB source-word alignment has 24 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include to kill (6), he put to death (1), He takes away (1), killed (1), put [Him] to death (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 2:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (19), Luke (2), 2 Thessalonians (1), Hebrews (1).
Ἀναιρέω can mean to take away, remove, abolish, or put someone to death. The violent sense appears when Herod kills Bethlehem's boys, leaders plot Jesus' death, lawless hands crucify Him, and the Lord destroys the lawless one. Hebrews uses the same verb nonviolently when saying Christ takes away the first sacrificial arrangement in order to establish the second.
A shared idea of removal links the senses, but context decides whether the object is a person, a life, an opponent, or an earlier covenantal provision. The word must not be used to blur moral agency. Human murder, God's judgment, and redemptive covenant fulfillment are not interchangeable acts merely because each involves removal.
Ἀναιρέω names decisive removal and often means killing, yet Hebrews applies it to the displacement of an earlier sacrificial order. Agent, object, authority, and purpose determine its theological force.
When Herod saw that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was filled with rage. Sending orders, he put to death all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the Magi.
Herod's rage becomes state violence against children, exposing the brutality of a threatened ruler who tries to remove God's promised king.
And the chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they feared the people.
The leaders seek a way to kill Jesus while fearing the people, joining murderous purpose to political calculation during Passover.
He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross.
Peter holds human agents responsible for crucifying Jesus while confessing that His delivery occurred within God's settled plan and foreknowledge.
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival.
The Lord Jesus will remove the lawless one at His appearing, portraying final judgment as Christ's sovereign victory rather than human vengeance.
Then He adds, “Here I am, I have come to do Your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second.
Hebrews uses removal for the first sacrificial arrangement so that Christ's obedient self-offering establishes the effective covenantal reality to which it pointed.
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. To kill by deliberate action; emphasizes the act of taking life rather than mere death itself.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 23 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
Read verseI take up, abolish, murder
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 25 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 24 lexical occurrence verses.
ἀναιρέω is built from these roots:
Marks the severity of persecution and the reality of martyrdom.Acts 12:1-5
Removal can serve rebellion or redemption. Herod attempts to secure his throne by killing children, and Jerusalem's leaders seek Jesus' death while calculating public reaction. Acts 2 refuses a simple choice between divine sovereignty and human responsibility: Jesus is delivered according to God's plan, yet lawless people truly put Him to death. Second Thessalonians locates the final removal of lawlessness in Christ's righteous appearing.
Hebrews turns the verb toward covenant fulfillment. The repeated sacrifices cannot accomplish God's will, so Christ's obedient offering takes away the first arrangement to establish the second. Teachers should neither soften the evil of murder nor portray the cross as divine improvisation. God overrules human violence through the willing Son and establishes the effective salvation earlier sacrifices anticipated.
Matt.2.16
Ἀναιρέω combines an upward or away prefix with taking. It may denote taking up or away, and idiomatically taking a life. A personal object often signals killing, while Hebrews supplies an institutional contrast between first and second.
Tyrants repeatedly seek to remove God's promised servants, yet the Lord preserves His purpose and judges violence. The sacrificial system reaches its appointed goal in the obedient offering of Christ.