To spit
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G4429 names the physical act of spitting. Its three governed forms occur when Jesus heals: he spits and touches the tongue of a man who cannot hear and speaks with difficulty, spits on a blind man's eyes during a healing that unfolds in stages, and spits on the ground to make mud for the eyes of a man born blind.
Reader summary
Full entry for πτύω (G4429) · Open the biblical lexicon
G4429 names the physical act of spitting. Its three governed forms occur when Jesus heals: he spits and touches the tongue of a man who cannot hear and speaks with difficulty, spits on a blind man's eyes during a healing that unfolds in stages, and spits on the ground to make mud for the eyes of a man born blind.
The BSB source-word alignment has 3 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include He spit (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Mark 7:33. Its strongest book concentrations include Mark (2), John (1).
G4429 names the physical act of spitting. Its three governed forms occur when Jesus heals: he spits and touches the tongue of a man who cannot hear and speaks with difficulty, spits on a blind man's eyes during a healing that unfolds in stages, and spits on the ground to make mud for the eyes of a man born blind. The verb identifies the action but does not assign healing power to saliva or establish a repeatable treatment.
Mark presents two private encounters in which Jesus leads a person away from a crowd and acts personally. John places the mud within a sign that begins with Jesus as the light of the world and develops through testimony, conflict, sight, and blindness. These settings direct attention to Jesus' authority and identity. They do not make the physical gesture a sacrament, secret technique, medical remedy, or proof that a minister possesses unusual power.
Pastoral use must respect bodies and consent. A narrated act by Jesus is not permission for leaders to spit on, touch, isolate, shame, or pressure another person. Churches may pray for healing and provide embodied care while also seeking qualified medical help, accessible communication, informed consent, safeguarding, and freedom to decline a proposed practice. Illness or disability is not evidence of deficient faith, and an outcome must not be promised from imitating these scenes.
All three governed forms name Jesus' physical action in healing narratives, while each Gospel supplies the meaning and prevents the action from becoming an independent formula.
Then He spit and touched the man's tongue
The bodily action precedes Jesus' command within a private healing encounter.
Then He spit on the man's eyes
The action occurs within a staged restoration whose details belong to this particular account.
He spit on the ground
The mud begins a sign whose wider interpretation comes from John 9 rather than from the verb alone.
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 spit
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
3 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I spit
Read verseI spit
Read verseI spit
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 3 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)
πτύω is built from this root:
The Gospels do not hide the physical character of these encounters. Jesus comes near to people with impaired hearing, speech, or sight and acts in ways that would have been memorable and culturally striking. Yet G4429 itself only says that he spit. The surrounding narratives identify the healer, the need, the command, the response, and the sign's meaning. A sermon should therefore keep Christ at the center and refuse to manufacture a method.
Embodied care today must honor the person receiving it. Prayer cannot erase consent, medical wisdom, communication access, hygiene, or safeguarding. A gradual recovery is not inferior faith, and no recovery at all permits no verdict about a person's spiritual condition. Hope in Christ can coexist with lament, treatment, accommodation, and patient presence.
John.9.6
Two aorist active participles in Mark present the spitting as an action accompanying the healing scenes; one aorist active indicative in John states the act directly. These forms organize the narration but do not assign medicinal or sacramental force.
Scripture sometimes records material signs and prophetic actions, but a thematic resemblance does not establish that every material detail carries the same meaning or should be repeated.