To hold/oppress
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G4912 describes holding something together or fast, pressing around someone, hemming in, constraining, or being gripped by a condition, emotion, duty, or competing desire. Its force depends on subject, object, voice, and setting: a crowd presses, guards hold a prisoner, illness grips a body, enemies hem in a city, love constrains action, and a person can feel pressed between alternatives.
Reader summary
Full entry for συνέχω (G4912) · Open the biblical lexicon
G4912 describes holding something together or fast, pressing around someone, hemming in, constraining, or being gripped by a condition, emotion, duty, or competing desire. Its force depends on subject, object, voice, and setting: a crowd presses, guards hold a prisoner, illness grips a body, enemies hem in a city, love constrains action, and a person can.
The BSB source-word alignment has 12 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include suffering from (2), are crowding (1), compels (1), devoted himself fully (1), distressed I am (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 4:24. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (6), Acts (3), 2 Corinthians (1), Matthew (1).
G4912 describes holding something together or fast, pressing around someone, hemming in, constraining, or being gripped by a condition, emotion, duty, or competing desire. Its force depends on subject, object, voice, and setting: a crowd presses, guards hold a prisoner, illness grips a body, enemies hem in a city, love constrains action, and a person can feel pressed between alternatives.
In 2Cor. 5. 14, the apostle Paul says Christ’s love compels the apostolic mission because the conviction that One died for all has reshaped how they understand life and service. In Php. 1. 23, the apostle Paul describes being pressed between continued fruitful labor and his desire to depart and be with Christ, while the surrounding argument keeps the congregation’s good in view.
G4912 opens teaching on the different pressures that can surround, seize, or direct a person, and on how the love of Christ can shape faithful action without erasing truth, agency, or wise limits. It corrects both a flattened word study that makes every occurrence mean compel and ministry rhetoric that uses Christ’s love to justify manipulation, urgency, or control by human leaders.
G4912 gathers several forms of pressure without making them morally equal: Paul says Christ’s love constrains apostolic life in light of the One’s death for all, he describes himself as pressed between continued fruitful service and departure to be with Christ, and Jesus warns that Jerusalem’s enemies will hem the city in. Context distinguishes gospel-shaped conviction, personal tension, bodily affliction, crowd pressure, custody, and hostile confinement.
For G4912, responsible teaching keeps lexical meaning, passage context, canonical synthesis, and present application distinguishable. The verb does not make coercion holy, treat illness as guilt, prove that intense emotion is divine guidance, or authorize a church, caregiver, employer, or family member to override another person’s safety and consent.
G4912 appears across passages that develop pressure, restraint, affliction, competing desires, Christ’s love, faithful action, confinement, and responsible response under constraint. For G4912, the immediate setting decides which part of the range is active, so the witnesses must remain distinct rather than being merged into one formula.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died.
The apostle Paul says Christ’s love compels the apostolic mission because the conviction that One died for all has reshaped how they understand life and service.
I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed.
The apostle Paul describes being pressed between continued fruitful labor and his desire to depart and be with Christ, while the surrounding argument keeps the congregation’s good in view.
For the days will come upon you when your enemies will barricade you and surround you and hem you in on every side.
The Lord Jesus warns Jerusalem that enemies will build barricades, surround the city, and hem it in, giving the verb a concrete and hostile confinement sense.
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 hold or constrain from multiple sides; pressed or afflicted by circumstances or illness
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
12 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
Read verseI press together, confine, compel, am afflicted with
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 11 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 1 selected witness from 12 lexical occurrence verses.
συνέχω is built from these roots:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G4912 gathers several forms of pressure without making them morally equal: Paul says Christ’s love constrains apostolic life in light of the One’s death for all, he describes himself as pressed between continued fruitful service and departure to be with Christ, and Jesus warns that Jerusalem’s enemies will hem the city in. Context distinguishes gospel-shaped conviction, personal tension, bodily affliction, crowd pressure, custody, and hostile confinement.
G4912 describes holding something together or fast, pressing around someone, hemming in, constraining, or being gripped by a condition, emotion, duty, or competing desire. The selected witnesses keep the teaching concrete: 2Cor. 5. 14 shows that the apostle Paul says Christ’s love compels the apostolic mission because the conviction that One died for all has reshaped how they understand life and service, while Php.
1. 23 Shows that the apostle Paul describes being pressed between continued fruitful labor and his desire to depart and be with Christ, while the surrounding argument keeps the congregation’s good in view. Luke. 19. 43 adds that the Lord Jesus warns Jerusalem that enemies will build barricades, surround the city, and hem it in, giving the verb a concrete and hostile confinement sense.
G4912 opens teaching on the different pressures that can surround, seize, or direct a person, and on how the love of Christ can shape faithful action without erasing truth, agency, or wise limits. It corrects both a flattened word study that makes every occurrence mean compel and ministry rhetoric that uses Christ’s love to justify manipulation, urgency, or control by human leaders.
A church teaching G4912 faithfully will name both the promise and the boundary carried by these contexts, attend to vulnerable hearers, and refuse to make the lexical item prove more than its passages support. The verb does not make coercion holy, treat illness as guilt, prove that intense emotion is divine guidance, or authorize a church, caregiver, employer, or family member to override another person’s safety and consent.
2Cor.5.14
G4912 is a Greek verb with an active range that includes holding, enclosing, pressing, and constraining and a passive range that includes being seized, afflicted, distressed, or pressed; grammar and the controlling subject materially determine its sense.
The Old Testament portrays people hemmed in by enemies, seized by distress, and upheld by covenant love. The New Testament uses G4912 within concrete scenes of illness, arrest, crowds, judgment, vocational tension, and Christ’s self-giving love, so canonical synthesis must preserve those differences rather than turn pressure itself into a spiritual virtue.