ἔτεκε (eteken) in Matthew 1:25: Verb Third Person Singular Second Aorist Active Indicative
ἔτεκε (eteken) in Matthew 1:25
Textual Witness
The witness reads ἔτεκε in Matthew 1:25, and the surrounding text says Joseph did not know her until she gave birth to her son.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form helps the verse read as a narrated completion point, making the timing of the birth central to the sentence.
How To Communicate It
In teaching or translation, the verb can be rendered plainly as gave birth or bore, with attention to the verse's time marker and narrative flow.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- Do not make verbal tense or voice carry more meaning than the sentence supports.
- Do not turn grammatical singular or gender labels into theological claims.
What Does The Label Mean?
Verb: the word names an action or event, here the act of bearing or giving birth.
Second Aorist: commonly views the action as a whole event. It should not be treated as automatically punctiliar or automatically past in every context.
Active: presents the subject as doing or carrying the action.
Indicative: presents the verbal idea as an assertion or statement in the clause.
Third person: the form speaks about someone or something rather than directly as I/we or you.
Not applicable: this verb form is not using noun case to mark its sentence role.
Singular: the form is singular in agreement with its third person subject in the clause.
Not applicable: this verb form does not use grammatical gender to make its point.
What The Form Does In This Verse
ἕως οὗ ... τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς
The verb is the action stated after the temporal phrase, marking what happened by the point introduced with until.
It states that the birth occurred, which completes the time limit set by the surrounding clause.
It does not by itself explain the nature of the child beyond the fact of birth, and it does not settle wider theological questions.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The verb marks the birth event that completes the waiting period in the infancy narrative.
Third-person singular second aorist active indicative birth verb. reports the birth as the event reached in the narrative. Attached to Mary as the implied subject and her son as the object brought forth. Governed by the temporal clause ending with the birth. The aorist presents the birth as a whole event; the until clause and narrative define the timing.
What event marks the end of the stated waiting period? Mary gave birth to her son.
Direct: The form directly supports wording such as "gave birth" or "bore."
The aorist form reports the birth event but does not settle every debate about the until clause. The verb names the act of birth; the surrounding narrative supplies the identity and naming context.
Aorist settles timing debate: Do not make the aorist form decide more than the birth event it reports.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witness reads ἔτεκε in Matthew 1:25, and the surrounding text says Joseph did not know her until she gave birth to her son.
The lemma is τίκτω, which means to give birth to or bring forth, so the form names the act of birth rather than a different word or concept.
The third person singular aorist active indicative fits the clause as a narrated event and supports a straightforward report of birth within the sentence.
The verse says Joseph abstained from marital relations until the birth of the child, and this verb marks the moment that ends the stated waiting period.
Within the passage, the form supports the plain storyline of Jesus' birth and the naming that follows, without requiring extra claims from the morphology alone.
For readers and speakers, the form communicates a completed historical action in the sentence, so the focus stays on the reported event and its timing.
Do not derive from this form alone any claim about duration beyond the until clause, the child's identity beyond the context, or any doctrinal conclusion not stated by the verse.