Lame
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G5560, chōlós, is a Greek adjective for being lame or unable to walk, often functioning as a noun-like description in English translations. The New Testament applies it to particular people, groups brought to Jesus, guests excluded from ordinary status networks, and a figurative or bodily image in Hebrews.
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Full entry for χωλός (G5560) · Open the biblical lexicon
G5560, chōlós, is a Greek adjective for being lame or unable to walk, often functioning as a noun-like description in English translations. The New Testament applies it to particular people, groups brought to Jesus, guests excluded from ordinary status networks, and a figurative or bodily image in Hebrews.
The BSB source-word alignment has 14 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include [the] lame (7), lame (5), the lame (1), who was lame (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 11:5. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (5), Acts (3), Luke (3), Hebrews (1).
G5560, chōlós, is a Greek adjective for being lame or unable to walk, often functioning as a noun-like description in English translations. The New Testament applies it to particular people, groups brought to Jesus, guests excluded from ordinary status networks, and a figurative or bodily image in Hebrews. It also appears in Jesus' severe hand-and-foot sayings, where entering life lame is rhetorically preferable to allowing sin to destroy a person. The word describes mobility, not character, intelligence, faith, usefulness, or human worth.
The Gospels and Acts tell healing stories in which people who cannot walk receive restored mobility. Those accounts testify to Jesus' compassion, messianic authority, and the apostolic witness, but they do not make present-day cure the condition for belonging. Luke's banquet teaching is especially important: people called poor, crippled, lame, and blind are to be invited before any healing occurs, and the great banquet brings people from the streets into the house. Their welcome is not postponed until their bodies change. Acts 3 also lets a man long positioned as a beggar enter the temple walking and praising God, while Acts 14 identifies a man by his history before Paul speaks.
Pastoral use should honor both healing hope and disability dignity. Some people seek treatment or pray for changed mobility; others understand disability as a durable part of life and seek access, community, work, sacramental participation, and freedom from pity or coercion. Churches should remove physical and social barriers without treating disabled people as sermon illustrations or projects. Jesus' cutting-off language must not be used to encourage self-harm, and Hebrews must not turn a person's body into a synonym for weak faith. G5560 can help congregations notice exclusion, celebrate embodied people, and practice welcome that does not depend on cure.
G5560 appears in messianic healing reports, individual restoration stories, banquet inclusion, temple access, severe anti-sin rhetoric, a poolside crowd, and Hebrews' call to make a healing path for what is vulnerable.
The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.
Jesus answers John's question by pointing to kingdom works and good news. Mobility restoration belongs to a larger messianic pattern and does not rank one recipient above another.
Large crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at His feet, and He healed them.
Crowds carry people to Jesus, and Matthew gathers multiple conditions without supplying one cause for them. Helpers are present, but the people are not reduced to the helpers' faith or effort.
The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them.
People often kept at the social edge enter the temple scene and approach Jesus. Their presence contrasts with leadership resistance and belongs within Jesus' restoration of worship.
If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands and two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire.
Jesus uses bodily hyperbole to demand decisive resistance to sin. The saying does not blame disabled people, define disability as spiritual loss, or authorize literal self-injury.
But when you host a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,
Jesus commands hosts to include people unable to repay through ordinary status exchange. The invitation values presence and fellowship before any change in physical condition.
The servant returned and reported all this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’
The parable fills the house with people bypassed by the original invitees. Inclusion is central, but interpreters should not treat disabled guests as mere symbols with no agency or present-day voice.
On these walkways lay a great number of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.
John locates Jesus among many people waiting beside the pool, though the narrative focuses on one man. The scene should not be used to explain why every other person remained unhealed.
And a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those entering the temple courts.
The man's mobility and economic exclusion are both visible. His later healing changes access and livelihood, yet the church must not infer that disabled people who remain disabled lack faith.
In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked.
Luke gives a specific lifelong history before the healing. The narrative's particularity resists general claims about causes, cures, or the spiritual condition of people with similar bodies.
Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
Within a communal exhortation, stronger members are to make a path that does not worsen what is vulnerable. The image supports accessible discipleship and mutual responsibility rather than contempt for weakness.
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. Physically disabled person unable to walk properly; Jesus's healing miracles frequently feature this condition.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
15 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
lame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
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Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
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Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
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Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
Read verselame, deprived of a foot
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 6 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 14 lexical occurrence verses.
χωλός is a primary word - no further derivation.
The man’s lifelong disability underscores the magnitude of the miracle and the compassion of Christ.Acts 3:1-10
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G5560 places people with mobility disabilities inside the public ministry of Jesus, the apostolic witness, communal meals, temple space, and the church's path-making responsibility. Healing accounts reveal divine compassion and authority, yet Luke 14 refuses to make physical change the entrance requirement for fellowship. Jesus tells hosts to invite disabled people into the banquet as honored guests who cannot be used for social repayment.
Acts 3 exposes economic and architectural exclusion alongside restored walking, and Hebrews calls the community to make paths that do not further injure what is vulnerable. These passages support prayer and treatment without turning cure into a spiritual test. A faithful church listens to disabled people, funds access, shares leadership, respects mobility aids, protects consent, and celebrates persons whose value was never suspended while they waited for others to make room.
Luke.14.13
G5560 is an adjective occurring in singular and plural, masculine and neuter forms. It frequently functions substantivally, so English versions say the lame or a lame man. The governed witnesses apply it to lifelong mobility disability, groups seeking healing, invited banquet guests, and rhetorical or communal images. The lexical label describes walking ability but does not specify medical cause, cognition, moral condition, or the person's preferred identity language.
The prophets envision weakened legs strengthened and a restored people walking in God's salvation, while Israel's law repeatedly protects people from exploitation and commands communal care. Jesus' healings embody messianic restoration, and Luke 14 commands present inclusion. Resurrection completes Christian hope, but the future promise intensifies rather than postpones today's duty to remove barriers and honor disabled neighbors.