Towel
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G3012 is the noun for the towel in John 13:4-5. The governed witness has only two forms: Jesus wraps the towel around His waist after rising from supper and laying aside His outer garments, then uses that same towel to dry the disciples' feet as He washes them.
Reader summary
Full entry for λέντιον (G3012) · Open the biblical lexicon
G3012 is the noun for the towel in John 13:4-5. The governed witness has only two forms: Jesus wraps the towel around His waist after rising from supper and laying aside His outer garments, then uses that same towel to dry the disciples' feet as He washes them.
The BSB source-word alignment has 2 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include a towel (1), towel (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 13:4. Its strongest book concentrations include John (2).
G3012 is the noun for the towel in John 13:4-5. The governed witness has only two forms: Jesus wraps the towel around His waist after rising from supper and laying aside His outer garments, then uses that same towel to dry the disciples' feet as He washes them. The noun identifies the physical cloth and does not itself encode humility, servant leadership, cleansing, atonement, or ministerial office.
Those themes must come from Jesus' actions and explanation in the surrounding passage. Because no other governed occurrence exists, this companion remains explicitly limited to the two verses and does not infer a wider lexical theology from the object.
Two exact G3012 forms occur in John 13:4-5, first as the towel Jesus wraps around Himself and then as the towel He uses to dry the disciples' feet.
So He got up from the supper, laid aside His outer garments, and wrapped a towel around His waist.
The towel belongs to the sequence of concrete actions John narrates.
After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel that was around Him.
The same object is used to dry the disciples' feet after the washing.
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. A linen cloth used for menial service, prominently symbolizing humble self-sacrifice in Christ's foot-washing
A linen cloth used for menial service, prominently symbolizing humble self-sacrifice in Christ's foot-washing
a linen cloth, towel: Jhn.13:4-5.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
2 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a towel, apron
Read versea towel, apron
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 2 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.
The towel matters because John names it twice within one continuous action, not because the noun carries a hidden doctrine. Jesus first wraps it around Himself and then uses it to dry the disciples' feet. This concrete continuity helps readers attend to what He actually does before they move to why He does it. The surrounding chapter supplies authority, example, cleansing language, betrayal context, and instruction, but G3012 alone supplies none of those conclusions.
A responsible teacher can point to the towel as part of the enacted scene while refusing to turn it into an independent symbol, a ministry title, or a guarantee about every act labeled service. The narrative and Jesus' own words must remain the controlling authority.
John.13.4-5
The two forms are the same neuter singular noun in accusative and dative cases. The case change follows the towel's syntactic role as the object taken in verse 4 and the means used for drying in verse 5.
No cross-testament lexical claim is warranted from this two-form noun. Background about washing or service may illuminate the scene only when the Gospel's own argument remains primary.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
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Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain