To put to death
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through the Connect page. Screenshots are helpful.
G3499 describes making dead, treating as dead, or putting to death. Romans 4:19 uses a perfect participle for Abraham's body in relation to his advanced age and the natural impossibility surrounding the promised offspring.
Reader summary
Full entry for νεκρόω (G3499) · Open the biblical lexicon
G3499 describes making dead, treating as dead, or putting to death. Romans 4:19 uses a perfect participle for Abraham's body in relation to his advanced age and the natural impossibility surrounding the promised offspring.
The BSB source-word alignment has 3 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include as good as dead (1), decrepitness (1), Put to death (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 4:19. Its strongest book concentrations include Colossians (1), Hebrews (1), Romans (1).
G3499 describes making dead, treating as dead, or putting to death. Romans 4:19 uses a perfect participle for Abraham's body in relation to his advanced age and the natural impossibility surrounding the promised offspring. Hebrews 11:12 similarly describes Abraham as good as dead before speaking of the descendants God brought from one man. Colossians 3:5 changes both grammar and object: believers are commanded to put to death what belongs to the earthly nature, followed by a list of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which Paul calls idolatry.
The command is metaphorical moral warfare against sinful practices and desires. It is not permission for bodily injury, suicide, violence against another person, hatred of the body, or coercive attempts to erase trauma, disability, unwanted thoughts, or ordinary human embodiment. The paragraph begins with believers raised with Christ and later speaks of putting off the old self and putting on the new.
That gospel order prevents both indulgence and self-salvation: sin is opposed decisively because life is held with Christ, not so that pain or severity can purchase acceptance.
Three governed uses distinguish bodily inability in Abraham's story from the Colossian command to end sinful conduct and desire.
He faced the fact that his body was as good as dead.
The bodily description establishes inability, not a command for Abraham to harm himself.
Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature.
The following list identifies the moral objects of the metaphorical death command.
And so from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants.
Hebrews places human inability beside God's faithfulness to the promise.
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. Mortify or deaden impulses, desires, and bodily members through spiritual discipline, not literal death.
Mortify or deaden impulses, desires, and bodily members through spiritual discipline, not literal death.
(νεκρός), to make dead, put to death; pass., to be dead: hyperbolically, of impotent age, Heb.11:12; σῶμα, Rom.4:19. Trop., of carnal impulses, τὰ μέλη, Col.3:5.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek 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 put to death, render weak
Read verseI put to death, render weak
Read verseI put to death, render weak
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)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 3 lexical occurrence verses.
νεκρόω is built from this root:
Indicates absence of spiritual vitality rather than mere weakness. James 2:14-17
G3499 gives two descriptions and one command. Abraham's aged body is treated as incapable of producing the promised line by natural strength, yet God remains faithful. Colossians then takes death language into Christian ethics: the listed patterns must not be protected, renamed, or allowed to govern a person whose life is hidden with Christ. The severity belongs against sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, not against the body as God's creature or against a suffering person.
Preachers should invite concrete repentance, truthful help, wise boundaries, and accountable change while rejecting self-injury, forced disclosure, humiliation, and coercive control. Some hearers will need patient trauma-informed care or clinical support in addition to pastoral companionship. Grace neither excuses destructive conduct nor requires someone to punish a body to prove holiness.
The command is a response to union with the risen Christ and belongs within the church's practices of truth, compassion, protection, and hope.
Col.3.5
Romans 4:19 and Hebrews 11:12 use perfect middle or passive participles for Abraham's deadened condition. Colossians 3:5 uses an aorist active imperative addressed to a plural congregation. The different grammar and objects distinguish a described incapacity from an ethical command.
Genesis presents the promise of offspring amid Abraham and Sarah's advanced age. Paul and Hebrews draw on that story to magnify God's faithfulness, while the wider biblical call to reject idolatry helps explain Colossians' identification of greed. These connections do not make aging, infertility, or disability moral failures.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain