To sympathize in gladness, congratulate
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The Greek verb synchairo means to rejoice with someone, share gladness, or congratulate. Luke uses it when neighbors and friends rejoice with Elizabeth after the Lord shows her mercy and when a shepherd and a woman invite others to celebrate what was lost and has been found.
Reader summary
Full entry for συγχαίρω (G4796) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek verb synchairo means to rejoice with someone, share gladness, or congratulate. Luke uses it when neighbors and friends rejoice with Elizabeth after the Lord shows her mercy and when a shepherd and a woman invite others to celebrate what was lost and has been found.
The BSB source-word alignment has 7 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include Rejoice with (4), rejoices (1), rejoices with [it] (1), they rejoiced with (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Luke 1:58. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (3), 1 Corinthians (2), Philippians (2).
The Greek verb synchairo means to rejoice with someone, share gladness, or congratulate. Luke uses it when neighbors and friends rejoice with Elizabeth after the Lord shows her mercy and when a shepherd and a woman invite others to celebrate what was lost and has been found. Paul tells the Philippians to share joy with him amid sacrificial ministry. First Corinthians says that if one member is honored, all the members rejoice together, and then insists that love rejoices with the truth rather than wrongdoing.
Shared joy is therefore relational and morally shaped. It is not compulsory cheerfulness, envy denial, emotional imitation, or celebration of any event someone labels a blessing. Communities should not pressure people carrying infertility, bereavement, trauma, poverty, depression, or disappointment to perform happiness. Nor should they rejoice in abuse, dishonesty, domination, or another person's loss.
Responsible teaching makes room for mixed emotions, listens to the person whose good is being celebrated, and joins gladness to mercy, recovery, honor, sacrifice, and truth.
Synchairo describes shared gladness in mercy, recovery of what was lost, communal honor, sacrificial ministry, and truth, making rejoicing a relational practice governed by love rather than forced emotion.
Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they rejoiced with her.
Elizabeth's neighbors and relatives hear of the Lord's great mercy and rejoice with her after John's birth.
Comes home, and calls together his friends and neighbors to tell them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep!’
The shepherd calls friends and neighbors to rejoice with him because he found his lost sheep.
And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors to say, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost coin.’
The woman likewise gathers friends and neighbors to share joy over her recovered coin.
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Paul says every member shares suffering and rejoices together when one member receives honor.
Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
Love refuses delight in wrongdoing and instead rejoices with the truth, giving shared joy a moral boundary.
So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
Paul asks the Philippians to be glad and rejoice with him amid service he describes in sacrificial terms.
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. Rejoicing actively with others in their joy, especially in their success or good fortune, expressing shared gladness.
Rejoicing actively with others in their joy, especially in their success or good fortune, expressing shared gladness.
(Rec. συγ-), [in LXX: Gen.21:6 (צָחַק), 3Ma.1:8 R * ;]
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
7 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice with
Read verseI rejoice 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 7 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 4 selected witnesses from 7 lexical occurrence verses.
συγχαίρω 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.
Synchairo portrays joy that moves toward another person's good. Elizabeth's community recognizes the Lord's mercy and celebrates with her, while Luke 15 uses shared rejoicing to close the sheep and coin stories before the more difficult response of the older brother. The invitation exposes the difference between recovery-centered joy and resentment over grace.
In First Corinthians 12, members do not compete for honor; the whole body rejoices when one member is honored and suffers when one suffers. Chapter 13 then gives joy a moral test: love does not celebrate wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Philippians shows shared joy alongside sacrificial ministry, not comfort alone. These passages neither command a permanent emotional state nor erase complicated experiences.
A joyful birth announcement may awaken grief in someone else; public honor may expose prior exclusion; recovery may follow real loss. Faithful communities celebrate without demanding performance, make room for honest sorrow, and refuse to call abusive or dishonest success a blessing. Shared joy listens, tells the truth, resists envy, and honors the person whose good is in view while remaining attentive to those who need care.
1Cor.13.6
Synchairo is a compound Greek verb formed with the sense of rejoicing together or with another. Its person or object relationship identifies whose joy is shared, while First Corinthians shows that the verb's moral content depends on what the community celebrates.
Scripture repeatedly joins communal feasting, restored relationship, deliverance, honor, and truthful worship with shared joy. New Testament synchairo gives specific expression to that wider pattern without making every Hebrew or Greek joy term interchangeable.