To break
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G4937 describes breaking, crushing, or shattering. Its seven governed forms range from a bruised reed that the Servant will not break, shattered restraints, an opened perfume jar, and a child being mauled to Jesus' bones remaining unbroken, God's promised defeat of Satan, and royal judgment imagery.
Reader summary
Full entry for συντρίβω (G4937) · Open the biblical lexicon
G4937 describes breaking, crushing, or shattering. Its seven governed forms range from a bruised reed that the Servant will not break, shattered restraints, an opened perfume jar, and a child being mauled to Jesus' bones remaining unbroken, God's promised defeat of Satan, and royal judgment imagery.
The BSB source-word alignment has 7 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include [and] shatter [them] (1), A bruised (1), It keeps mauling (1), shattered (1), She broke open (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 12:20. Its strongest book concentrations include Mark (2), John (1), Luke (1), Matthew (1).
G4937 describes breaking, crushing, or shattering. Its seven governed forms range from a bruised reed that the Servant will not break, shattered restraints, an opened perfume jar, and a child being mauled to Jesus' bones remaining unbroken, God's promised defeat of Satan, and royal judgment imagery. The shared verb does not make these objects, agents, or moral settings interchangeable.
Matthew 12 places the word inside Isaiah's portrait of a gentle Servant who does not finish off what is already bruised. Mark 5 describes restraints that could not contain a suffering man, while Luke 9 reports bodily harm associated with a destructive spirit. Those scenes require compassion, safety, competent care, and attention to the narrator's claims. The lexeme cannot diagnose a contemporary illness, disability, trauma response, or unusual behavior as demonic.
John 19 uses a future passive form within a negation: Jesus' bone will not be broken. The soldiers break the legs of the two crucified men but do not do so to Jesus because he is already dead. The wording supports John's fulfillment claim without denying Jesus' real wounds, pain, crucifixion, or death and without supplying every proposed Passover detail by itself.
Romans 16 promises that the God of peace will crush Satan under the believers' feet. The subject is God, the adversary is Satan, and the surrounding warning concerns deceptive division. It does not authorize Christians, leaders, nations, or institutions to label human opponents satanic and crush them. Revelation 2 likewise belongs to Christ's royal judgment promise and cannot be transferred into personal revenge, political violence, coercive discipline, or abuse.
Seven forms cover protected fragility, broken restraints and objects, bodily harm, negated bone-breaking, God's defeat of Satan, and apocalyptic royal judgment.
A bruised reed He will not break
The Servant's justice includes gentleness toward what is already damaged.
Not one of His bones will be broken
The form is negated and belongs to John's fulfillment testimony after Jesus' death.
The God of peace will soon crush Satan
God remains the acting subject, Satan the named object, and grace the closing frame.
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. Breaking into pieces or crushing, emphasizing violent fragmentation rather than simple breakage
Breaking into pieces or crushing, emphasizing violent fragmentation rather than simple breakage
to shatter, break in pieces: Mat.12:20 (LXX), Mrk.5:4 14:3, Jhn.19:36" (LXX), Rev.2:27; of persons and parts of the body, to break, crush, bruise: Luk.9:39; figuratively, Rom.16:20.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
8 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
Read verseI break by crushing
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 1 selected witness from 7 lexical occurrence verses.
συντρίβω is built from these roots:
Echoes God’s promised defeat of Satan and assures final triumph. Romans 16:17-20
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G4937 refuses a simple equation between divine power and human force. Jesus preserves the bruised reed, a child suffers violence, Jesus' own bones remain unbroken within a genuinely lethal crucifixion, and the God of peace promises Satan's defeat. These settings permit honest speech about harm and hope while withholding permission to stigmatize patients, threaten dissenters, glorify crushing leadership, or treat political opponents as spiritual enemies.
Christian resistance to evil follows truth, grace, safeguarding, lawful accountability, prayer, and patient care rather than retaliation. Teachers should slow down at every change of subject and object. A shattered chain, broken jar, mauled body, unbroken bone, defeated adversary, and judged nation cannot be exchanged as if the same action carried the same moral force.
Care for bruised people and confidence in God's victory belong together.
Rom.16.20
Every governed row has a different parsing code: three participles, one infinitive, and three finite verbs distribute the breaking image across several tense and voice choices. Syntax matters more than a tense list here. John 19 negates what will happen to a bone, whereas Romans 16 names God as the acting subject and Satan as the object.
Isaiah's unbroken reed, Passover bone language, a psalm about preserved bones, the serpent promise, and Psalm 2 supply different canonical frames. Each connection must be argued from its passage rather than assumed from the verb alone.
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