to release, set free, untie
ἀπολύω carries the physical weight of untying a knot or opening a locked door. The verb breaks into two parts: ἀπό (apo), meaning away from or away out of, and λύω (luō), meaning to loosen, to untie, to dissolve. Together they describe a release that puts distance between a person and whatever held them. This is not a gentle nudging toward the exit. It is a complete severance from a prior state of bondage or obligation.
The word moves across several distinct contexts in the New Testament. In legal and political settings, Roman officials use ἀπολύω to release prisoners. Pilate offers to release (ἀπολύω) Jesus or Barabbas to the crowd in Matthew 27:15-26. The word carries the weight of a judicial declaration: you are no longer bound by this charge. In domestic contexts, the word describes divorce, the legal dissolution of a marital bond in Matthew 5:31-32. The husband formally releases the wife from the covenant. In narrative passages, Jesus uses it to dismiss crowds, sending them away fed and whole in Matthew 14:15.
What unites all these uses is the idea of a formal, decisive release from a prior attachment. Nobody is halfway ἀπολύω-d. The knot is either cut or it isn't. When Simeon holds the infant Jesus in Luke 2:29 and says, 'Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,' he uses the same verb. His whole life was the knot. The promise of the Messiah was the tension holding it taut. Now the child is in his arms and God is ἀπολύω-ing him into death without dread.
Most of us read 'release' and picture someone politely opening a door. I spent years reading the Barabbas account that way, as if Pilate simply chose one man over another the way you'd pick a seat on a bus. But ἀπολύω is a legal verdict with bodily consequences. Barabbas walks out of a cell where he was waiting to die. The chain falls off. The guard steps aside. That is the same word attached to Jesus in the same breath, except the crowd refuses it. The man who deserved ἀπολύω received the cross, so the man who deserved the cross received ἀπολύω. Simeon knew this child would make that trade possible. That is why he could ask God to loose him into death without fear.
The root λύω belongs to a wide Greek semantic family covering loosening, dissolving, and breaking apart. Related forms include λύσις (release or dissolution), λύτρον (the ransom price paid to achieve the loosening), and λυτρόω (to redeem by paying that price). The prefix ἀπό intensifies the separation, moving the released person away from the source of constraint. The same root appears in the noun ἄλυσις, an iron chain, which is precisely what λύω undoes.
Where apoluo appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word.
Simeon's word 'letting depart' is ἀπολύω. His life was held in tension by a promise, and now God formally releases him from that waiting. The word gives his death the texture of a completed transaction.
Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.
Both verdicts in this verse pivot on ἀπολύω. The judicial release of Barabbas stands in brutal contrast to the binding and scourging of Jesus, making the substitution visible in the grammar itself.
It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.'
The word 'divorces' translates ἀπολύω, showing how the same release-word covers the formal dissolution of a covenant bond. Jesus goes on to tighten the standard, which only intensifies the gravity of what ἀπολύω actually severs.
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.
Peter names Pilate's decision to ἀπολύω Jesus and the crowd's refusal of it as the hinge point of the crucifixion. The word grounds the accusation in a specific legal moment that the audience remembered.
When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, 'Woman, you are freed from your disability.'
Jesus speaks ἀπολύω over a woman bent double for eighteen years. The same word used in courtrooms and divorce proceedings becomes a healing declaration. Her body is the chain; his word is the loosening.
Words in the same semantic family.
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.
