Exploring the Meaning of Kakoucheo in Greek

κακουχέω means “to torment,” and it appears in Hebrews in contexts that recall harsh treatment of suffering people and a call to remember them. In both places the word sits among concrete descriptions of what the afflicted endure and how others are to regard them.

Root and Related Words

κακουχέω is associated with the verb ἔχω (echo, “to have/be”; Strong’s G2192) and the adjective κακός (kakos, “evil/harm: evil”; Strong’s G2556). These related words frame κακουχέω as a verb that expresses what it is like to be subjected to harmful conditions or actions, described from the standpoint of the one who undergoes them.

Occurrences

“They were stoned. They were sawn apart. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated—” (Hebrews 11:37)

Here κακουχέω stands at the end of an escalating chain of hardships. The surrounding clauses name violent acts (“stoned,” “sawn apart,” “slain with the sword”) and also the grinding pressures of deprivation (“went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute”). Within that cluster, “ill-treated” captures torment as an experienced reality, not as an abstract idea: the sufferers are portrayed as people pushed to the margins and pressed by hostile treatment. The verb’s force is intensified by its placement among short, heavy statements, where one affliction follows another without relief. In this setting, torment is part of a larger portrait of relentless mistreatment that includes both overt violence and the social exposure implied by wandering in makeshift clothing.

“Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you are also in the body.” (Hebrews 13:3)

In Hebrews 13:3 κακουχέω is tied to an imperative: “Remember.” The word appears alongside “those who are in bonds,” and the sentence asks the reader to take their condition personally—“as bound with them.” “Ill-treated” therefore functions not only as a description of what certain people endure, but as the reason remembrance must be active and sympathetic. The phrase “since you are also in the body” anchors the appeal in shared bodily vulnerability: torment is something that happens to embodied persons, and the readers are to keep that reality in view. In this scene, the verb helps define the group to be remembered—people not merely inconvenienced but subjected to harsh treatment that calls for solidarity.

Sense and Usage

Across these two uses, κακουχέω communicates torment as lived experience—treatment that weighs on a person through harmful actions and conditions. Hebrews 11:37 places it among concrete harms, where torment is one strand in a tapestry of suffering that ranges from lethal violence to ongoing deprivation. The term works with the other descriptors to show that the suffering is not only momentary; it includes being driven into a precarious way of life (“went around in sheep skins and in goat skins”) in addition to being attacked. Torment, in that list, is part of the cumulative burden borne by the afflicted.

Hebrews 13:3 brings the word into the ethical life of the community. Here torment is not recounted as a past episode but treated as a present situation that demands attention. The verse pairs two categories—“those who are in bonds” and “those who are ill-treated”—and then presses the reader toward imaginative identification (“as bound with them”). In this way, κακουχέω marks a kind of suffering that others might overlook unless they choose to remember. The reference to “the body” keeps the sense grounded: torment is what happens to people in their physical, vulnerable existence, and that shared condition forms the bridge between those suffering and those called to remember.

Together, the occurrences show κακουχέω operating on two levels without changing its basic sense: it can describe the reality of torment among a catalogue of afflictions, and it can also function as a label for those who are presently being tormented, summoning the community to regard them with embodied empathy. The word’s contribution in Hebrews is therefore both descriptive and exhortative: it names harsh treatment and, by naming it, supports the demand that such sufferers not be forgotten.

Imagery

The imagery attached to κακουχέω in these passages is starkly physical. Hebrews 11:37 places “ill-treated” beside weapons and deprivation, evoking bodies exposed to violence and want. Hebrews 13:3 keeps the focus on embodied vulnerability—people “in bonds” and people “ill-treated”—and calls for remembrance shaped by the recognition that the readers, too, live “in the body.”

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).