Exploring the Meaning of Sundeo in Greek

συνδέω means “to bind with.” It appears once in the New Testament, in the exhortation of Hebrews 13:3.

Root and Related Words

συνδέω (Sundeo) is formed from the preposition σύν (syn), “with” (Strong’s G4862), and the verb δέω (deo), “to bind” (Strong’s G1210). The combined form expresses binding conceived in association—binding “with” someone rather than binding as an isolated act.

Occurrences

“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 the word belongs to a tightly packed set of imperatives that aim the community’s attention outward: “Remember” those “in bonds,” and remember those “ill-treated.” The phrase “as bound with them” frames that remembrance with an imaginative stance: the hearers are to think of themselves as sharing the prisoners’ condition, not merely observing it from safety. The language of binding turns memory into an act of solidarity; the imprisoned are not treated as distant objects of pity but as persons whose confinement is, in some sense, carried “with” them.

The verse places this solidarity alongside bodily self-awareness: “since you are also in the body.” Within the flow of the sentence, the condition of being “in the body” anchors the instruction to remember suffering people. The binding image fits that argument: to be “bound with” others is to take their physical vulnerability seriously, recognizing that those who suffer restraint and mistreatment do so as embodied humans, and that the readers share the same embodied frame of life. The word thus pulls the audience toward identification, making the remembered people present in a way that resembles shared constraint.

Sense and Usage

The definition “to bind with” points to binding that is not merely something done to another, but something conceived as shared. In Hebrews 13:3 that sharedness is explicit: the readers are to remember the imprisoned “as bound with them.” The binding is not described as a physical action performed by the readers; instead it functions as a posture of association. The imperative “Remember” is modified by the “as…” clause, so that the manner of remembrance is shaped by the binding concept. Remembrance, in this usage, is expected to be empathetic and participatory, as though the readers’ own bodies were tied into the same bonds.

Because the verse also includes “and those who are ill-treated,” the binding-with image extends beyond literal imprisonment to the wider experience of suffering inflicted by others. The text does not separate the “in bonds” from the “ill-treated” as unrelated categories; rather, both are placed under a unified duty of remembrance. The binding-with idea strengthens that unity by portraying the community’s proper response as one of joining oneself to the afflicted. The verse’s final clause, “since you are also in the body,” does not change the word’s sense; it supplies the rationale that makes the binding-with posture fitting. Bodily life is shared; therefore the memory of the suffering is to be carried as shared as well.

In this single occurrence, the word’s force is relational. It is not simply the fact of bonds that matters but the orientation of the hearer toward those bonds. The prepositional element “with” within the verb is crucial to the exhortation’s effect: it presses the reader beyond awareness into companionship. The scene imagined is not one in which the community stands outside a prison wall offering abstract concern; it is one in which they mentally step into the prisoners’ condition, letting the thought of binding define how they “remember.”

Imagery

Hebrews 13:3 attaches a concrete image—bonds—to an inner act—remembering. The result is a vivid moral imagination: to remember the bound is to picture oneself bound “with” them, and to let that shared bodily vulnerability shape the way the ill-treated are held in mind.

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).