Exploring the Meaning of Sunodino in Greek

συνωδίνω means “to labor together,” and it appears in the New Testament in Paul’s description of the present condition of creation in Romans 8:22. In that sentence it contributes an image of shared, ongoing pain that is experienced corporately rather than privately.

Root and Related Words

συνωδίνω is built from syn (σύν), “with” (Strong’s G4862), and odino (ὠδίνω), “be in labor” (Strong’s G5605). The combination expresses a single action conceived as taking place “with” others—labor experienced in company.

Occurrences

“For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.” (Romans 8:22)

In Romans 8:22, the subject is explicitly comprehensive: “the whole creation.” Within that sweeping subject, συνωδίνω supplies the second of two coordinated actions: creation both “groans” and “travails in pain together.” The pairing of “groans” with labor-pain imagery does not describe an isolated outburst; it depicts a sustained condition, a kind of collective strain that is voiced (“groans”) and bodily felt (“travails in pain”).

The wording “together” anchors the verb’s force in this verse. The labor is not portrayed as scattered individuals each having a separate experience, but as a joined, corporate event—creation as a whole undergoing one shared travail. Paul also adds a time marker: “until now.” That phrase places the described labor within the present moment of the speaker and hearers, implying that the travail is ongoing and has not yet reached its endpoint in the timeframe of the statement. In this setting, συνωδίνω intensifies the sense of universal participation: whatever is being depicted as labor-pain is not confined to a region, class, or creature, but involves “the whole creation” in a single, communal experience that continues up to the present.

The immediate syntax contributes as well. The verb sits alongside “groans” as a parallel predicate: creation is doing two things at once. The first term gives an audible, emotional register (“groans”); the second gives a visceral, physical register (“travails in pain together”). Read together, the two predicates portray a comprehensive suffering that has expression and sensation, sound and pain, and the second predicate, marked by “together,” gathers that suffering into a shared condition.

Sense and Usage

The defined idea, “to labor together,” is expressed in Romans 8:22 through an inclusive subject (“the whole creation”) and explicit corporate framing (“together”). The labor is presented as a communal ordeal rather than a solitary one: creation is pictured as participating in one experience of travail. Because the verse also includes the phrase “until now,” the labor is not a momentary spasm but an extended process, present and continuing at the time of speaking.

The verse places this labor in a broad, cosmic frame. By choosing “the whole creation” as the subject, the statement does not narrow the action to human society or to a subset within creation; it describes a condition in which all creation is implicated. Within that scale, “labor together” portrays a unity of experience: the travail is something shared across the entire created order. The definitional content is therefore not merely that pain exists, but that the pain is conceived as a joined experience, held in common.

Additionally, the coordination with “groans” shows that this labor is not silent. The verse does not describe labor-pain as a purely internal state; it stands in a line with an outward expression. The result is a fuller picture of corporate suffering: it is both felt (“travails in pain”) and voiced (“groans”), and it is experienced “together.” In this usage, “labor together” functions as a way of portraying shared distress as a single, collective phenomenon rather than a sum of private sorrows.

Because the verb belongs to the semantic domain of labor, the imagery naturally evokes intensity, pressure, and endurance across time. Romans 8:22 reinforces this temporal aspect through “until now,” which situates the labor within a continuing present. The word’s contribution is thus to cast the creation’s suffering as a prolonged, communal travail—something that involves participation across the whole and persists up to the present moment of the statement.

Imagery

Romans 8:22 draws on the concrete, bodily image of labor pains, but it applies that image to “the whole creation.” The effect is to picture creation as moving through a period of acute, shared pain—an ordeal that is felt collectively and expressed audibly in “groans,” continuing “until now.”

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).