Lexicon

G1096 - ginomai

Strong's: G1096 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: ghin'-om-ahee Part of speech: deponent middle verb (active in meaning, middle in form) NT occurrences: ~669, one of the most frequent NT verbs Hebrew equivalents (LXX): H1961 - hayah (הָיָה, "to be / become / come to pass") is the dominant LXX-equivalence

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

To come into being, be born, be produced, the coming-to-be sense, the most lexically loaded for theological argument (John 1:3, 14; Galatians 4:4; Romans 1:3).
To happen, take place, occur, events / circumstances coming about (Matthew 6:10, genēthētō to thelēma sou, "let Your will happen"; Luke 1:38, genoito moi kata to rhēma sou, "let it be done to me").
To become, be transformed into, change of state (John 1:14, "the Word became flesh"; John 9:39 "ginōntai blind"; 1 Cor 13:11 "when I egenomēn a man, I put away childish things").
To be made, be created, be appointed, passive-effect sense (often functioning as the passive of poieō), Gal 4:4, genomenon ek gynaikos; Heb 5:5, "He did not glorify Himself to become high priest, but the One who said…"
To be present, exist (in some contexts indistinguishable from eimi), Hebrews 11:6, pisteusai gar dei… hoti estin, using eimi; but elsewhere ginomai takes on existence-claim functions.

The verb's range from existence-coming-to-be through happening through becoming makes it semantically broad; its theological force is concentrated in the contexts where the coming-into-being sense is sharply distinguished from a separate verb of being, most decisively in John 1.1-3.

Theological force, the ēn / egeneto contrast in John 1

John 1:1-3 deploys two verbs in deliberate contrast:

εἰμί (G1510 - eimi, "to be"), used three times in the imperfect ἦν (ēn, "was") for the eternal Logos:
ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, "in the beginning was the Word"
καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, "and the Word was with God"
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, "and the Word was God"
γίνομαι (ginomai, "to come into being"), used twice in the aorist ἐγένετο (egeneto, "came into being") for the created order:
πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν, "all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him came into being not one thing that has come into being"

The grammatical contrast does load-bearing christological work:

ēn (imperfect of eimi) names the timeless / continuous existence of the Logos. The imperfect tense, in this context, picks out a state that simply was without temporal origin, there is no implied beginning to the being.
egeneto (aorist of ginomai) names the punctiliar coming-into-existence of created things. The aorist names a discrete event of beginning-to-be.

The Logos ēn (was, eternally); creation egeneto (came-to-be, at a beginning). The two verbs partition reality: that which is (the Logos, with God, indeed was God) and that which came-to-be (the created order, which came-to-be through the Logos).

This is the primary lexical-grammatical buttress for the orthodox christological claim that the Logos is uncreated: He is not among the things that egeneto; He is the agent through whom all things egeneto. Athanasius (Contra Arianos II.21-24) makes precisely this point against the Arians: if all coming-to-be is through the Logos, the Logos cannot be coming-to-be. The grammatical wedge is the ēn / egeneto distinction.

The Watchtower Society's New World Translation has historically tried to dilute this distinction by translating John 1:1c as "the Word was a god" (predicate-noun controversy), but this leaves John 1:3 untouched: the egeneto / ēn distinction holds, and the Logos remains on the uncreated side of the partition. The grammar resists subordinationist readings independently of the predicate-noun question.

Ho gegonen, the perfect-tense closing flourish

John 1:3 ends with a perfect-tense form: καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν, "and apart from Him came-into-being not one thing that has come-into-being." The perfect gegonen names the standing-state of being-already-come-to-be. The clause is universally exhaustive: nothing in the category "things that have come into being" lies outside the Logos's mediation.

(There is a textual / punctuation variant: some Patristic readings, favored by Origen and the Gnostic Valentinians, punctuate the verse to attach ho gegonen to v. 4: "what came into being in Him was life." Modern critical editions vary; UBS5 / NA28 punctuate with ho gegonen as the close of v. 3, which is the more grammatically natural reading.)

Theological force, the Logos egeneto sarx of John 1:14

The other dense christological use is John 1:14, καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, "and the Word became flesh." The same verb that names creation's coming-to-be (1:3) names the Word's incarnation (1:14). The grammatical-theological lever:

The Logos who was (ēn) eternally now egeneto (came-to-be) flesh.
This is not that the Logos ceased to be what He was; the imperfect / aorist contrast is preserved by the lexicon.
It is that the Logos added a mode of being, the sarx (flesh, G4561 - sarx) is the assumed humanity, taken up into the eternal Logos's identity.
Ginomai here is the Greek-language Christological tool for asserting genuine incarnation without compromising eternal deity: the eternal ēn never became egeneto; rather, the Logos who is eternal egeneto (became / took on) flesh.

The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) and its associated theological vocabulary (two natures in one person, enhypostasis, communicatio idiomatum) is in part an extended explication of how Logos egeneto sarx works grammatically and metaphysically.

Pauline use, genomenon of incarnation

Paul's parallel formulations leverage the same verb:

Galatians 4:4, exapesteilen ho theos ton hyion autou, genomenon ek gynaikos, genomenon hypo nomon, "God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the Law"
Romans 1:3, peri tou hyiou autou tou genomenou ek spermatos David kata sarka, "concerning His Son, born of David's seed according to flesh"
Philippians 2:7, en homoiōmati anthrōpōn genomenos, "being made in the likeness of men"
Hebrews 1:4, tosoutōi kreittōn genomenos tōn angelōn, "having become so much better than the angels"
Hebrews 2:17, epheilen kata panta tois adelphois homoiōthēnai, He had to become like His brothers in all things (different verb, same incarnational claim)
Hebrews 5:5, Christ did not glorify Himself to become (genēthēnai) high priest, but God said to Him "You are my Son"

In each case, ginomai/-cognate verbs are doing the incarnational work: the eternal Son enters the human / Davidic / fleshly / under-Law condition. The lexical pattern is consistent: ginomai names the assumption, not the constitution.

Theological force, the genēthētō / genoito of divine command and human submission

A second cluster of theologically loaded uses is the imperative / optative of ginomai in the contexts of divine fiat and human submission:

Genesis 1 (LXX), kai eipen ho theos: genēthētō phōs, kai egeneto phōs, "and God said, 'let there be light,' and light came-to-be", the verb fronted to the absolute creative fiat
Matthew 6:10, genēthētō to thelēma sou, "let Your will come-to-pass"
Matthew 26:42 (Gethsemane), genēthētō to thelēma sou, Jesus's submission to the Father's will (echoing the Lord's Prayer)
Luke 1:38, genoito moi kata to rhēma sou, Mary's fiat, "let it be done to me according to your word", patristically read as the Marian assent that mirrors Christ's Gethsemane submission

The lexeme thus carries both the divine creative speech (let it come to be) and the creaturely consenting submission (let it come to be in me), a remarkable double-register that liturgical and devotional traditions have long noted.

Notable verses

The ēn / egeneto contrast and Christ-as-creator

John 1.1-3, the imperfect ēn and aorist egeneto contrast
John 1.3, panta di' autou egeneto
John 1.14, ho logos sarx egeneto
John 1:6, egeneto anthrōpos apestalmenos para theou (John the Baptist), the lexeme deployed for human creaturely coming-to-be, in immediate contrast to the eternal Logos
John 8:58, prin Abraam genesthai egō eimi, "before Abraham came-to-be, I AM", Christ uses ginomai of Abraham (creature) and eimi of Himself (uncreated), the same partition

Pauline incarnational genomenon

Galatians 4.4, genomenon ek gynaikos, genomenon hypo nomon
Romans 1:3, genomenou ek spermatos David
Philippians 2.7, en homoiōmati anthrōpōn genomenos

Divine creative fiat

Genesis 1 LXX, genēthētō / egeneto throughout
Matthew 6:10; 26:42, genēthētō to thelēma sou
Luke 1:38, genoito moi

Eschatological coming-to-pass

Mark 13:30; Matthew 24:34; Luke 21:32, heōs an panta tauta genētai, "until all these things come to pass"
Revelation 1:1; 4:1; 22:6, ha dei genesthai, "what must take place"

Patristic / scholarly note

The exegetical importance of the ēn / egeneto distinction in John 1:1-3 is recognized across the patristic period. Origen (Commentary on John 2.1) draws the contrast explicitly. Athanasius (Contra Arianos II.21-24, II.31; De Decretis 14) treats the partition between eternal-being and coming-to-be as the structural backbone of the anti-Arian argument: the Arian claim that the Son egeneto (came-to-be) before the rest of creation is shown to be incoherent on John's own grammar, the verb egeneto names what passes through the Son, not what the Son is.

Augustine (Tractates on John 1.5-11, c. AD 415) develops the ēn / egeneto distinction at length, using it to refute both Arian subordinationism and Sabellian modalism: the Word who eternally was with God (against Sabellian collapse) is also Himself God (against Arian subordination); creation came-to-be through this eternally-existing Word.

In modern scholarship, the John 1 prologue is the most-discussed Christological pericope. C. K. Barrett (The Gospel According to St. John, 1955), Raymond Brown (The Gospel According to John, 1966-70), Craig Keener (The Gospel of John, 2003), and Andreas Köstenberger (A Theology of John's Gospel and Letters, 2009) all treat the ēn / egeneto contrast as a deliberate authorial signal of high christology. The contrast is sometimes called "the verbal partition" or "the imperfect/aorist contrast" in technical literature.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Top-cited references using ginomai: John 1.1-3, John 1.3, John 1.14, Galatians 4.4 (when present), Philippians 2.7 (when present).