ἄσιτος (asitos)
asitos
fasting
Quick Reference
- Language
- Koine Greek
- Testament
- New Testament
- Occurrences
- 1 verses
- Root
- —
Word Overview
The adjective asitos describes a state of being without food. It is formed from a negative prefix and the word for grain or bread, literally meaning "unbaked" or simply "without sustenance." In the New Testament, it appears only once, in Acts 27:33.
Paul uses this term while shipwrecked at sea to urge the crew to eat. He notes that they have gone fourteen days without eating, a detail that highlights the physical exhaustion and desperation of their situation. The word focuses on the bare fact of hunger rather than any spiritual discipline.
While modern readers might associate fasting with religious devotion, this usage is purely descriptive. It marks a period of forced abstinence due to extreme circumstances. The term underscores the severity of the storm and the crew's need for strength to survive.
Based on public-domain lexicons (Strong's, Thayer, Gesenius, Brown-Driver-Briggs and others).
What This Word Means for Your Faith
When we face storms in life, our strength often runs out before our hope does. The word asitos describes a state of being without food, capturing that raw physical exhaustion where survival feels impossible. In Acts 27:33, Paul uses this term to describe the crew’s fourteen days of forced abstinence during a shipwreck. This was not a spiritual discipline but a desperate reality of hunger and fear.
This passage reminds us that God meets us in our weakest moments. Even when we feel completely depleted, like those sailors on the dark sea, divine provision can still arrive. Paul’s encouragement to eat shows that taking care of our physical needs is part of trusting God through trials. He did not ask them to starve further but to restore their bodies so they could endure.
Your faith does not require you to ignore your humanity. When you feel drained by circumstances beyond your control, remember that God cares about your physical well-being too. It is okay to seek rest and nourishment. This word invites us to see our need for sustenance not as a failure of spirit, but as an invitation to rely on God’s care in the midst of the storm.
How it's translated
How this word is rendered word-by-word in the 1 verses where it appears, by frequency.
- without eating1×
Forms in the text
The inflected forms of this word as they appear in Scripture, by frequency.
- ἄσιτοι1×
Key Verses
-
Acts 27:33
While the day was coming on, Paul begged them all to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you wait and continue fasting, having taken nothing.
This verse uses the word to highlight the extreme physical depletion of the crew, showing that Paul recognized their need for food to survive rather than viewing hunger as a spiritual virtue.