to pray
deomai is used for earnest appeals to people and for prayer directed to the Lord.
The supplied verses most often show an earnest personal appeal for another person to hear, permit, spare, examine, or grant something; they also show prayer directed to the Lord, including prayer for forgiveness, strength, and a hoped-for outcome.
Senses in use
-
Earnest appeal or request to a person · dominant
Present first-person forms introduce direct appeals: in Acts 21:39 the speaker asks permission to address the people, while in Acts 26:3 he asks to be heard patiently. In Luke 8:28 and Luke 9:38 the speaker urgently asks Jesus not to torment him and to look upon his only son; Acts 8:34 similarly introduces a question addressed to Philip.
-
Prayer directed to the Lord · common
Participial forms describe ongoing prayer in 1 Thessalonians 3:10 and Luke 21:36, where the APB renders prayer for seeing fellow believers and for strength to escape coming events. In Acts 8:22 an aorist form is used in an instruction to pray to the Lord for possible forgiveness, and Acts 4:31 refers to the group after they had prayed.
In the Anselm Project Bible: The APB varies its presentation between "ask," "beg," "pray," and "praying" across these verses. Because the English is a whole-verse translation, those renderings show the clauses' overall presentation rather than a fixed English equivalent.