ἄβυσσος
abyss
‘abyss’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Genitive-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
3 distinct verses where G12 appears in the Accusative case, across 3 books. Filtered view — show all forms. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Greek form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Greek New Testament; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences of this word are not indexed here.
Luke 1 verse
Romans 1 verse
Revelation 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“abyss” is the headline sense of the Greek noun αβυσσος (ábyssos). It clusters heavily in Revelation, which alone accounts for 78% of its uses. With 9 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Catalogued under 5 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. The King James Version usually renders it “bottomless pit,” while modern versions prefer “abyss” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G12 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,140
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,140 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 7 verses 78%
- Luke 1 verse 11%
- Romans 1 verse 11%
By section of the New Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 9 distinct verses.
- Johannine 7 verses · 78%
- Revelation 7 verses · 78%
- Gospels 1 verse · 11%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 11%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 11%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Bottomless pit 5×, Bottomless 2×, Deep 2×
- American Standard Version: Abyss 9×
- Berean Standard Bible: Abyss 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abyss 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G12 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G12 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G12 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G12 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 5 senses Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- bottomless
- unbounded
- the pit
- the immeasurable depth
- of Orcus, a very deep gulf or chasm in the lowest parts of the earth used as the common receptacle of the dead and…
Word origin
Derived from Α (A) (G1) — alpha.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G12 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀβύσσου abýssou | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Revelation 9:1 | 6 |
| ἄβυσσον ábysson | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Luke 8:31 | 3 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G12, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- αβαρης abarḗs G4 light
- αγαμος ágamos G22 unmarried
- αγενεαλογητος agenealógētos G35 without genealogy
- αγενης agenḗs G36 ignoble
- αγναφος ágnaphos G46 unprocessed
- αγνοεω agnoéō G50 to be ignorant
- αγνωσια agnōsía G56 ignorance
- αγνωστος ágnōstos G57 unknown
- αγραμματος agrámmatos G62 unlearned
- αγρυπνεω agrypnéō G69 to watch
- αδαπανος adápanos G77 free
- αδελφος adelphós G80 brother
- αδηλος ádēlos G82 obscure
- αδης háidēs G86 hell
- αδιακριτος adiákritos G87 clear
- αδιαλειπτος adiáleiptos G88 continual
- αδικος ádikos G94 unjust
- αδοκιμος adókimos G96 unapproved
- αδολος ádolos G97 guileless
- αδυνατος adýnatos G102 weak
- αζυμος ázymos G106 unleavened
- αθανασια athanasía G110 immortal
- αθεμιτος athémitos G111 unlawful
- αθεος átheos G112 godless
+149 more words share this root (not shown).
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 176 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αβυσσος appears 37 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 35 verses in 11 books.
- 37
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 35
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 1:2 ἄβυσσος
- Deuteronomy 8:7 ἄβυσσος
- Job 28:14 ἄβυσσος
- Psalms 32:7 ἄβυσσος
- Proverbs 3:20 ἄβυσσος
- Isaiah 44:27 ἄβυσσος
- Ezekiel 26:19 ἄβυσσος
- Daniel 3:55 ἄβυσσος
- Amos 7:4 ἄβυσσος
- Jonah 2:6 ἄβυσσος
- Habakkuk 3:10 ἄβυσσος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G12) appears in the Greek Septuagint. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 1:2 ἄβυσσος Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
- Genesis 7:11 ἄβυσσος In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep were burst open, and the sky's windows were opened.
- Genesis 8:2 ἄβυσσος The deep's fountains and the sky's windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.
- Deuteronomy 8:7 ἄβυσσος For Yahweh your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills;
- Deuteronomy 33:13 ἄβυσσος Of Joseph he said, Blessed of Yahweh be his land, For the precious things of the heavens, for the dew, For the deep that couches beneath,
- Job 28:14 ἄβυσσος The deep says, 'It isn't in me.' The sea says, 'It isn't with me.'
- Job 36:16 ἄβυσσος Yes, he would have allured you out of distress, Into a broad place, where there is no restriction. That which is set on your table would be full of fatness.
- Job 38:16 ἄβυσσος "Have you entered into the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in the recesses of the deep?
- Job 38:30 ἄβυσσος The waters become hard like stone, When the surface of the deep is frozen.
- Job 41:23 ἄβυσσος The flakes of his flesh are joined together. They are firm on him. They can't be moved.
- Job 41:24 ἄβυσσος His heart is as firm as a stone, Yes, firm as the lower millstone.
- Psalms 32:7 ἄβυσσος You are my hiding place. You will preserve me from trouble. You will surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.
- Psalms 35:7 ἄβυσσος For without cause they have hidden their net in a pit for me. Without cause they have dug a pit for my soul.
- Psalms 41:8 ἄβυσσος "An evil disease," they say, "has afflicted him. Now that he lies he shall rise up no more."
- Psalms 70:20 ἄβυσσος
- Psalms 70:21 ἄβυσσος
- Psalms 76:17 ἄβυσσος
- Psalms 77:15 ἄβυσσος You have redeemed your people with your arm, The sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.
- Psalms 103:6 ἄβυσσος Yahweh executes righteous acts, And justice for all who are oppressed.
- Psalms 105:9 ἄβυσσος The covenant which he made with Abraham, His oath to Isaac,
- Psalms 106:26 ἄβυσσος Therefore he swore to them That he would overthrow them in the wilderness,
- Psalms 134:6 ἄβυσσος
- Psalms 148:7 ἄβυσσος Praise Yahweh from the earth, You great sea creatures, and all depths!
- Proverbs 3:20 ἄβυσσος By his knowledge, the depths were broken up, And the skies drop down the dew.
- Proverbs 8:24 ἄβυσσος When there were no depths, I was brought forth, When there were no springs abounding with water.
- Isaiah 44:27 ἄβυσσος who says to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up your rivers;
- Isaiah 51:10 ἄβυσσος Isn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?
- Isaiah 63:13 ἄβυσσος who led them through the depths, as a horse in the wilderness, so that they didn't stumble?
- Ezekiel 26:19 ἄβυσσος For thus says the Lord Yahweh: When I shall make you a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep on you, and the great waters shall cover you;
- Ezekiel 31:4 ἄβυσσος The waters nourished it, the deep made it to grow: the rivers of it ran round about its plantation; and it sent out its channels to all the trees of the field.
- Ezekiel 31:15 ἄβυσσος Thus says the Lord Yahweh: In the day when he went down to Sheol I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the rivers of it; and the great waters were stayed; and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him.
- Daniel 3:55 ἄβυσσος
- Amos 7:4 ἄβυσσος Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me and, behold, the Lord Yahweh called for judgment by fire; and it dried up the great deep, and would have devoured the land.
- Jonah 2:6 ἄβυσσος I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth barred me in forever: Yet have you brought up my life from the pit, Yahweh my God.
- Habakkuk 3:10 ἄβυσσος The mountains saw you, and were afraid. The tempest of waters passed by. The deep roared and lifted up its hands on high.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G12) in the Septuagint — not a translation of any one Hebrew word. The store carries no word-level Hebrew↔Greek alignment, so no Hebrew original is asserted here. Counts come from the recovered LXX Strong's tagging — high-frequency vocabulary is well covered, while rare or late forms may be untagged — so they reflect tagged occurrences and may slightly undercount.
