ἐρέω
to speak
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Future-tense verb in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Future
- Action expected in future time.
- Aorist
- Action viewed as a simple whole, without regard to duration — often past (perfective aspect).
- Perfect
- A completed past action with continuing present results.
- Pluperfect
- A past action completed before another past point (“had written”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
- Passive
- The subject receives the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
- Participle
- A verbal adjective (“writing,” “having written”).
- Infinitive
- A verbal noun (“to write”), unmarked for person or number.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G2046 appears in the Book of Luke — 19 distinct verses. 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
- Luke 2:24 εἰρημένον perf pass ptcp acc sg neut attic and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, "A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons."
- Luke 4:12 εἴρηται perf pass ind 3sg Jesus answering, said to him, "It has been said, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'"
- Luke 4:23 ἐρεῖτέ fut act ind 2pl He said to them, "Doubtless you will tell me this parable, 'Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown.'"
- Luke 12:10 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
- Luke 12:19 ἐρῶ fut act ind 1sg I will tell my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry."'
- Luke 13:25 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg When once the master of the house has risen up, and has shut the door, and you begin to stand outside, and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us!' then he will answer and tell you, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'
- Luke 13:27 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg He will say, 'I tell you, I don't know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.'
- Luke 14:9 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, 'Make room for this person.' Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place.
- Luke 14:10 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.
- Luke 15:18 ἐρῶ fut act ind 1sg I will get up and go to my father, and will tell him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight.
- Luke 17:7 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg But who is there among you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, that will say, when he comes in from the field, 'Come immediately and sit down at the table,'
- Luke 17:8 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg and will not rather tell him, 'Prepare my supper, clothe yourself properly, and serve me, while I eat and drink. Afterward you shall eat and drink'?
- Luke 17:21 ἐροῦσιν fut act ind 3pl neither will they say, 'Look, here!' or, 'Look, there!' for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you."
- Luke 17:23 ἐροῦσιν fut act ind 3pl They will tell you, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Don't go away, nor follow after them,
- Luke 19:31 ἐρεῖτε fut act ind 2pl If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' say to him: 'The Lord needs it.'"
- Luke 20:5 ἐρεῖ fut act ind 3sg They reasoned with themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say, 'Why didn't you believe him?'
- Luke 22:11 ἐρεῖτε fut act ind 2pl Tell the master of the house, 'The Teacher says to you, "Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'
- Luke 22:13 εἰρήκει plup act ind 3sg attic They went, found things as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
- Luke 23:29 ἐροῦσιν fut act ind 3pl For behold, the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'
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.
At its core, ερεω (eréō) means “to speak.” Translators differ — “say” in the King James Version, then “was spoken” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 96 verses in 13 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (31% of all occurrences). First canonically at Matthew 1:22, it enters the text early. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2046 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 →
- 96
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 96 distinct verses.
- 13 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 13 of 27 New Testament books.
- #178
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 178 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 96 occurrences in the concordance →
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 96 distinct verses.
- Gospels 57 verses · 59%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 26 verses · 27%
- Pauline corpus 20 verses · 21%
- Johannine 11 verses · 11%
- Hebrews 6 verses · 6%
- Revelation 5 verses · 5%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 1%
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: Say 9×, Shall we say 6×, He said 3×
- American Standard Version: Say 10×, Shall we say 6×, Will say 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Was spoken 9×, Shall we say 6×, Was said 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2046 across 75 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 29 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2046 across 74 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 32 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2046 across 96 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 47 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in Thayer's
The 1 sense 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.
- to utter, speak, say
Word origin
Derived from ρεω (rhéō) (G4483) — to utter.
Forms in the corpus
The 26 distinct written forms G2046 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2046, 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
Derived from this word
- επω épō G2036 to say
- ερευναω ereunáō G2045 to search
- ερωταω erōtáō G2065 to ask
- ιρις îris G2463 rainbow
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 10 — 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 ερεω appears 1 time in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 1 verse in 1 book.
- 1
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 1
- verse
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Judges 1:31 ερεω
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2046) 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.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2046) 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.
