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.
24 distinct verses where G2046 appears in the Aorist tense, across 4 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.
Matthew 19 verses
- Matthew 1:22 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut Now all this has happened, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying,
- Matthew 2:15 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, "Out of Egypt I called my son."
- Matthew 2:17 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut Then that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying,
- Matthew 2:23 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut and came and lived in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
- Matthew 3:3 ῥηθεὶς aor pass ptcp nom sg masc For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, Make his paths straight."
- Matthew 4:14 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying,
- Matthew 5:21 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, 'You shall not murder;' and 'Whoever shall murder shall be in danger of the judgment.'
- Matthew 5:27 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery;'
- Matthew 5:31 Ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "It was also said, 'Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce,'
- Matthew 5:33 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "Again you have heard that it was said to them of old time, 'You shall not make false vows, but shall perform to the Lord your vows,'
- Matthew 5:38 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'
- Matthew 5:43 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.'
- Matthew 8:17 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: "He took our infirmities, and bore our diseases."
- Matthew 12:17 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying,
- Matthew 13:35 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, "I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world."
- Matthew 21:4 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying,
- Matthew 22:31 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp acc sg neut But concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven't you read that which was spoken to you by God, saying,
- Matthew 24:15 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp acc sg neut "When, therefore, you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
- Matthew 27:9 ῥηθὲν aor pass ptcp nom sg neut Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, "They took the thirty pieces of silver, The price of him upon whom a price had been set, Whom some of the children of Israel priced,
Romans 2 verses
Galatians 1 verse
Revelation 2 verses
- Revelation 6:11 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg A long white robe was given to each of them. They were told that they should rest yet for a while, until their fellow servants and their brothers, who would also be killed even as they were, should complete their course.
- Revelation 9:4 ἐρρέθη aor pass ind 3sg They were told that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those people who don't have God's seal on their foreheads.
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.
