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.
23 distinct verses where G2046 appears in the Perfect tense, across 8 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 1 verse
Luke 2 verses
- 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.'"
John 5 verses
- John 4:18 εἴρηκας perf act ind 2sg attic for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly."
- John 6:65 εἴρηκα perf act ind 1sg attic He said, "For this cause have I said to you that no one can come to me, unless it is given to him by my Father."
- John 12:50 εἴρηκέν perf act ind 3sg attic I know that his commandment is eternal life. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak."
- John 14:29 εἴρηκα perf act ind 1sg attic Now I have told you before it happens so that, when it happens, you may believe.
- John 15:15 εἴρηκα perf act ind 1sg attic No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.
Acts 5 verses
- Acts 2:16 εἰρημένον perf pass ptcp nom sg neut attic But this is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel:
- Acts 8:24 εἰρήκατε perf act ind 2pl attic Simon answered, "Pray for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken happen to me."
- Acts 13:34 εἴρηκεν perf act ind 3sg attic "Concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he has spoken thus: 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.'
- Acts 13:40 εἰρημένον perf pass ptcp acc sg neut attic Beware therefore, lest that come on you which is spoken in the prophets:
- Acts 17:28 εἰρήκασιν perf act ind 3pl attic 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'
Romans 1 verse
2 Corinthians 1 verse
Hebrews 6 verses
- Hebrews 1:13 εἴρηκέν perf act ind 3sg attic But of which of the angels has he said at any time, "Sit at my right hand, Until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet?"
- Hebrews 4:3 εἴρηκεν perf act ind 3sg attic For we who have believed do enter into that rest, even as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest;" although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
- Hebrews 4:4 εἴρηκεν perf act ind 3sg attic For he has said this somewhere about the seventh day, "God rested on the seventh day from all his works;"
- Hebrews 10:9 εἴρηκεν perf act ind 3sg attic then he has said, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,
- Hebrews 10:15 εἰρηκέναι perf act inf The Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
- Hebrews 13:5 εἴρηκεν perf act ind 3sg attic Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, "I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you."
Revelation 2 verses
- Revelation 7:14 εἴρηκα perf act ind 1sg attic I told him, "My lord, you know." He said to me, "These are those who came out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes, and made them white in the Lamb's blood.
- Revelation 19:3 εἴρηκαν perf act ind 3pl attic A second said, "Hallelujah! Her smoke goes up forever and ever."
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.
