ἑρπετόν
creeping animal
‘creeping animal’ is one of 3 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.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
1 distinct verse where G2062 appears in the Nominative case, across 1 book. 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.
Acts 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.
“creeping animal” is the headline sense of the Greek noun ερπετον (herpetón). With only 4 verses it sits in the long tail of Greek New Testament vocabulary. More than half of its appearances fall in Acts. Its earliest occurrence is Acts 10:12. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. See the sense tree, 4-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2062 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 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 4 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 50%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 25%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 25%
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: Creeping things 3×
- American Standard Version: Creeping things 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Reptiles 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Reptiles 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2062 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2062 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2062 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2062 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 3 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.
- a creeping animal, reptile
- four-legged animals and birds
- marine animals
Word origin
Origin: neuter of a derivative of herpo (to creep)
Neuter of a derivative of ἕρπω herpō (to creep ); a reptile that is (by hebraism (compare [ H7431 ]) a small animal : - creeping thing serpent.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G2062 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἑρπετὰ herpetà | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Acts 11:6 | 2 |
| ἑρπετῶν herpetō̂n | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter | Romans 1:23 | 2 |
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ερπετον appears 40 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 40 verses in 9 books.
- 40
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 40
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 1:20 ἑρπετόν
- Leviticus 11:20 ἑρπετόν
- Deuteronomy 4:18 ἑρπετόν
- 1 Kings 5:13 ἑρπετόν
- Psalms 103:25 ἑρπετόν
- Isaiah 16:1 ἑρπετόν
- Ezekiel 38:20 ἑρπετόν
- Hosea 2:14 ἑρπετόν
- Habakkuk 1:14 ἑρπετόν
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2062) 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 1:20 ἑρπετόν God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of sky."
- Genesis 1:21 ἑρπετόν God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good.
- Genesis 1:24 ἑρπετόν God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind," and it was so.
- Genesis 1:25 ἑρπετόν God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
- Genesis 1:26 ἑρπετόν God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
- Genesis 1:28 ἑρπετόν God blessed them. God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
- Genesis 1:30 ἑρπετόν To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food." And it was so.
- Genesis 6:7 ἑρπετόν Yahweh said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground; man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."
- Genesis 6:19 ἑρπετόν Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female.
- Genesis 6:20 ἑρπετόν Of the birds after their kind, of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort shall come to you, to keep them alive.
- Genesis 7:8 ἑρπετόν Clean animals, animals that are not clean, birds, and everything that creeps on the ground
- Genesis 7:14 ἑρπετόν they, and every animal after its kind, all the cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort.
- Genesis 7:21 ἑρπετόν All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, cattle, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.
- Genesis 7:23 ἑρπετόν Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.
- Genesis 8:1 ἑρπετόν God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.
- Genesis 8:17 ἑρπετόν Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, cattle, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."
- Genesis 8:19 ἑρπετόν Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went forth out of the ark.
- Genesis 9:3 ἑρπετόν Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As the green herb, I have given everything to you.
- Leviticus 11:20 ἑρπετόν "'All flying insects that walk on all fours are an abomination to you.
- Leviticus 11:21 ἑρπετόν Yet you may eat these: of all winged creeping things that go on all fours, which have legs above their feet, with which to hop on the earth.
- Leviticus 11:23 ἑρπετόν But all winged creeping things which have four feet, are an abomination to you.
- Leviticus 11:29 ἑρπετόν "'These are they which are unclean to you among the creeping things that creep on the earth: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard,
- Leviticus 11:31 ἑρπετόν These are they which are unclean to you among all that creep. Whoever touches them when they are dead, shall be unclean until the evening.
- Leviticus 11:41 ἑρπετόν "'Every creeping thing that creeps on the earth is an abomination. It shall not be eaten.
- Leviticus 11:42 ἑρπετόν Whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, even all creeping things that creep on the earth, them you shall not eat; for they are an abomination.
- Leviticus 11:43 ἑρπετόν You shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creeps, neither shall you make yourselves unclean with them, that you should be defiled thereby.
- Leviticus 11:44 ἑρπετόν For I am Yahweh your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy: neither shall you defile yourselves with any kind of creeping thing that moves on the earth.
- Leviticus 20:25 ἑρπετόν "'You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean: and you shall not make yourselves abominable by animal, or by bird, or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have separated from you as unclean for you.
- Leviticus 22:5 ἑρπετόν or whoever touches any creeping thing, whereby he may be made unclean, or a man of whom he may take uncleanness, whatever uncleanness he has;
- Deuteronomy 4:18 ἑρπετόν the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth;
- Deuteronomy 14:19 ἑρπετόν All winged creeping things are unclean to you: they shall not be eaten.
- 1 Kings 5:13 ἑρπετόν King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.
- Psalms 103:25 ἑρπετόν
- Psalms 148:10 ἑρπετόν Wild animals and all cattle; Small creatures and flying birds;
- Isaiah 16:1 ἑρπετόν Send you the lambs for the ruler of the land from Selah to the wilderness, to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.
- Ezekiel 38:20 ἑρπετόν so that the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and the animals of the field, and all creeping things who creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the surface of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.
- Hosea 2:14 ἑρπετόν "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, And bring her into the wilderness, And speak tenderly to her.
- Hosea 2:20 ἑρπετόν I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; And you shall know Yahweh.
- Hosea 4:3 ἑρπετόν Therefore the land will mourn, And everyone who dwells therein will waste away. All living things in her, Even the animals of the field and the birds of the sky; Yes, the fish of the sea also die.
- Habakkuk 1:14 ἑρπετόν and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2062) 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.
