Ζαρά
Zerah
Thayer's lists 2 entries for ‘Zerah’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Every verse where G2196 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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
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.
“Zerah” is the headline sense of the Greek name Ζαρα (Zará). With only 1 verse it sits in the long tail of Greek New Testament vocabulary. More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Matthew. Scripture uses it exactly once, at Matthew 1:3. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2196 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #3,503
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 3,503 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Gospels 1 verse · 100%
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: Zara 1×
- American Standard Version: Zerah 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Zerah 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Zerah 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2196 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2196 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2196 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2196 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 2 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.
- Zara = "a rising (as the sun)"
- the son of Judah, ancestor of Christ
Word origin
Derived from זרח (Zerach) (H2226) — Zerah.
Of hebrew origin [ H2226 ]; Zara (that is Zerach ) an Israelite : - Zara.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2196, 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
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 → 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Zerah). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Sunrise. (1.) An "Ethiopian," probably Osorkon II., the successor of Shishak on the throne of Egypt. With an enormous army, the largest we read of in Scripture, he invaded the kingdom of Judah in the days of Asa (2 Chr. 14:9-15). He reached Zephathah, and there encountered the army of Asa. This is the only instance "in all the annals of Judah of a victorious encounter in the field with a first-class heathen power in full force." The Egyptian host was utterly routed, and the Hebrews gathered "exceeding much spoil." Three hundred years elapsed before another Egyptian army, that of Necho (B.C. 609), came up against Jerusalem.
(2.) A son of Tamar (Gen. 38:30); called also Zara (Matt. 1:3).
(3.) A Gershonite Levite (1 Chr. 6:21, 41).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(rising (of the sun)).
+ A son of Reuel, son of Esau, (Genesis 36:13; 1 Chronicles 1:37) and one of the "dukes" or phylarchs of the Edomites. (Genesis 36:17) (B.C. after 1760.) + Less properly, Zarah, twin son, with his elder brother Pharez, of Judah and Tamar. (Genesis 38:30; 1 Chronicles 2:4; Matthew 1:3) (B.C. about 1728.) His descendants were called Zarhites, Ezrahites and Izrahites. (Numbers 26:20; 1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 27:8,11) + Son of Simeon, (1 Chronicles 4:24) called Zohar in (Genesis 46:10) (B.C. 1706.) + A Gershonite Levite, son of Iddo or Adaiah. (1 Chronicles 6:21,41) (B.C. 1043.) + The Ethiopian or Cushite, an invader of Judah, defeated by Asa about B.C. 941. [Asa] Zerah is probably the Hebrew name of Usarken I., second king of the Egyptian twenty-second dynasty; or perhaps more probably Usarken II his second successor. In the fourteenth year of Asa, Zerah the Ethiopian, with a mighty army of or million, invaded his kingdom, and advanced unopposed in the field as far as the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. The Egyptian monuments enable us to picture the general disposition of Zerah's army. The chariots formed the first corps in a single or double line; behind them, massed in phalanxes, were heavy-armed troops; probably on the flanks stood archers and horsemen in lighter formations. After a prayer by Asa, his army attacked the Egyptians and defeated them. The chariots, broken by the charge and with horses made unmanageable by flights of arrows must have been forced back upon the cumbrous host behind. So complete was the overthrow that the Hebrews could capture and spoil the cities around Gerah which must have been in alliance with Zerah. The defeat of the Egyptian army is without parallel in the history of the Jews. On no other occasion did an Israelite army meet an army of one of the great powers and defeat it.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
same as Zarah
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word Ζαρα appears 14 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 14 verses in 4 books.
- 14
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 14
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 36:33 ζαρα
- Numbers 26:13 ζαρα
- Joshua 7:1 ζαρα
- 1 Chronicles 1:32 ζαρα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2196) 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 36:33 ζαρα Bela died, and Jobab, the son of Zerah of Bozrah, reigned in his place.
- Genesis 38:30 ζαρα Afterward his brother came out, that had the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah.
- Genesis 46:12 ζαρα The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul.
- Numbers 26:13 ζαρα of Zerah, the family of the Zerahites; of Shaul, the family of the Shaulites.
- Numbers 26:16 ζαρα of Ozni, the family of the Oznites; of Eri, the family of the Erites;
- Joshua 7:1 ζαρα But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted thing; for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the devoted thing: and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the children of Israel.
- Joshua 7:18 ζαρα and he brought near his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.
- Joshua 7:24 ζαρα Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his donkeys, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them up to the valley of Achor.
- Joshua 22:20 ζαρα Didn't Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the devoted thing, and wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel? and that man didn't perish alone in his iniquity.
- 1 Chronicles 1:32 ζαρα The sons of Keturah, Abraham's concubine: she bore Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. The sons of Jokshan: Sheba, and Dedan.
- 1 Chronicles 2:4 ζαρα Tamar his daughter-in-law bore him Perez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five.
- 1 Chronicles 2:6 ζαρα The sons of Zerah: Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara; five of them in all.
- 1 Chronicles 6:6 ζαρα and Uzzi became the father of Zerahiah, and Zerahiah became the father of Meraioth,
- 1 Chronicles 9:6 ζαρα Of the sons of Zerah: Jeuel, and their brothers, six hundred ninety.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2196) 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.
