ζύμη
leaven
‘leaven’ is one of 2 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.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where G2219 appears in the Dative case in the Book of Matthew. 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
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, ζυμη (zýmē) means “leaven.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “leaven” in the King James Version, “yeast” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It appears 11 verses across 5 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Matthew (36%), then 1 Corinthians and Luke. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Dig into 11-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2219 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #863
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 863 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Matthew 4 verses 36%
- 1 Corinthians 3 verses 27%
- Luke 2 verses 18%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Gospels 7 verses · 64%
- Pauline corpus 4 verses · 36%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 18%
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: Leaven 13×
- American Standard Version: Leaven 13×
- Berean Standard Bible: Leaven 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Yeast 12×, A 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2219 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2219 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2219 across 11 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2219 across 15 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.
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.
- leaven
- metaph. of inveterate mental and moral corruption, viewed in its tendency to infect others
Word origin
Derived from ζεω (zéō) (G2204) — to boil.
Probably from G2204 ; ferment (as if boiling up): - leaven.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G2219 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ζύμης zýmēs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 16:6 | 6 |
| ζύμῃ zýmē | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 13:33 | 4 |
| ζύμη zýmē | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | 1 Corinthians 5:6 | 2 |
| ζύμην zýmēn | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | 1 Corinthians 5:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2219, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ζυμη appears 10 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 9 verses in 3 books.
- 10
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 9
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 12:15 ζυμή
- Leviticus 2:11 ζυμή
- Deuteronomy 16:3 ζυμή
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2219) 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.
- Exodus 12:15 ζυμή Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread; even the first day you shall put away yeast out of your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
- Exodus 12:19 ζύμη Seven days shall there be no yeast found in your houses, for whoever eats that which is leavened, that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a foreigner, or one who is born in the land.
- Exodus 13:3 ζύμη Moses said to the people, "Remember this day, in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand Yahweh brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.
- Exodus 13:7 ζύμη Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and no leavened bread shall be seen with you, neither shall there be yeast seen with you, in all your borders.
- Exodus 23:18 ζυμή "You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, neither shall the fat of my feast remain all night until the morning.
- Exodus 34:25 ζυμή "You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover be left to the morning.
- Leviticus 2:11 ζυμή "'No meal offering, which you shall offer to Yahweh, shall be made with yeast; for you shall burn no yeast, nor any honey, as an offering made by fire to Yahweh.
- Deuteronomy 16:3 ζυμή You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shall you eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for you came forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that you may remember the day when you came forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.
- Deuteronomy 16:4 ζυμή There shall be no yeast seen with you in all your borders seven days; neither shall any of the flesh, which you sacrifice the first day at even, remain all night until the morning.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2219) 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.
