Ἰεσσαί
Jesse
Thayer's lists 2 entries for ‘Jesse’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Every verse where G2421 appears — 5 distinct verses across 4 books. 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 2 verses
- Matthew 1:5 Ἰεσσαί n proper indecl Salmon became the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz became the father of Obed by Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse.
- Matthew 1:6 Ἰεσσαὶ n proper indecl Jesse became the father of David the king. David became the father of Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.
Luke 1 verse
Acts 1 verse
Romans 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.
At its core, Ιεσσαι (Iessaí) means “Jesse.” It is rare — just 5 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Matthew (40% of all occurrences). It first appears in Matthew 1:5. Dig into 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2421 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,648
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,648 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Gospels 3 verses · 60%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 40%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 20%
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: Jesse 3×
- American Standard Version: Jesse 3×, Son of jesse 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Jesse 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Jesse 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2421 across 5 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2421 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2421 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2421 across 5 tagged occurrences — 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.
- Jesse = "wealthy"
- the father of David the king
Word origin
Derived from ישי (Yishay) (H3448) — Jesse.
Of hebrew origin [ H3448 ]; Jessae (that is Jishai ) an Israelite : - Jesse.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G2421 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ἰεσσαί Iessaí | Noun, Proper, indeclinable | Matthew 1:5 | 3 |
| Ἰεσσαὶ Iessaì | Noun, Proper, indeclinable | Matthew 1:6 | 2 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Jesse). 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
Firm, or a gift, a son of Obed, the son of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4:17, 22; Matt. 1:5, 6; Luke 3:32). He was the father of eight sons, the youngest of whom was David (1 Sam. 17:12). The phrase "stem of Jesse" is used for the family of David (Isa. 11:1), and "root of Jesse" for the Messiah (Isa. 11:10; Rev. 5:5). Jesse was a man apparently of wealth and position at Bethlehem (1 Sam. 17:17, 18, 20; Ps. 78:71). The last reference to him is of David's procuring for him an asylum with the king of Moab (1 Sam. 22:3).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(wealthy), the father of David, was the son of Obed, who again was the fruit of the union of Boaz and the Moabitess Ruth. His great-grandmother was Rahab the Canaanite, of Jericho. (Matthew 1:5) Jesse's genealogy is twice given in full in the Old Testament, viz., (Ruth 4:18-22) and 1Chr 2:5-12 He is commonly designated as "Jesse the Bethlehemite," (1 Samuel 16:1,18; 17:58) but his full title is "the Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah." ch. (1 Samuel 17:12) He is an "old man" when we first meet with him, (1 Samuel 17:12) with eight sons, ch. (1 Samuel 16:10; 17:12) residing at Bethlehem. ch (1 Samuel 16:4,5) Jesse's wealth seems to have consisted of a flock of sheep and goats, which were under the care of David. ch. (1 Samuel 16:11; 17:34,35) After David's rupture with Saul he took his father and his mother into the country of Moab and deposited them with the king, and there they disappear from our view in the records of Scripture. (B.C. 1068-61.) Who the wife of Jesse was we are not told.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
gift; oblation; one who is
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word Ιεσσαι appears 37 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 35 verses in 8 books.
- 37
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 35
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Ruth 4:17 ιεσσαι
- 1 Samuel 16:1 ιεσσαι
- 2 Samuel 20:1 ιεσσαι
- 1 Kings 12:16 ιεσσαι
- 1 Chronicles 2:12 ιεσσαι
- 2 Chronicles 10:16 ιεσσαι
- Psalms 71:20 ιεσσαι
- Isaiah 11:1 ιεσσαι
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2421) 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.
- Ruth 4:17 ιεσσαι The women her neighbors gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they named him Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
- Ruth 4:22 ιεσσαι and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
- 1 Samuel 16:1 ιεσσαι Yahweh said to Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel? fill your horn with oil, and go: I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons.
- 1 Samuel 16:3 ιεσσαι Call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do: and you shall anoint to me him whom I name to you.
- 1 Samuel 16:5 ιεσσαι He said, Peaceably; I am come to sacrifice to Yahweh: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. He sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice.
- 1 Samuel 16:8 ιεσσαι Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, Neither has Yahweh chosen this.
- 1 Samuel 16:9 ιεσσαι Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. He said, Neither has Yahweh chosen this.
- 1 Samuel 16:10 ιεσσαι Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. Samuel said to Jesse, Yahweh has not chosen these.
- 1 Samuel 16:11 ιεσσαι Samuel said to Jesse, Are here all your children? He said, There remains yet the youngest, and, behold, he is keeping the sheep. Samuel said to Jesse, Send and get him; for we will not sit down until he come here.
- 1 Samuel 16:18 ιεσσαι Then answered one of the young men, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, and a mighty man of valor, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, and a comely person; and Yahweh is with him.
- 1 Samuel 16:19 ιεσσαι Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.
- 1 Samuel 16:20 ιεσσαι Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son to Saul.
- 1 Samuel 16:22 ιεσσαι Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Please let David stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight.
- 1 Samuel 20:27 ιεσσαι It happened on the next day after the new moon, [which was] the second [day], that David's place was empty: and Saul said to Jonathan his son, Why doesn't the son of Jesse come to meat, neither yesterday, nor today?
- 1 Samuel 20:30 ιεσσαι Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, You son of a perverse rebellious woman, don't I know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?
- 1 Samuel 20:31 ιεσσαι For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom. Therefore now send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.
- 1 Samuel 22:7 ιεσσαι Saul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, you Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds,
- 1 Samuel 22:8 ιεσσαι that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none who discloses to me when my son makes a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you who is sorry for me, or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?
- 1 Samuel 22:9 ιεσσαι Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, and said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub.
- 1 Samuel 22:13 ιεσσαι Saul said to him, Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread, and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?
- 1 Samuel 25:10 ιεσσαι Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there are many servants now-a-days who break away every man from his master.
- 2 Samuel 20:1 ιεσσαι There happened to be there a base fellow, whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: and he blew the trumpet, and said, We have no portion in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, Israel.
- 2 Samuel 23:1 ιεσσαι Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse says, The man who was raised on high says, The anointed of the God of Jacob, The sweet psalmist of Israel:
- 1 Kings 12:16 ιεσσαι When all Israel saw that the king didn't listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, Israel: now see to your own house, David. So Israel departed to their tents.
- 1 Kings 12:24 ιεσσαι Thus says Yahweh, You shall not go up, nor fight against your brothers the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is of me. So they listened to the word of Yahweh, and returned and went their way, according to the word of Yahweh.
- 1 Chronicles 2:12 ιεσσαι and Boaz became the father of Obed, and Obed became the father of Jesse;
- 1 Chronicles 2:13 ιεσσαι and Jesse became the father of his firstborn Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimea the third,
- 1 Chronicles 10:14 ιεσσαι and didn't inquire of Yahweh: therefore he killed him, and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse.
- 1 Chronicles 12:19 ιεσσαι Of Manasseh also there fell away some to David, when he came with the Philistines against Saul to battle: but they didn't help them; for the lords of the Philistines sent him away after consultation, saying, He will fall away to his master Saul to the jeopardy of our heads.
- 1 Chronicles 29:26 ιεσσαι Now David the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.
- 2 Chronicles 10:16 ιεσσαι When all Israel saw that the king didn't listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to your tents, Israel: now see to your own house, David. So all Israel departed to their tents.
- 2 Chronicles 11:18 ιεσσαι Rehoboam took him a wife, Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, [and of] Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse;
- Psalms 71:20 ιεσσαι You, who have shown us many and bitter troubles, You will let me live. You will bring us up again from the depths of the earth.
- Isaiah 11:1 ιεσσαι There shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit.
- Isaiah 11:10 ιεσσαι It shall happen in that day, that the root of Jesse, who stands for an ensign of the peoples, to him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2421) 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.
