ἱλαστήριον
propitiatory
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G2435 appears in the Book of Hebrews — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Hebrews
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.
ιλαστηριον (hilastḗrion) is a Greek noun most often rendered “propitiatory.” It is rare — just 2 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. It clusters heavily in Romans, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Romans 3:25. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2435 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,678
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,678 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
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 2 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 50%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 50%
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: Be a propitiation 1×, Mercyseat 1×
- American Standard Version: Be a propitiation 1×, Mercy-seat 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Atoning sacrifice 1×, Mercy seat 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Atonement lid 1×, Propitiation 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2435 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2435 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2435 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2435 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- relating to an appeasing or expiating…
Word origin
Derived from ιλασκομαι (hiláskomai) (G2433) — to propitiate.
Neuter of a derivative of G2433 ; an expiatory (place or thing) that is (concretely) an atoning victim or (specifically) the lid of the Ark (in the temple): - mercyseat propitiation.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ιλαστηριον appears 27 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 20 verses in 5 books.
- 27
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 20
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 25:17 ἱλαστήριον
- Leviticus 16:2 ἱλαστήριον
- Numbers 7:89 ἱλαστήριον
- Ezekiel 43:14 ἱλαστήριον
- Amos 9:1 ἱλαστήριον
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2435) 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 25:17 ἱλαστήριον You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two and a half cubits shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth.
- Exodus 25:18 ἱλαστήριον You shall make two cherubim of hammered gold. You shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat.
- Exodus 25:19 ἱλαστήριον Make one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other end. You shall make the cherubim on its two ends of one piece with the mercy seat.
- Exodus 25:20 ἱλαστήριον The cherubim shall spread out their wings upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings, with their faces toward one another. The faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat.
- Exodus 25:21 ἱλαστήριον You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I will give you.
- Exodus 25:22 ἱλαστήριον There I will meet with you, and I will tell you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the testimony, all that I command you for the children of Israel.
- Exodus 31:7 ἱλαστήριον the tent of meeting, the ark of the testimony, the mercy seat that is on it, all the furniture of the Tent,
- Exodus 35:12 ἱλαστήριον the ark, and its poles, the mercy seat, the veil of the screen;
- Exodus 38:5 ἱλαστήριον He cast four rings for the four ends of brass grating, to be places for the poles.
- Exodus 38:7 ἱλαστήριον He put the poles into the rings on the sides of the altar, with which to carry it. He made it hollow with planks.
- Exodus 38:8 ἱλαστήριον He made the basin of brass, and its base of brass, out of the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered at the door of the tent of meeting.
- Leviticus 16:2 ἱλαστήριον and Yahweh said to Moses, "Tell Aaron your brother, not to come at all times into the Most Holy Place within the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark; lest he die: for I will appear in the cloud on the mercy seat.
- Leviticus 16:13 ἱλαστήριον and he shall put the incense on the fire before Yahweh, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the testimony, so that he will not die.
- Leviticus 16:14 ἱλαστήριον He shall take some of the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.
- Leviticus 16:15 ἱλαστήριον "Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat:
- Numbers 7:89 ἱλαστήριον When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Yahweh, he heard his voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim: and he spoke to him.
- Ezekiel 43:14 ἱλαστήριον From the bottom on the ground to the lower ledge shall be two cubits, and the breadth one cubit; and from the lesser ledge to the greater ledge shall be four cubits, and the breadth a cubit.
- Ezekiel 43:17 ἱλαστήριον The ledge shall be fourteen [cubits] long by fourteen broad in the four sides of it; and the border about it shall be half a cubit; and the bottom of it shall be a cubit round about; and the steps of it shall look toward the east.
- Ezekiel 43:20 ἱλαστήριον You shall take of the blood of it, and put it on the four horns of it, and on the four corners of the ledge, and on the border round about: thus shall you cleanse it and make atonement for it.
- Amos 9:1 ἱλαστήριον I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, "Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will kill the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2435) 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.
