καρδία
heart
‘heart’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Dative-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
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- 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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G2588 appears in the Book of Matthew — 15 distinct verses. 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
- Matthew 5:8 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
- Matthew 5:28 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
- Matthew 6:21 καρδία n nom sg fem for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
- Matthew 9:4 καρδίαις n dat pl fem Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts?
- Matthew 11:29 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.
- Matthew 12:34 καρδίας n gen sg fem You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
- Matthew 12:40 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
- Matthew 13:15 καρδία καρδίᾳ n nom sg fem n dat sg fem For this people's heart has grown callous, Their ears are dull of hearing, They have closed their eyes; Or else perhaps they might perceive with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their heart, And should turn again; And I would heal them.'
- Matthew 13:19 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom, and doesn't understand it, the evil one comes, and snatches away that which has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown by the roadside.
- Matthew 15:8 καρδία n nom sg fem 'These people draw near to me with their mouth, And honor me with their lips; But their heart is far from me.
- Matthew 15:18 καρδίας n gen sg fem But the things which proceed out of the mouth come out of the heart, and they defile the man.
- Matthew 15:19 καρδίας n gen sg fem For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.
- Matthew 18:35 καρδιῶν n gen pl fem So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don't each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds."
- Matthew 22:37 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
- Matthew 24:48 καρδίᾳ n dat sg fem But if that evil servant should say in his heart, 'My lord is delaying his coming,'
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, καρδια (kardía) means “heart.” Catalogued under 5 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. It turns up in 149 verses across 22 books, a common footprint. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 5:8. It shares a root with καρδιογνωστης. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2588 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 →
- 149
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 149 distinct verses.
- 22 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 22 of 27 New Testament books.
- #102
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 102 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 149 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 149 distinct verses.
- Gospels 53 verses · 36%
- Pauline corpus 51 verses · 34%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 40 verses · 27%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 13 verses · 9%
- Johannine 12 verses · 8%
- Hebrews 10 verses · 7%
- Revelation 3 verses · 2%
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: Heart 99×, Hearts 57×
- American Standard Version: Heart 95×, Hearts 45×, Of 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Hearts 80×, Heart 71×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Heart 98×, Hearts 59×, Of 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2588 across 159 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear 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 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2588 across 160 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2588 across 153 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2588 across 176 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 5 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.
- that organ in the animal body which is the centre of the circulation of the blood…
- denotes the centre of all physical and spiritual life
- the vigour and sense of physical life
- the centre and seat of spiritual life
- of the middle or central or inmost part of anything, even though inanimate
Word origin
Origin: "prolonged from a primary kar (Latin, cor, "heart")"
Prolonged from a primary κάρ kar (Latin cor heart); the heart that is (figuratively) the thoughts or feelings ( mind ); also (by analogy) the middle : - (+ broken-) heart (-ed).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G2588 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| καρδίας kardías | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 12:34 | 57 |
| καρδίᾳ kardía | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 5:8 | 35 |
| καρδίαις kardíais | Noun, Dative, Plural, Feminine | Matthew 9:4 | 21 |
| καρδία kardía | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 6:21 | 19 |
| καρδίαν kardían | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Mark 7:19 | 18 |
| καρδιῶν kardiō̂n | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Feminine | Matthew 18:35 | 4 |
| καρδίαι kardíai | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine | Luke 21:34 | 2 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2588, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word καρδια appears 746 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 680 verses in 36 books.
- 746
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 680
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 36 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 36 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 6:5 καρδία
- Exodus 4:21 καρδία
- Leviticus 26:36 καρδία
- Numbers 32:9 καρδία
- Deuteronomy 1:28 καρδία
- Joshua 2:11 καρδία
- Judges 1:15 καρδία
- Ruth 2:13 καρδία
- 1 Samuel 1:8 καρδία
- 2 Samuel 6:16 καρδία
- 1 Kings 2:4 καρδία
- 2 Kings 5:26 καρδία
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2588) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 680. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 6:5 καρδία Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
- Genesis 20:5 καρδία Didn't he tell me, 'She is my sister?' She, even she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands have I done this."
- Genesis 20:6 καρδία God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also withheld you from sinning against me. Therefore I didn't allow you to touch her.
- Genesis 42:28 καρδία He said to his brothers, "My money is restored! Behold, it is even in my sack." Their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling one to another, saying, "What is this that God has done to us?"
- Genesis 50:21 καρδία Now therefore don't be afraid. I will nourish you and your little ones." He comforted them, and spoke kindly to them.
- Exodus 4:21 καρδία Yahweh said to Moses, "When you go back into Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your hand, but I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go.
- Exodus 7:3 καρδία I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 7:13 καρδία Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he didn't listen to them; as Yahweh had spoken.
- Exodus 7:14 καρδία Yahweh said to Moses, "Pharaoh's heart is stubborn. He refuses to let the people go.
- Exodus 7:22 καρδία The magicians of Egypt did in like manner with their enchantments; and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he didn't listen to them; as Yahweh had spoken.
- Exodus 8:11 καρδία The frogs shall depart from you, and from your houses, and from your servants, and from your people. They shall remain in the river only."
- Exodus 8:15 καρδία But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart, and didn't listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken.
- Exodus 8:28 καρδία Pharaoh said, "I will let you go, that you may sacrifice to Yahweh your God in the wilderness, only you shall not go very far away. Pray for me."
- Exodus 9:7 καρδία Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not so much as one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was stubborn, and he didn't let the people go.
- Exodus 9:12 καρδία Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he didn't listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken to Moses.
- Exodus 9:14 καρδία For this time I will send all my plagues against your heart, against your officials, and against your people; that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.
- Exodus 9:34 καρδία When Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
- Exodus 9:35 καρδία The heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he didn't let the children of Israel go, just as Yahweh had spoken through Moses.
- Exodus 10:1 καρδία Yahweh said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I may show these my signs in the midst of them,
- Exodus 10:20 καρδία But Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he didn't let the children of Israel go.
- Exodus 10:27 καρδία But Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he wouldn't let them go.
- Exodus 11:10 καρδία Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he didn't let the children of Israel go out of his land.
- Exodus 14:4 καρδία I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will follow after them; and I will get honor over Pharaoh, and over all his host; and the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh." They did so.
- Exodus 14:5 καρδία It was told the king of Egypt that the people had fled; and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was changed towards the people, and they said, "What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?"
- Exodus 14:8 καρδία Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel; for the children of Israel went out with a high hand.
- Exodus 14:17 καρδία I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall go in after them: and I will get myself honor over Pharaoh, and over all his host, over his chariots, and over his horsemen.
- Exodus 25:2 καρδία "Speak to the children of Israel, that they take an offering for me. From everyone whose heart makes him willing you shall take my offering.
- Exodus 31:6 καρδία I, behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the heart of all who are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded you:
- Exodus 35:5 καρδία 'Take from among you an offering to Yahweh. Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, Yahweh's offering: gold, silver, brass,
- Exodus 35:10 καρδία "Let every wise-hearted man among you come, and make all that Yahweh has commanded:
- Exodus 35:21 καρδία They came, everyone whose heart stirred him up, and everyone whom his spirit made willing, and brought Yahweh's offering, for the work of the tent of meeting, and for all of its service, and for the holy garments.
- Exodus 36:2 καρδία Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab, and every wise-hearted man, in whose heart Yahweh had put wisdom, even everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to the work to do it:
- Leviticus 26:36 καρδία "'As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies: and the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword; and they will fall when no one pursues.
- Leviticus 26:41 καρδία I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies: if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity;
- Numbers 32:9 καρδία For when they went up to the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which Yahweh had given them.
- Deuteronomy 1:28 καρδία Where are we going up? our brothers have made our heart to melt, saying, The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to the sky; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.
- Deuteronomy 2:30 καρδία But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for Yahweh your God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into your hand, as at this day.
- Deuteronomy 4:9 καρδία Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your children and your children's children;
- Deuteronomy 4:29 καρδία But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you shall find him, when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
- Deuteronomy 5:29 καρδία Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!
- Deuteronomy 6:5 καρδία and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
- Deuteronomy 6:6 καρδία These words, which I command you this day, shall be on your heart;
- Deuteronomy 8:2 καρδία You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.
- Deuteronomy 8:5 καρδία You shall consider in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so Yahweh your God chastens you.
- Deuteronomy 8:14 καρδία then your heart be lifted up, and you forget Yahweh your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage;
- Deuteronomy 8:17 καρδία and [lest] you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.
- Deuteronomy 9:4 καρδία Don't speak in your heart, after that Yahweh your God has thrust them out from before you, saying, For my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land; whereas for the wickedness of these nations Yahweh does drive them out from before you.
- Deuteronomy 9:5 καρδία Not for your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, do you go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations Yahweh your God does drive them out from before you, and that he may establish the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
- Deuteronomy 10:12 καρδία Now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
- Deuteronomy 11:13 καρδία It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love Yahweh your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2588) 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.
