κλείς
key
‘key’ 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 Accusative-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
- 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 G2807 appears in the Book of Revelation — 4 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.
Revelation
- Revelation 1:18 κλεῖς n acc pl fem and the Living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
- Revelation 3:7 κλεῖν n acc sg fem "To the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: "He who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says these things:
- Revelation 9:1 κλεὶς n nom sg fem The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from the sky which had fallen to the earth. The key to the pit of the abyss was given to him.
- Revelation 20:1 κλεῖν n acc sg fem I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.
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.
κλεις (kleís) is a Greek noun most often rendered “key.” Revelation dominates its distribution — 4 of 6 verses. The Greek New Testament uses it across 6 verses — uncommon. It first appears in Matthew 16:19. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2807 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,476
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,476 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 4 verses 67%
- Matthew 1 verse 17%
- Luke 1 verse 17%
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 6 distinct verses.
- Johannine 4 verses · 67%
- Revelation 4 verses · 67%
- Gospels 2 verses · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 17%
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: Key 4×, Keys 2×
- American Standard Version: Key 4×, Keys 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Key 4×, Keys 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Key 4×, Keys 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2807 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2807 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2807 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2807 across 6 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.
- since the keeper of the keys has the power to open and to shut
- metaph. in the NT to denote power and authority of various kinds
Word origin
Derived from κλειω (kleíō) (G2808) — to shut.
From G2808 ; a key (as shutting a lock) literally or figuratively : - key.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G2807 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| κλεῖν kleîn | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Revelation 3:7 | 2 |
| κλεὶς kleìs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Revelation 9:1 | 1 |
| κλεῖδα kleîda | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Luke 11:52 | 1 |
| κλεῖδας kleîdas | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Feminine | Matthew 16:19 | 1 |
| κλεῖς kleîs | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Feminine | Revelation 1:18 | 1 |
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word κλεις appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 3 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- 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
- Judges 3:25 κλείς
- 1 Chronicles 9:27 κλείς
- Job 31:22 κλείς
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G2807) 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.
- Judges 3:25 κλείς They waited until they were ashamed; and, behold, he didn't open the doors of the upper room: therefore they took the key, and opened [them], and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth.
- 1 Chronicles 9:27 κλείς They lodged round about the house of God, because the charge [of it] was on them; and to them pertained the opening of it morning by morning.
- Job 31:22 κλείς Then let my shoulder fall from the shoulder-blade, And my arm be broken from the bone.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G2807) 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.
