ἀμήν
amen
‘amen’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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
- Hebrew transliteration
- A Hebrew word carried over into Greek letters (e.g. ἀμήν, ἀλληλουϊά).
Every verse where G281 appears in the Book of John — 25 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.
John
- John 1:52 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr
- John 3:3 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus answered him, "Most assuredly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can't see the Kingdom of God."
- John 3:5 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus answered, "Most assuredly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can't enter into the Kingdom of God!
- John 3:11 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, we speak that which we know, and testify of that which we have seen, and you don't receive our witness.
- John 5:19 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus therefore answered them, "Most assuredly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing. For whatever things he does, these the Son also does likewise.
- John 5:24 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr "Most assuredly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn't come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
- John 5:25 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly, I tell you, the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God's voice; and those who hear will live.
- John 6:26 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly I tell you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled.
- John 6:32 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus therefore said to them, "Most assuredly, I tell you, it wasn't Moses who gave you the bread out of heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread out of heaven.
- John 6:47 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life.
- John 6:53 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus therefore said to them, "Most assuredly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don't have life in yourselves.
- John 8:34 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin.
- John 8:51 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly, I tell you, if a person keeps my word, he will never see death."
- John 8:58 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM."
- John 10:1 Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr "Most assuredly, I tell you, one who doesn't enter by the door into the sheep fold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
- John 10:7 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus therefore said to them again, "Most assuredly, I tell you, I am the sheep's door.
- John 12:24 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
- John 13:16 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, a servant is not greater than his lord, neither one who is sent greater than he who sent him.
- John 13:20 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, he who receives whomever I send, receives me; and he who receives me, receives him who sent me."
- John 13:21 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr When Jesus had said this, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, "Most assuredly I tell you that one of you will betray me."
- John 13:38 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Jesus answered him, "Will you lay down your life for me? Most assuredly I tell you, the rooster won't crow until you have denied me three times.
- John 14:12 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these will he do; because I am going to my Father.
- John 16:20 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.
- John 16:23 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr "In that day you will ask me no questions. Most assuredly I tell you, whatever you may ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
- John 21:18 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν hebr hebr Most assuredly I tell you, when you were young, you dressed yourself, and walked where you wanted to. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you, and carry you where you don't want to go."
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.
The Greek word αμην centers on the idea of “amen.” Where the King James Version says “verily,” newer translations reach for “truly” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Greek New Testament uses it across 100 verses — moderately common. Matthew dominates its distribution — 30 of 100 verses. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. 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 G281 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 →
- 100
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 100 distinct verses.
- 17 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 17 of 27 New Testament books.
- #131
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 131 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 100 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 100 distinct verses.
- Gospels 74 verses · 74%
- Johannine 32 verses · 32%
- Pauline corpus 15 verses · 15%
- Revelation 7 verses · 7%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 6%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 3 verses · 3%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 1%
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: Verily 101×, Amen 51×
- American Standard Version: Verily 92×, Amen 31×, Truly 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Truly 100×, Amen 30×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Truly 100×, Amen 34×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G281 across 152 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G281 across 130 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G281 across 130 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G281 across 134 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.
- firm
- verily, amen
Word origin
Derived from אמן (ʼâmên) (H543) — truly.
Of hebrew origin [ H543 ]; properly firm that is (figuratively) trustworthy ; adverbially surely (often as interjection so be it ): - amen verily.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G281 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀμὴν amḕn | Hebrew transliteration | Matthew 5:18 | 97 |
| ἀμήν amḗn | Hebrew transliteration | Luke 23:43 | 26 |
| Ἀμὴν Amḕn | Hebrew transliteration | Matthew 18:18 | 2 |
| Ἀμήν Amḗn | Hebrew transliteration | Revelation 22:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G281, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αμην appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 1 Chronicles 16:36 αμην
- Ezra 15:13 αμην
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G281) 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.
- 1 Chronicles 16:36 αμην Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, From everlasting even to everlasting. All the people said, Amen, and praised Yahweh.
- Ezra 15:13 αμην
- Ezra 18:6 αμην
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G281) 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.