ἄμμος
sand
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Nominative-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
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine 3 times (60%)
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine 2 times (40%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G285 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 1 verse
Romans 1 verse
Hebrews 1 verse
Revelation 2 verses
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 noun αμμος centers on the idea of “sand.” A scarce word — 5 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. Revelation dominates its distribution — 2 of 5 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 7:26. Sharing its root, it stands alongside αμα, αμαω and ημισυ. 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 G285 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 →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 2 verses 40%
- Matthew 1 verse 20%
- Romans 1 verse 20%
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.
- Johannine 2 verses · 40%
- Revelation 2 verses · 40%
- Gospels 1 verse · 20%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 20%
- Hebrews 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: Sand 5×
- American Standard Version: Sand 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sand 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sand 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G285 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G285 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G285 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G285 across 5 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.
- sand, sandy ground
Word origin
Derived from αμα (háma) (G260) — together.
Perhaps from G260 ; sand (as heaped on the beach): - sand.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G285 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἄμμος ámmos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Romans 9:27 | 3 |
| ἄμμον ámmon | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 7:26 | 2 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G285, 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
- αμαω amáō G270 to reap
- ημισυ hḗmisy G2255 half
- ιμας himás G2438 leather strap
- ομου homoû G3674 together
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αμμος appears 26 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 25 verses in 15 books.
- 26
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 25
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 15 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 15 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 13:16 ἄμμος
- Exodus 2:12 ἄμμος
- Joshua 11:4 ἄμμος
- Judges 7:12 ἄμμος
- 1 Samuel 13:5 ἄμμος
- 2 Samuel 17:11 ἄμμος
- 1 Kings 2:35 ἄμμος
- Job 6:3 ἄμμος
- Psalms 77:27 ἄμμος
- Proverbs 27:3 ἄμμος
- Isaiah 10:22 ἄμμος
- Jeremiah 5:22 ἄμμος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G285) 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.
- Genesis 13:16 ἄμμος I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then your seed may also be numbered.
- Genesis 22:17 ἄμμος that in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore. Your seed will possess the gate of his enemies.
- Genesis 28:14 ἄμμος Your seed will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed.
- Genesis 32:13 ἄμμος He lodged there that night, and took from that which he had with him, a present for Esau, his brother:
- Genesis 41:49 ἄμμος Joseph laid up grain as the sand of the sea, very much, until he stopped counting, for it was without number.
- Exodus 2:12 ἄμμος He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no one, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
- Joshua 11:4 ἄμμος They went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.
- Judges 7:12 ἄμμος The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley like locusts for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand which is on the sea-shore for multitude.
- 1 Samuel 13:5 ἄμμος The Philistines assembled themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude: and they came up, and encamped in Michmash, eastward of Beth Aven.
- 2 Samuel 17:11 ἄμμος But I counsel that all Israel be gathered together to you, from Dan even to Beersheba, as the sand that is by the sea for multitude; and that you go to battle in your own person.
- 1 Kings 2:35 ἄμμος The king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada in his room over the host; and Zadok the priest did the king put in the room of Abiathar.
- 1 Kings 2:46 ἄμμος So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he went out, and fell on him, so that he died. The kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon.
- 1 Kings 5:9 ἄμμος My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon to the sea; and I will make them into rafts to go by sea to the place that you shall appoint me, and will cause them to be broken up there, and you shall receive them; and you shall accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household.
- Job 6:3 ἄμμος For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas, Therefore have my words been rash.
- Psalms 77:27 ἄμμος
- Psalms 138:18 ἄμμος
- Proverbs 27:3 ἄμμος A stone is heavy, And sand is a burden; But a fool's provocation is heavier than both.
- Isaiah 10:22 ἄμμος For though your people, Israel, be as the sand of the sea, [only] a remnant of them shall return: a destruction [is] determined, overflowing with righteousness.
- Isaiah 48:19 ἄμμος your seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of your loins like the grains of it: his name would not be cut off nor destroyed from before me.
- Jeremiah 5:22 ἄμμος Don't you fear me? says Yahweh: won't you tremble at my presence, who have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it can't pass it? and though the waves of it toss themselves, yet they can't prevail; though they roar, yet they can't pass over it.
- Jeremiah 15:8 ἄμμος Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas; I have brought on them against the mother of the young men a destroyer at noonday: I have caused anguish and terrors to fall on her suddenly.
- Jeremiah 26:22 ἄμμος and Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, [namely], Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him, into Egypt;
- Daniel 3:36 ἄμμος
- Hosea 2:1 ἄμμος "Say to your brothers, 'My people!' And to your sisters, 'My loved one!'
- Habakkuk 1:9 ἄμμος All of them come for violence. Their hordes face the desert. He gathers prisoners like sand.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G285) 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.
