μάχη
fight
‘fight’ is one of 3 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
- Plural
- More than one.
2 distinct verses where G3163 appears in the Nominative case, across 2 books. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
2 Corinthians 1 verse
James 1 verse
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, μαχη (máchē) means “fight.” It is rare — just 4 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in 2 Corinthians (25% of all occurrences). It first appears in 2 Corinthians 7:5. Ranging over 3 senses, it is not a single-sense word. 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 G3163 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,877
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,877 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Corinthians 1 verse 25%
- 2 Timothy 1 verse 25%
- Titus 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 3 verses · 75%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 25%
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: Fightings 1×, Strifes 1×, Strivings about 1×
- American Standard Version: Fightings 1×, Strifes 1×, Were fightings 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Quarrels 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Battles 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3163 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3163 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3163 across 4 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3163 across 4 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 3 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.
- of those in arms, a battle
- of persons at variance, disputants etc., strife, contention
- a quarrel
Word origin
Derived from μαχομαι (máchomai) (G3164) — to fight.
From G3164 ; a battle that is (figuratively) controversy : - fighting strive striving.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G3163 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μάχαι máchai | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 7:5 | 2 |
| μάχας máchas | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Feminine | 2 Timothy 2:23 | 2 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3163, 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
Derived from this word
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μαχη appears 17 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 17 verses in 7 books.
- 17
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 17
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 13:7 μάχη
- Joshua 4:13 μάχη
- Judges 20:38 μάχη
- 2 Samuel 22:44 μάχη
- Job 38:23 μάχη
- Proverbs 15:18 μάχη
- Isaiah 58:4 μάχη
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3163) 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 13:7 μάχη There was a strife between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite lived then in the land.
- Genesis 13:8 μάχη Abram said to Lot, "Please, let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are relatives.
- Joshua 4:13 μάχη about forty thousand ready armed for war passed over before Yahweh to battle, to the plains of Jericho.
- Judges 20:38 μάχη Now the appointed sign between the men of Israel and the liers-in-wait was that they should make a great cloud of smoke rise up out of the city.
- 2 Samuel 22:44 μάχη You also have delivered me from the strivings of my people; You have kept me to be the head of the nations: A people whom I have not known shall serve me.
- Job 38:23 μάχη Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, Against the day of battle and war?
- Proverbs 15:18 μάχη A wrathful man stirs up contention, But one who is slow to anger appeases strife.
- Proverbs 17:1 μάχη Better is a dry morsel with quietness, Than a house full of feasting with strife.
- Proverbs 17:14 μάχη The beginning of strife is like breaching a dam, Therefore stop contention before quarreling breaks out.
- Proverbs 17:19 μάχη He who loves disobedience loves strife. One who builds a high gate seeks destruction.
- Proverbs 25:8 μάχη Don't be hasty in bringing charges to court. What will you do in the end when your neighbor shames you?
- Proverbs 25:10 μάχη Lest one who hears it put you to shame, And your bad reputation never depart.
- Proverbs 26:20 μάχη For lack of wood a fire goes out; Without gossip, a quarrel dies down.
- Proverbs 26:21 μάχη As coals are to hot embers, And wood to fire, So is a contentious man to kindling strife.
- Proverbs 30:32 μάχη "If you have done foolishly in lifting up yourself, Or if you have thought evil, Put your hand over your mouth.
- Proverbs 30:33 μάχη For as the churning of milk brings forth butter, And the wringing of the nose brings forth blood; So the forcing of wrath brings forth strife."
- Isaiah 58:4 μάχη Behold, you fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness: you don't fast this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3163) 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.
