ἀναγκή
necessity
also: custom, argument 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).
- 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.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G318 appears in the Accusative case in the Book of Luke. 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.
Luke
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.
“necessity” is the headline sense of the Greek noun αναγκη (anánkē). First canonically at Matthew 18:7, it enters the text early. It turns up in 17 verses across 9 books, an uncommon footprint. Not a single-sense word, it carries 2 senses, among them “custom” and “argument”. From the same root come ανα, αναβαινω and αναβαλλομαι. See the sense tree, 17-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G318 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 9 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 9 of 27 New Testament books.
- #697
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 697 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 17 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Hebrews 4 verses 24%
- 1 Corinthians 3 verses 18%
- 2 Corinthians 3 verses 18%
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 17 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 9 verses · 53%
- Hebrews 4 verses · 24%
- Gospels 3 verses · 18%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 12%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 6%
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: Necessity 6×, Distress 3×, Necessities 2×
- American Standard Version: Necessity 5×, Distress 2×, Necessities 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Necessary 4×, Compulsion 2×, Distress 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Compulsion 3×, Distress 3×, Hardships 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G318 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G318 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G318 across 17 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G318 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 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.
- necessity, imposed either by the circumstances, or by law of duty regarding to one's advantage, custom, argument
- calamity, distress, straits
Word origin
Derived from ανα (aná) (G303) — among.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G318 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀνάγκη anánkē | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 18:7 | 6 |
| ἀνάγκην anánkēn | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Luke 14:18 | 6 |
| ἀνάγκαις anánkais | Noun, Dative, Plural, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 6:4 | 2 |
| ἀνάγκης anánkēs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | 2 Corinthians 9:7 | 2 |
| ἀνάγκῃ anánkē | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | 1 Thessalonians 3:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G318, 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
- αναβαινω anabaínō G305 to ascend
- αναβαλλομαι anabállomai G306 to delay
- αναβιβαζω anabibázō G307 to draw up
- αναβλεπω anablépō G308 to look up
- αναβοαω anaboáō G310 to cry out
- αναγγελλω anangéllō G312 to announce
- αναγενναω anagennáō G313 to be born again
- αναγινωσκω anaginṓskō G314 to recognize
- αναγνωριζομαι anagnōrízomai G319 to recognize
- αναγω anágō G321 to lead up
- αναδεικνυμι anadeíknymi G322 to proclaim
- αναδεχομαι anadéchomai G324 to take up
- αναδιδωμι anadídōmi G325 to give forth
- αναζαω anazáō G326 to live again
- αναζητεω anazētéō G327 to search out
- αναζωννυμι anazṓnnymi G328 to gird up
- αναζωπυρεω anazōpyréō G329 to inflame
- αναθαλλω anathállō G330 to sprout up
- αναθεωρεω anatheōréō G333 to observe
- αναιρεω anairéō G337 to take away
- ανακαθιζω anakathízō G339 to sit up
- ανακαινιζω anakainízō G340 to renew
- ανακαινοω anakainóō G341 to make new
- ανακαλυπτω anakalýptō G343 to uncover
+51 more words share this root (not shown).
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 79 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αναγκη appears 20 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 20 verses in 6 books.
- 20
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 20
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 1 Samuel 22:2 ἀνάγκη
- Job 5:19 ἀνάγκη
- Psalms 24:17 ἀνάγκη
- Proverbs 17:17 ἀνάγκη
- Jeremiah 9:14 ἀνάγκη
- Zephaniah 1:15 ἀνάγκη
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G318) 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 Samuel 22:2 ἀνάγκη Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented, gathered themselves to him; and he became captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.
- Job 5:19 ἀνάγκη He will deliver you in six troubles; Yes, in seven there shall no evil touch you.
- Job 7:11 ἀνάγκη "Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
- Job 15:24 ἀνάγκη Distress and anguish make him afraid; They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle.
- Job 18:14 ἀνάγκη He shall be rooted out of his tent where he trusts. He shall be brought to the king of terrors.
- Job 20:22 ἀνάγκη In the fullness of his sufficiency, distress shall overtake him: The hand of everyone who is in misery shall come on him.
- Job 27:9 ἀνάγκη Will God hear his cry, When trouble comes on him?
- Job 30:25 ἀνάγκη Didn't I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn't my soul grieved for the needy?
- Job 36:19 ἀνάγκη Would your wealth sustain you in distress, Or all the might of your strength?
- Psalms 24:17 ἀνάγκη
- Psalms 30:8 ἀνάγκη I cried to you, Yahweh. To Yahweh I made supplication:
- Psalms 106:6 ἀνάγκη We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly.
- Psalms 106:13 ἀνάγκη They soon forgot his works. They didn't wait for his counsel,
- Psalms 106:19 ἀνάγκη They made a calf in Horeb, And worshiped a molten image.
- Psalms 106:28 ἀνάγκη They joined themselves also to Baal Peor, And ate the sacrifices of the dead.
- Psalms 118:143 ἀνάγκη
- Proverbs 17:17 ἀνάγκη A friend loves at all times; And a brother is born for adversity.
- Jeremiah 9:14 ἀνάγκη but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them;
- Jeremiah 15:4 ἀνάγκη I will cause them to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem.
- Zephaniah 1:15 ἀνάγκη That day is a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness,
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G318) 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.
