ἀνάθεμα
accursed thing
‘accursed thing’ 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G331 appears in the Book of Galatians — 2 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.
Galatians
- Galatians 1:8 ἀνάθεμα n nom sg neut But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any gospel other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.
- Galatians 1:9 ἀνάθεμα n nom sg neut As we have said before, so I now say again: if any man preaches to you any gospel other than that which you received, let him be cursed.
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.
αναθεμα (anáthema) is a Greek noun most often rendered “accursed thing.” Debuting at Luke 21:5, it then recurs through the corpus. With 7 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It concentrates in 1 Corinthians, which alone accounts for 29% of its uses. Its lexical range runs to 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 G331 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,358
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,358 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Corinthians 2 verses 29%
- Galatians 2 verses 29%
- Luke 1 verse 14%
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 7 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 5 verses · 71%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 29%
- Gospels 1 verse · 14%
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: Accursed 4×
- American Standard Version: Anathema 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Under a curse 3×, Cursed 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Accursed 2×, Cursed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G331 across 6 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G331 across 6 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G331 across 6 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 G331 across 6 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 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.
- a thing set up or laid by in order to be kept
- a thing devoted to God without hope of being redeemed…
Word origin
Derived from ανατιθεμαι (anatíthemai) (G394) — to set forth.
From G394 ; a (religious) ban or (concretely) excommunicated (thing or person): - accursed anathema curse X great.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G331 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀνάθεμα anáthema | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter | Romans 9:3 | 5 |
| ἀναθέμασιν anathémasin | Noun, Dative, Plural, Neuter | Luke 21:5 | 1 |
| ἀναθέματι anathémati | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Acts 23:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G331, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αναθεμα appears 23 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 16 verses in 7 books.
- 23
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 16
- 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
- Leviticus 27:28 ἀνάθεμα
- Numbers 21:3 ἀνάθεμα
- Deuteronomy 7:26 ἀνάθεμα
- Joshua 6:17 ἀνάθεμα
- Judges 1:17 ἀνάθεμα
- 1 Chronicles 2:7 ἀνάθεμα
- Zechariah 14:11 ἀνάθεμα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G331) 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.
- Leviticus 27:28 ἀνάθεμα "'Notwithstanding, no devoted thing, that a man shall devote to Yahweh of all that he has, whether of man or animal, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy to Yahweh.
- Numbers 21:3 ἀνάθεμα Yahweh listened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and the name of the place was called Hormah.
- Deuteronomy 7:26 ἀνάθεμα You shall not bring an abomination into your house, and become a devoted thing like it: you shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it; for it is a devoted thing.
- Deuteronomy 13:16 ἀνάθεμα You shall gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street of it, and shall burn with fire the city, and all the spoil of it every whit, to Yahweh your God: and it shall be a heap forever; it shall not be built again.
- Deuteronomy 13:18 ἀνάθεμα when you shall listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep all his commandments which I command you this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of Yahweh your God.
- Deuteronomy 20:17 ἀνάθεμα but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as Yahweh your God has commanded you;
- Joshua 6:17 ἀνάθεμα The city shall be devoted, even it and all that is therein, to Yahweh: only Rahab the prostitute shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.
- Joshua 6:18 ἀνάθεμα But as for you, only keep yourselves from the devoted thing, lest when you have devoted it, you take of the devoted thing; so would you make the camp of Israel accursed, and trouble it.
- Joshua 7:1 ἀνάθεμα But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted thing; for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the devoted thing: and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the children of Israel.
- Joshua 7:11 ἀνάθεμα Israel has sinned; yes, they have even transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: yes, they have even taken of the devoted thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also; and they have even put it among their own stuff.
- Joshua 7:12 ἀνάθεμα Therefore the children of Israel can't stand before their enemies; they turn their backs before their enemies, because they are become accursed: I will not be with you any more, except you destroy the devoted thing from among you.
- Joshua 7:13 ἀνάθεμα Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, There is a devoted thing in the midst of you, Israel; you can not stand before your enemies, until you take away the devoted thing from among you.
- Joshua 22:20 ἀνάθεμα Didn't Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the devoted thing, and wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel? and that man didn't perish alone in his iniquity.
- Judges 1:17 ἀνάθεμα Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they struck the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. The name of the city was called Hormah.
- 1 Chronicles 2:7 ἀνάθεμα The sons of Carmi: Achar, the troubler of Israel, who committed a trespass in the devoted thing.
- Zechariah 14:11 ἀνάθεμα Men will dwell therein, and there will be no more curse; but Jerusalem will dwell safely.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G331) 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.
