μήτηρ
mother
‘mother’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
9 verses where G3384 appears in the Nominative 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
- Luke 1:43 μήτηρ n nom sg fem Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
- Luke 1:60 μήτηρ n nom sg fem His mother answered, "Not so; but he will be called John."
- Luke 2:33 μήτηρ n nom sg fem Joseph and his mother were marveling at the things which were spoken concerning him,
- Luke 2:48 μήτηρ n nom sg fem When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you."
- Luke 2:51 μήτηρ n nom sg fem And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
- Luke 8:19 μήτηρ n nom sg fem His mother and brothers came to him, and they could not come near him for the crowd.
- Luke 8:20 μήτηρ n nom sg fem It was told him by some saying, "Your mother and your brothers stand outside, desiring to see you."
- Luke 8:21 μήτηρ n nom sg fem But he answered them, "My mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God, and do it."
- Luke 12:53 μήτηρ μητέρα n nom sg fem n acc sg fem They will be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
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.
“mother” is the headline sense of the Greek noun μητηρ (mḗtēr). First canonically at Matthew 1:18, it enters the text early. The Greek New Testament uses it across 77 verses — moderately common. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Matthew. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3384 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 →
- 77
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 77 distinct verses.
- 11 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 11 of 27 New Testament books.
- #204
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 204 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 77 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 77 distinct verses.
- Gospels 65 verses · 84%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 20 verses · 26%
- Johannine 10 verses · 13%
- Pauline corpus 7 verses · 9%
- Revelation 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: Mother 76×, Mother's 7×, Mothers 2×
- American Standard Version: Mother 81×, Mothers 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mother 74×, Mother’s 4×, Mothers 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mother 79×, Of 6×, To 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3384 across 85 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3384 across 85 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 G3384 across 80 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3384 across 93 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.
- a mother
- metaph. the source of something, the motherland
Word origin
Origin: apparently a primary word
Apparently a primary word; a mother (literally or figuratively immediate or remote): - mother.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G3384 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μήτηρ mḗtēr | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 12:46 | 32 |
| μητέρα mētéra | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 2:13 | 27 |
| μητρὸς mētròs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 1:18 | 11 |
| μητρὶ mētrì | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 14:11 | 6 |
| μητρί mētrí | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 15:5 | 5 |
| μητέρας mētéras | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Feminine | Mark 10:30 | 2 |
| μητρός mētrós | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Galatians 1:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3384, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μητηρ appears 229 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 209 verses in 26 books.
- 229
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 209
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 26 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 26 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 2:24 μήτηρ
- Exodus 2:3 μήτηρ
- Leviticus 18:7 μήτηρ
- Numbers 6:7 μήτηρ
- Deuteronomy 5:16 μήτηρ
- Joshua 2:13 μήτηρ
- Judges 5:7 μήτηρ
- Ruth 1:8 μήτηρ
- 1 Samuel 1:25 μήτηρ
- 2 Samuel 17:25 μήτηρ
- 1 Kings 1:11 μήτηρ
- 2 Kings 1:18 μήτηρ
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3384) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 209. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 2:24 μήτηρ Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.
- Genesis 3:20 μήτηρ The man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
- Genesis 20:12 μήτηρ Moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.
- Genesis 21:21 μήτηρ He lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother took a wife for him out of the land of Egypt.
- Genesis 24:28 μήτηρ The young lady ran, and told her mother's house about these words.
- Genesis 24:53 μήτηρ The servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and clothing, and gave them to Rebekah. He gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.
- Genesis 24:55 μήτηρ Her brother and her mother said, "Let the young lady stay with us a few days, at least ten. After that she will go."
- Genesis 24:67 μήτηρ Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife. He loved her. Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.
- Genesis 27:11 μήτηρ Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, "Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
- Genesis 27:13 μήτηρ His mother said to him, "Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice, and go get them for me."
- Genesis 27:14 μήτηρ He went, and got them, and brought them to his mother. His mother made savory food, such as his father loved.
- Genesis 28:2 μήτηρ Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.
- Genesis 28:5 μήτηρ Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, Rebekah's brother, Jacob's and Esau's mother.
- Genesis 28:7 μήτηρ and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan Aram.
- Genesis 29:1 μήτηρ Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the children of the east.
- Genesis 29:10 μήτηρ It happened, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban, his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother.
- Genesis 30:14 μήτηρ Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me some of your son's mandrakes."
- Genesis 32:12 μήτηρ You said, 'I will surely do you good, and make your seed as the sand of the sea, which can't be numbered because there are so many.'"
- Genesis 37:10 μήτηρ He told it to his father and to his brothers. His father rebuked him, and said to him, "What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to you to the earth?"
- Genesis 44:20 μήτηρ We said to my lord, 'We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother; and his father loves him.'
- Genesis 48:7 μήτηρ As for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when there was still some distance to come to Ephrath, and I buried her there in the way to Ephrath (the same is Bethlehem)."
- Genesis 49:26 μήτηρ The blessings of your father Have prevailed above the blessings of the ancient mountains, Above the bounty of the age-old hills. They will be on the head of Joseph, On the crown of the head of him who is separated from his brothers.
- Exodus 2:3 μήτηρ When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch. She put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank.
- Exodus 2:8 μήτηρ Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." The maiden went and called the child's mother.
- Exodus 20:12 μήτηρ "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.
- Exodus 21:15 μήτηρ "Anyone who attacks his father or his mother shall be surely put to death.
- Exodus 21:16 μήτηρ "Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
- Exodus 22:29 μήτηρ "You shall not delay to offer from your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. "You shall give the firstborn of your sons to me.
- Exodus 23:19 μήτηρ The first of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of Yahweh your God. "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
- Exodus 34:26 μήτηρ You shall bring the first of the first fruits of your ground to the house of Yahweh your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."
- Leviticus 18:7 μήτηρ "'You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, nor the nakedness of your mother: she is your mother. You shall not uncover her nakedness.
- Leviticus 18:9 μήτηρ "'You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father, or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home, or born abroad.
- Leviticus 18:13 μήτηρ "'You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister: for she is your mother's near kinswoman.
- Leviticus 19:3 μήτηρ "'Each one of you shall respect his mother and his father. You shall keep my Sabbaths. I am Yahweh your God.
- Leviticus 20:9 μήτηρ "'For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death: he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.
- Leviticus 20:14 μήτηρ "'If a man takes a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burned with fire, both he and they; that there may be no wickedness among you.
- Leviticus 20:17 μήτηρ "'If a man takes his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness; it is a shameful thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people: he has uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity.
- Leviticus 20:19 μήτηρ "'You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, nor of your father's sister; for he has made naked his close relative: they shall bear their iniquity.
- Leviticus 21:2 μήτηρ except for his relatives that are near to him: for his mother, for his father, for his son, for his daughter, for his brother,
- Leviticus 21:11 μήτηρ neither shall he go in to any dead body, nor defile himself for his father, or for his mother;
- Leviticus 22:27 μήτηρ "When a bull, or a sheep, or a goat, is born, then it shall remain seven days with its mother; and from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be accepted for the offering of an offering made by fire to Yahweh.
- Leviticus 24:11 μήτηρ The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name, and cursed; and they brought him to Moses. His mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.
- Numbers 6:7 μήτηρ He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die; because his separation to God is on his head.
- Numbers 12:12 μήτηρ Let her not, I pray, be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother's womb.
- Deuteronomy 5:16 μήτηρ "Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God commanded you; that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you, in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.
- Deuteronomy 13:7 μήτηρ of the gods of the peoples who are round about you, near to you, or far off from you, from the one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth;
- Deuteronomy 14:21 μήτηρ You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself: you may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner: for you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
- Deuteronomy 21:13 μήτηρ and she shall put the clothing of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that you shall go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
- Deuteronomy 21:18 μήτηρ If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not listen to them;
- Deuteronomy 21:19 μήτηρ then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place;
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3384) 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.
