μήτρα
womb
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.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine 1 time (50%)
- Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 1 time (50%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 2 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3388 appears — 2 distinct verses across 2 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.
Luke 1 verse
Romans 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.
μητρα (mḗtra) is a Greek noun most often rendered “womb.” It occurs a mere 2 verses across Scripture. It clusters heavily in Luke, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Luke 2:23. It clusters with μητηρ, μητραλωας and μητροπολις under a shared root. 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 G3388 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,678
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,678 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
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 2 distinct verses.
- Gospels 1 verse · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 50%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 50%
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: Womb 2×
- American Standard Version: Of 1×, Womb 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Womb 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Womb 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3388 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3388 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3388 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3388 across 2 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.
- the womb
Word origin
Derived from μητηρ (mḗtēr) (G3384) — mother.
From G3384 ; the matrix : - womb.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G3388 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μήτραν mḗtran | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine | Luke 2:23 | 1 |
| μήτρας mḗtras | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | Romans 4:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3388, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μητρα appears 28 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 26 verses in 11 books.
- 28
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 26
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 20:18 μήτρα
- Exodus 13:2 μήτρα
- Numbers 3:12 μήτρα
- 1 Samuel 1:5 μήτρα
- 1 Kings 3:26 μήτρα
- Job 3:16 μήτρα
- Psalms 21:11 μήτρα
- Jeremiah 1:5 μήτρα
- Ezekiel 20:26 μήτρα
- Hosea 9:14 μήτρα
- Amos 1:11 μήτρα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3388) 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 20:18 μήτρα For Yahweh had closed up tight all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
- Genesis 29:31 μήτρα Yahweh saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
- Genesis 30:22 μήτρα God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and opened her womb.
- Genesis 49:25 μήτρα Even by the God of your father, who will help you, By the Almighty, who will bless you, With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that lies below, Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb.
- Exodus 13:2 μήτρα "Sanctify to me all of the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of animal. It is mine."
- Exodus 13:12 μήτρα that you shall set apart to Yahweh all that opens the womb, and every firstborn which you have that comes from an animal. The males shall be Yahweh's.
- Exodus 13:13 μήτρα Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb; and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck; and you shall redeem all the firstborn of man among your sons.
- Exodus 13:15 μήτρα and it happened, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that Yahweh killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of animal. Therefore I sacrifice to Yahweh all that opens the womb, being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.'
- Exodus 34:19 μήτρα All that opens the womb is mine; and all your cattle that is male, the firstborn of cow and sheep.
- Numbers 3:12 μήτρα "Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn who open the womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites shall be mine:
- Numbers 8:16 μήτρα For they are wholly given to me from among the children of Israel; instead of all who open the womb, even the firstborn of all the children of Israel, I have taken them to me.
- Numbers 12:12 μήτρα 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.
- Numbers 18:15 μήτρα Everything that opens the womb, of all flesh which they offer to Yahweh, both of man and animal shall be yours: nevertheless the firstborn of man shall you surely redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals shall you redeem.
- Numbers 25:8 μήτρα and he went after the man of Israel into the pavilion, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel.
- 1 Samuel 1:5 μήτρα but to Hannah he gave a double portion; for he loved Hannah, but Yahweh had shut up her womb.
- 1 Samuel 1:6 μήτρα Her rival provoked her sore, to make her fret, because Yahweh had shut up her womb.
- 1 Kings 3:26 μήτρα Then spoke the woman whose the living child was to the king, for her heart yearned over her son, and she said, Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and in no way kill it. But the other said, It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it.
- Job 3:16 μήτρα Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants who never saw light.
- Psalms 21:11 μήτρα For they intended evil against you. They plotted evil against you which cannot succeed.
- Psalms 57:4 μήτρα My soul is among lions. I lie among those who are set on fire, Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, And their tongue a sharp sword.
- Jeremiah 1:5 μήτρα Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.
- Jeremiah 20:17 μήτρα because he didn't kill me from the womb; and so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb always great.
- Jeremiah 20:18 μήτρα Why came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?
- Ezekiel 20:26 μήτρα and I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through [the fire] all that opens the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am Yahweh.
- Hosea 9:14 μήτρα Give them--Yahweh what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.
- Amos 1:11 μήτρα Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of Edom, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because he pursued his brother with the sword, And cast off all pity, And his anger raged continually, And he kept his wrath forever;
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3388) 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.
