ναός
sanctuary
‘sanctuary’ 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.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- 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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 13 times (29%)
- Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine 12 times (27%)
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 10 times (22%)
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine 8 times (18%)
- Noun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (2%)
- Noun, Dative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (2%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 45 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G3485 appears — 39 distinct verses across 10 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.
Matthew 8 verses
- Matthew 23:16 ναῷ ναοῦ n dat sg masc n gen sg masc "Woe to you, you blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.'
- Matthew 23:17 ναὸς n nom sg masc You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold?
- Matthew 23:21 ναῷ n dat sg masc He who swears by the temple, swears by it, and by him who was living in it.
- Matthew 23:35 ναοῦ n gen sg masc that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar.
- Matthew 26:61 ναὸν n acc sg masc and said, "This man said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.'"
- Matthew 27:5 ναὸν n acc sg masc He threw down the pieces of silver in the sanctuary, and departed. He went away and hanged himself.
- Matthew 27:40 ναὸν n acc sg masc and saying, "You who destroy the temple, and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!"
- Matthew 27:51 ναοῦ n gen sg masc Behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom. The earth quaked and the rocks were split.
Mark 3 verses
- Mark 14:58 ναὸν n acc sg masc "We heard him say, 'I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.'"
- Mark 15:29 ναὸν n acc sg masc Those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Ha! You who destroy the temple, and build it in three days,
- Mark 15:38 ναοῦ n gen sg masc The veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom.
Luke 4 verses
- Luke 1:9 ναὸν n acc sg masc according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to enter into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.
- Luke 1:21 ναῷ n dat sg masc The people were waiting for Zacharias, and they marveled that he delayed in the temple.
- Luke 1:22 ναῷ n dat sg masc When he came out, he could not speak to them, and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple. He continued making signs to them, and remained mute.
- Luke 23:45 ναοῦ n gen sg masc The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.
John 3 verses
- John 2:19 ναὸν n acc sg masc Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
- John 2:20 ναὸς n nom sg masc The Jews therefore said, "Forty-six years was this temple in building, and will you raise it up in three days?"
- John 2:21 ναοῦ n gen sg masc But he spoke of the temple of his body.
Acts 2 verses
- Acts 17:24 ναοῖς n dat pl masc The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands,
- Acts 19:24 ναοὺς n acc pl masc For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen,
1 Corinthians 3 verses
- 1 Corinthians 3:16 ναὸς n nom sg masc Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?
- 1 Corinthians 3:17 ναὸν ναὸς n acc sg masc n nom sg masc If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him; for God's temple is holy, which you are.
- 1 Corinthians 6:19 ναὸς n nom sg masc Or don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God? You are not your own,
2 Corinthians 1 verse
Ephesians 1 verse
2 Thessalonians 1 verse
Revelation 13 verses
- Revelation 3:12 ναῷ n dat sg masc He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will go out from there no more. I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name.
- Revelation 7:15 ναῷ n dat sg masc Therefore they are before the throne of God, they serve him day and night in his temple. He who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.
- Revelation 11:1 ναὸν n acc sg masc A reed like a rod was given to me. Someone said, "Rise, and measure God's temple, and the altar, and those who worship in it.
- Revelation 11:2 ναοῦ n gen sg masc Leave out the court which is outside of the temple, and don't measure it, for it has been given to the gentiles. They will tread the holy city under foot for forty-two months.
- Revelation 11:19 ναὸς ναῷ n nom sg masc n dat sg masc God's temple that is in heaven was opened, and the ark of the Lord's covenant was seen in his temple. Lightnings, sounds, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail followed.
- Revelation 14:15 ναοῦ n gen sg masc Another angel came out from the temple, crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, "Send forth your sickle, and reap; for the hour to reap has come; for the harvest of the earth is ripe!"
- Revelation 14:17 ναοῦ n gen sg masc Another angel came out from the temple which is in heaven. He also had a sharp sickle.
- Revelation 15:5 ναὸς n nom sg masc After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.
- Revelation 15:6 ναοῦ n gen sg masc The seven angels who had the seven plagues came out, clothed with pure, bright linen, and wearing golden sashes around their breasts.
- Revelation 15:8 ναὸς ναὸν n nom sg masc n acc sg masc The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power. No one was able to enter into the temple, until the seven plagues of the seven angels would be finished.
- Revelation 16:1 ναοῦ n gen sg masc I heard a loud voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God on the earth!"
- Revelation 16:17 ναοῦ n gen sg masc The seventh poured out his bowl into the air. A loud voice came forth out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, "It is done!"
- Revelation 21:22 ναὸν ναὸς n acc sg masc n nom sg masc I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple.
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.
“sanctuary” is the headline sense of the Greek noun ναος (naós). Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 23:16. It turns up in 39 verses across 10 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Revelation, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. See the sense tree, 39-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3485 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 10 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
- #337
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 337 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 39 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 13 verses 33%
- Matthew 8 verses 21%
- Luke 4 verses 10%
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 39 distinct verses.
- Gospels 18 verses · 46%
- Johannine 16 verses · 41%
- Revelation 13 verses · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 15%
- Pauline corpus 6 verses · 15%
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: Temple 42×, Temples 2×
- American Standard Version: Temple 39×, Sanctuary 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Temple 42×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Temple 43×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3485 across 46 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 G3485 across 46 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3485 across 45 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 G3485 across 46 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.
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.
- used of the temple at Jerusalem…
- any heathen temple or shrine
- metaph. the spiritual temple consisting of the saints of all ages joined together by and in Christ
Word origin
Origin: from a primary naio (to dwell)
From a primary word ναίω naiō (to dwell ); a fane shrine temple : - shrine temple. Compare G2411 .
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G3485 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ναὸν naòn | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 26:61 | 13 |
| ναοῦ naoû | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 23:16 | 12 |
| ναὸς naòs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 23:17 | 10 |
| ναῷ naō̂ | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 23:16 | 8 |
| ναοὺς naoùs | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 19:24 | 1 |
| ναοῖς naoîs | Noun, Dative, Plural, Masculine | Acts 17:24 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3485, 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 ναος appears 66 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 63 verses in 19 books.
- 66
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 63
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 19 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 19 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 1 Samuel 1:9 ναός
- 2 Samuel 22:7 ναός
- 1 Kings 6:3 ναός
- 2 Kings 18:16 ναός
- 1 Chronicles 28:11 ναός
- 2 Chronicles 3:17 ναός
- Ezra 5:14 ναός
- Psalms 5:8 ναός
- Isaiah 66:6 ναός
- Jeremiah 7:4 ναός
- Ezekiel 8:16 ναός
- Daniel 3:53 ναός
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3485) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 63. 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 1:9 ναός So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his seat by the door-post of the temple of Yahweh.
- 1 Samuel 3:3 ναός and the lamp of God hadn't yet gone out, and Samuel had laid down [to sleep], in the temple of Yahweh, where the ark of God was;
- 2 Samuel 22:7 ναός In my distress I called on Yahweh; Yes, I called to my God: He heard my voice out of his temple, My cry [came] into his ears.
- 1 Kings 6:3 ναός The porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length of it, according to the breadth of the house; [and] ten cubits was the breadth of it before the house.
- 1 Kings 6:5 ναός Against the wall of the house he built stories round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle; and he made side-chambers round about.
- 1 Kings 6:17 ναός The house, that is, the temple before [the oracle], was forty cubits [long].
- 1 Kings 6:33 ναός So also made he for the entrance of the temple door-posts of olive-wood, out of a fourth part [of the wall];
- 1 Kings 6:36 ναός He built the inner court with three courses of hewn stone, and a course of cedar beams.
- 1 Kings 7:7 ναός He made the porch of the throne where he was to judge, even the porch of judgment: and it was covered with cedar from floor to floor.
- 1 Kings 7:36 ναός On the plates of the stays of it, and on the panels of it, he engraved cherubim, lions, and palm trees, according to the space of each, with wreaths round about.
- 2 Kings 18:16 ναός At that time did Hezekiah cut off [the gold from] the doors of the temple of Yahweh, and [from] the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
- 2 Kings 23:4 ναός The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring forth out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of the sky, and he burned them outside of Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried the ashes of them to Bethel.
- 2 Kings 24:13 ναός He carried out there all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold, which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of Yahweh, as Yahweh had said.
- 1 Chronicles 28:11 ναός Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch [of the temple], and of the houses of it, and of the treasuries of it, and of the upper rooms of it, and of the inner chambers of it, and of the place of the mercy seat;
- 2 Chronicles 3:17 ναός He set up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand, and the other on the left; and called the name of that on the right hand Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz.
- 2 Chronicles 4:7 ναός He made the ten lampstands of gold according to the ordinance concerning them; and he set them in the temple, five on the right hand, and five on the left.
- 2 Chronicles 4:8 ναός He made also ten tables, and placed them in the temple, five on the right side, and five on the left. He made one hundred basins of gold.
- 2 Chronicles 4:22 ναός and the snuffers, and the basins, and the spoons, and the fire pans, of pure gold: and as for the entry of the house, the inner doors of it for the most holy place, and the doors of the house, [to wit], of the temple, were of gold.
- 2 Chronicles 8:12 ναός Then Solomon offered burnt-offerings to Yahweh on the altar of Yahweh, which he had built before the porch,
- 2 Chronicles 15:8 ναός When Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominations out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from the hill-country of Ephraim; and he renewed the altar of Yahweh, that was before the porch of Yahweh.
- 2 Chronicles 26:16 ναός But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up, so that he did corruptly, and he trespassed against Yahweh his God; for he went into the temple of Yahweh to burn incense on the altar of incense.
- 2 Chronicles 26:19 ναός Then Uzziah was angry; and he had a censer in his hand to burn incense; and while he was angry with the priests, the leprosy broke forth in his forehead before the priests in the house of Yahweh, beside the altar of incense.
- 2 Chronicles 27:2 ναός He did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that his father Uzziah had done: however he didn't enter into the temple of Yahweh. The people did yet corruptly.
- 2 Chronicles 29:7 ναός Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.
- 2 Chronicles 29:17 ναός Now they began on the first [day] of the first month to sanctify, and on the eighth day of the month came they to the porch of Yahweh; and they sanctified the house of Yahweh in eight days: and on the sixteenth day of the first month they made an end.
- 2 Chronicles 36:7 ναός Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of Yahweh to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon.
- Ezra 5:14 ναός The gold and silver vessels also of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, and brought into the temple of Babylon, those did Cyrus the king take out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered to one whose name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor;
- Ezra 6:5 ναός Also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of the temple which is at Jerusalem, and brought to Babylon, be restored, and brought again to the temple which is at Jerusalem, everyone to its place; and you shall put them in the house of God.
- Psalms 5:8 ναός Lead me, Yahweh, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before my face.
- Psalms 10:4 ναός The wicked, in the pride of his face, Has no room in his thoughts for God.
- Psalms 17:7 ναός Show your marvelous loving kindness, You who save those who take refuge by your right hand from their enemies.
- Psalms 26:4 ναός I have not sat with deceitful men, Neither will I go in with hypocrites.
- Psalms 27:2 ναός When evil-doers came at me to eat up my flesh, Even my adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.
- Psalms 28:9 ναός Save your people, And bless your inheritance. Be their shepherd also, And bear them up forever.
- Psalms 44:16 ναός At the taunt of one who reproaches and verbally abuses, Because of the enemy and the avenger.
- Psalms 47:10 ναός
- Psalms 64:5 ναός They encourage themselves in evil plans. They talk about laying snares secretly. They say, "Who will see them?"
- Psalms 67:30 ναός
- Psalms 78:1 ναός Hear my law, my people. Turn your ears to the words of my mouth.
- Psalms 137:2 ναός On the willows in the midst of it, We hung up our harps.
- Psalms 143:12 ναός In your loving kindness, cut off my enemies, And destroy all those who afflict my soul, For I am your servant.
- Isaiah 66:6 ναός A voice of tumult from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of Yahweh that renders recompense to his enemies.
- Jeremiah 7:4 ναός Don't you trust in lying words, saying, The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, are these.
- Jeremiah 24:1 ναός Yahweh shown me, and, behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of Yahweh, after that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon.
- Jeremiah 37:18 ναός Moreover Jeremiah said to king Zedekiah, Wherein have I sinned against you, or against your servants, or against this people, that you have put me in prison?
- Ezekiel 8:16 ναός He brought me into the inner court of Yahweh's house; and see, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east; and they were worshipping the sun toward the east.
- Ezekiel 41:1 ναός He brought me to the temple, and measured the posts, six cubits broad on the one side, and six cubits broad on the other side, which was the breadth of the tent.
- Ezekiel 41:4 ναός He measured the length of it, twenty cubits, and the breadth, twenty cubits, before the temple: and he said to me, This is the most holy place.
- Ezekiel 41:15 ναός He measured the length of the building before the separate place which was at the back of it, and the galleries of it on the one side and on the other side, one hundred cubits; and the inner temple, and the porches of the court;
- Ezekiel 41:21 ναός As for the temple, the door-posts were squared; and as for the face of the sanctuary, the appearance [of it] was as the appearance [of the temple].
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3485) 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.
