ὀρφανός
fatherless
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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G3737 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.
John 1 verse
James 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.
ορφανος — transliterated orphanós — is a Greek adjective carrying the sense “fatherless.” A scarce word — 2 verses in all of the Greek New Testament. More than half of its appearances fall in John. It first appears in John 14:18. See the sense tree, 2-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3737 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%
- Johannine 1 verse · 50%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 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: Comfortless 1×, Fatherless 1×
- American Standard Version: Desolate 1×, Fatherless 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Orphans 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Orphans 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3737 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3737 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3737 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3737 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.
- bereft (of a father, of parents)
Word origin
Origin: of uncertain affinity
Of uncertain affinity; bereaved (orphan) that is parentless : - comfortless fatherless.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G3737 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὀρφανούς orphanoús | Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | John 14:18 | 1 |
| ὀρφανοὺς orphanoùs | Adjective, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | James 1:27 | 1 |
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word ορφανος appears 44 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 44 verses in 13 books.
- 44
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 44
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 22:21 ὀρφανός
- Deuteronomy 10:18 ὀρφανός
- Job 6:27 ὀρφανός
- Psalms 9:35 ὀρφανός
- Proverbs 23:10 ὀρφανός
- Isaiah 1:17 ὀρφανός
- Jeremiah 5:28 ὀρφανός
- Lamentations 5:3 ὀρφανός
- Ezekiel 22:7 ὀρφανός
- Hosea 14:4 ὀρφανός
- Micah 2:2 ὀρφανός
- Zechariah 7:10 ὀρφανός
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3737) 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.
- Exodus 22:21 ὀρφανός "You shall not wrong an alien, neither shall you oppress him, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 22:23 ὀρφανός If you take advantage of them at all, and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry;
- Deuteronomy 10:18 ὀρφανός He does execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the foreigner, in giving him food and clothing.
- Deuteronomy 14:29 ὀρφανός and the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the foreigner living among you, and the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.
- Deuteronomy 16:11 ὀρφανός and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your man-servant, and your maid-servant, and the Levite who is within your gates, and the foreigner, and the fatherless, and the widow, who are in the midst of you, in the place which Yahweh your God shall choose, to cause his name to dwell there.
- Deuteronomy 16:14 ὀρφανός and you shall rejoice in your feast, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your man-servant, and your maid-servant, and the Levite, and the foreigner, and the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your gates.
- Deuteronomy 24:17 ὀρφανός You shall not wrest the justice [due] to the foreigner, [or] to the fatherless, nor take the widow's clothing to pledge;
- Deuteronomy 24:19 ὀρφανός When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgot a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to get it: it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow; that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
- Deuteronomy 24:20 ὀρφανός When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
- Deuteronomy 24:21 ὀρφανός When you gather [the grapes of] your vineyard, you shall not glean it after you: it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
- Deuteronomy 26:12 ὀρφανός When you have made an end of tithing all the tithe of your increase in the third year, which is the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, that they may eat within your gates, and be filled.
- Deuteronomy 26:13 ὀρφανός You shall say before Yahweh your God, I have put away the holy things out of my house, and also have given them to the Levite, and to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all your commandment which you have commanded me: I have not transgressed any of your commandments, neither have I forgotten them:
- Deuteronomy 27:19 ὀρφανός Cursed be he who wrests the justice [due] to the foreigner, fatherless, and widow. All the people shall say, Amen.
- Job 6:27 ὀρφανός Yes, you would even cast lots for the fatherless, And make merchandise of your friend.
- Job 22:9 ὀρφανός You have sent widows away empty, And the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
- Job 24:3 ὀρφανός They drive away the donkey of the fatherless, And they take the widow's ox for a pledge.
- Job 24:9 ὀρφανός There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast, And take a pledge of the poor,
- Job 24:19 ὀρφανός Drought and heat consume the snow waters; So does Sheol those who have sinned.
- Job 29:12 ὀρφανός Because I delivered the poor who cried, And the fatherless also, who had none to help him.
- Job 31:17 ὀρφανός Or have eaten my morsel alone, And the fatherless has not eaten of it
- Job 31:21 ὀρφανός If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, Because I saw my help in the gate:
- Psalms 9:35 ὀρφανός
- Psalms 9:39 ὀρφανός
- Psalms 67:6 ὀρφανός The earth has yielded its increase. God, even our own God, will bless us.
- Psalms 81:3 ὀρφανός Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, At the full moon, on our feast day.
- Psalms 93:6 ὀρφανός
- Psalms 108:9 ὀρφανός Moab is my wash pot. I will toss my sandal on Edom. I will shout over Philistia."
- Psalms 108:12 ὀρφανός Give us help against the enemy, For the help of man is vain.
- Psalms 145:9 ὀρφανός Yahweh is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works.
- Proverbs 23:10 ὀρφανός Don't move the ancient boundary stone. Don't encroach on the fields of the fatherless:
- Isaiah 1:17 ὀρφανός Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow."
- Isaiah 1:23 ὀρφανός Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They don't judge the fatherless, Neither does the cause of the widow come to them.
- Isaiah 9:16 ὀρφανός For those who lead this people cause them to err; and those who are led of them are destroyed.
- Isaiah 10:2 ὀρφανός to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!
- Jeremiah 5:28 ὀρφανός They are grew fat, they shine: yes, they overpass in deeds of wickedness; they don't plead the cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they may prosper; and the right of the needy they don't judge.
- Jeremiah 7:6 ὀρφανός if you don't oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and don't shed innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt:
- Jeremiah 22:3 ὀρφανός Thus says Yahweh: Execute you justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence, to the foreigner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent blood in this place.
- Jeremiah 30:5 ὀρφανός For thus says Yahweh: We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace.
- Lamentations 5:3 ὀρφανός We are orphans and fatherless; Our mothers are as widows.
- Ezekiel 22:7 ὀρφανός In you have they set light by father and mother; in the midst of you have they dealt by oppression with the foreigner; in you have they wronged the fatherless and the widow.
- Hosea 14:4 ὀρφανός "I will heal their waywardness. I will love them freely; For my anger is turned away from him.
- Micah 2:2 ὀρφανός They covet fields, and seize them; And houses, and take them away: And they oppress a man and his house, Even a man and his heritage.
- Zechariah 7:10 ὀρφανός Don't oppress the widow, nor the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.'
- Malachi 3:5 ὀρφανός I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don't fear me," says Yahweh of Hosts.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3737) 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.
