πλῆθος
multitude
‘multitude’ 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
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
3 verses where G4128 appears in the Genitive case in the Book of Acts. 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.
Acts
- Acts 4:32 πλήθους n gen sg neut The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.
- Acts 6:5 πλήθους n gen sg neut These words pleased the whole multitude. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch;
- Acts 19:9 πλήθους n gen sg neut But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.
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.
At its core, πληθος (plēthos) means “multitude.” The word gravitates to Acts (53%), then Luke and Mark. It turns up in 32 verses across 7 books, a moderately common footprint. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Translators differ — “multitude” in the King James Version, then “number” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. Dig into 32-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4128 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 →
- 32
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 32 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #438
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 438 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 32 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 32 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 25 verses · 78%
- Gospels 12 verses · 38%
- Johannine 2 verses · 6%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 6%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 3%
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: Multitude 29×
- American Standard Version: Multitude 23×
- Berean Standard Bible: Number 5×, Crowd 4×, Multitude 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Multitude 20×, A 8×, Crowd 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4128 across 32 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4128 across 33 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 G4128 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 G4128 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 great number, of men or things
- the whole number, the whole multitude, the assemblage
Word origin
Derived from πληθω (plḗthō) (G4130) — to fill.
From G4130 ; a fulness that is a large number throng populace : - bundle company multitude.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G4128 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πλῆθος plē̂thos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter | Mark 3:7 | 26 |
| πλήθους plḗthous | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | John 21:6 | 4 |
| πλήθει plḗthei | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Hebrews 11:12 | 1 |
| πλήθη plḗthē | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Neuter | Acts 5:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4128, 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
- πλημμυρα plḗmmyra G4132 flood
- πληρης plḗrēs G4134 full
- πλησμονη plēsmonḗ G4140 satiety
- πλουτος ploûtos G4149 riches
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word πληθος appears 180 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 171 verses in 27 books.
- 180
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 171
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 27 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 27 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 16:10 πλῆθος
- Exodus 1:9 πλῆθος
- Leviticus 25:36 πλῆθος
- Numbers 32:1 πλῆθος
- Deuteronomy 1:10 πλῆθος
- Joshua 11:4 πλῆθος
- Judges 4:7 πλῆθος
- 1 Samuel 1:16 πλῆθος
- 2 Samuel 17:11 πλῆθος
- 1 Kings 1:19 πλῆθος
- 2 Kings 7:13 πλῆθος
- 1 Chronicles 4:38 πλῆθος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4128) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 171. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 16:10 πλῆθος The angel of Yahweh said to her, "I will greatly multiply your seed, that they will not be numbered for multitude."
- Genesis 17:4 πλῆθος "As for me, behold, my covenant is with you. You will be the father of a multitude of nations.
- Genesis 27:28 πλῆθος God give you of the dew of the sky, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and new wine.
- Genesis 30:30 πλῆθος For it was little which you had before I came, and it has increased to a multitude. Yahweh has blessed you wherever I turned. Now when will I provide for my own house also?"
- Genesis 32:13 πλῆθος He lodged there that night, and took from that which he had with him, a present for Esau, his brother:
- Genesis 36:7 πλῆθος For their substance was too great for them to dwell together, and the land of their travels couldn't bear them because of their cattle.
- Genesis 48:16 πλῆθος the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac. Let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."
- Genesis 48:19 πλῆθος His father refused, and said, "I know, my son, I know. He also will become a people, and he also will be great. However, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his seed will become a multitude of nations."
- Exodus 1:9 πλῆθος He said to his people, "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we.
- Exodus 8:20 πλῆθος Yahweh said to Moses, "Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; behold, he comes forth to the water; and tell him, 'This is what Yahweh says, "Let my people go, that they may serve me.
- Exodus 12:6 πλῆθος and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at evening.
- Exodus 15:7 πλῆθος In the greatness of your excellency, you overthrow those who rise up against you: You send forth your wrath. It consumes them as stubble.
- Exodus 19:21 πλῆθος Yahweh said to Moses, "Go down, charge the people, lest they break through to Yahweh to gaze, and many of them perish.
- Exodus 23:2 πλῆθος You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; neither shall you testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice;
- Exodus 32:13 πλῆθος Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your seed as the stars of the sky, and all this land that I have spoken of I will give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
- Exodus 36:5 πλῆθος They spoke to Moses, saying, "The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work which Yahweh commanded to make."
- Leviticus 25:36 πλῆθος Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God; that your brother may live among you.
- Numbers 32:1 πλῆθος Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that behold, the place was a place for cattle;
- Deuteronomy 1:10 πλῆθος Yahweh your God has multiplied you, and, behold, you are this day as the stars of the sky for multitude.
- Deuteronomy 10:22 πλῆθος Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons; and now Yahweh your God has made you as the stars of the sky for multitude.
- Deuteronomy 26:5 πλῆθος You shall answer and say before Yahweh your God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
- Deuteronomy 28:47 πλῆθος Because you didn't serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things;
- Deuteronomy 28:62 πλῆθος You shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of the sky for multitude; because you didn't listen to the voice of Yahweh your God.
- Joshua 11:4 πλῆθος They went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.
- Judges 4:7 πλῆθος I will draw to you, to the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into your hand.
- Judges 6:5 πλῆθος For they came up with their cattle and their tents; they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it.
- Judges 7:12 πλῆθος The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley like locusts for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand which is on the sea-shore for multitude.
- 1 Samuel 1:16 πλῆθος Don't count your handmaid for a wicked woman; for out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation have I spoken hitherto.
- 1 Samuel 13:5 πλῆθος The Philistines assembled themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude: and they came up, and encamped in Michmash, eastward of Beth Aven.
- 2 Samuel 17:11 πλῆθος But I counsel that all Israel be gathered together to you, from Dan even to Beersheba, as the sand that is by the sea for multitude; and that you go to battle in your own person.
- 2 Samuel 18:29 πλῆθος The king said, Is it well with the young man Absalom? Ahimaaz answered, When Joab sent the king's servant, even me your servant, I saw a great tumult, but I don't know what it was.
- 1 Kings 1:19 πλῆθος and he has slain oxen and fatlings and sheep in abundance, and has called all the sons of the king, and Abiathar the priest, and Joab the captain of the host; but he hasn't called Solomon your servant.
- 1 Kings 1:25 πλῆθος For he is gone down this day, and has slain oxen and fatlings and sheep in abundance, and has called all the king's sons, and the captains of the host, and Abiathar the priest; and, behold, they are eating and drinking before him, and say, [Long] live king Adonijah.
- 1 Kings 2:46 πλῆθος So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he went out, and fell on him, so that he died. The kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon.
- 1 Kings 10:10 πλῆθος She gave the king one hundred twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon.
- 1 Kings 10:27 πλῆθος The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the lowland, for abundance.
- 2 Kings 7:13 πλῆθος One of his servants answered, Please let some take five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city (behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel who are left in it; behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel who are consumed); and let us send and see.
- 2 Kings 19:23 πλῆθος By your messengers you have defied the Lord, and have said, With the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the innermost parts of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars of it, and the choice fir trees of it; and I will enter into his farthest lodging-place, the forest of his fruitful field.
- 1 Chronicles 4:38 πλῆθος these mentioned by name were princes in their families: and their fathers' houses increased greatly.
- 1 Chronicles 12:41 πλῆθος
- 1 Chronicles 22:3 πλῆθος David prepared iron in abundance for the nails for the doors of the gates, and for the couplings; and brass in abundance without weight;
- 1 Chronicles 22:4 πλῆθος and cedar trees without number: for the Sidonians and they of Tyre brought cedar trees in abundance to David.
- 1 Chronicles 22:5 πλῆθος David said, Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be built for Yahweh must be exceedingly magnificent, of fame and of glory throughout all countries: I will therefore make preparation for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death.
- 1 Chronicles 22:8 πλῆθος But the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, You have shed blood abundantly, and have made great wars: you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight.
- 1 Chronicles 22:14 πλῆθος Now, behold, in my affliction I have prepared for the house of Yahweh one hundred thousand talents of gold, and one thousand thousand talents of silver, and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared; and you may add to them.
- 1 Chronicles 22:15 πλῆθος There are also workmen with you in abundance, cutters and workers of stone and timber, and all kinds of men who are skillful in every kind of work:
- 1 Chronicles 29:16 πλῆθος Yahweh our God, all this store that we have prepared to build you a house for your holy name comes of your hand, and is all your own.
- 1 Chronicles 29:21 πλῆθος They sacrificed sacrifices to Yahweh, and offered burnt offerings to Yahweh, on the next day after that day, even one thousand bulls, one thousand rams, and one thousand lambs, with their drink-offerings, and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel,
- 2 Chronicles 1:15 πλῆθος The king made silver and gold to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the lowland, for abundance.
- 2 Chronicles 2:8 πλῆθος Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees, out of Lebanon; for I know that your servants know how to cut timber in Lebanon: and, behold, my servants shall be with your servants,
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4128) 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.
