πόλεμος
war
‘war’ 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.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 10 times (56%)
- Noun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine 3 times (17%)
- Noun, Genitive, Plural, Masculine 2 times (11%)
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (6%)
- Noun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine 1 time (6%)
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 18 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4171 appears — 16 distinct verses across 7 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 1 verse
Mark 1 verse
Luke 2 verses
- Luke 14:31 πόλεμον n acc sg masc Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
- Luke 21:9 πολέμους n acc pl masc When you hear of wars and disturbances, don't be terrified, for these things must happen first, but the end won't come immediately."
1 Corinthians 1 verse
Hebrews 1 verse
James 1 verse
Revelation 9 verses
- Revelation 9:7 πόλεμον n acc sg masc The shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared for war. On their heads were something like golden crowns, and their faces were like people's faces.
- Revelation 9:9 πόλεμον n acc sg masc They had breastplates, like breastplates of iron. The sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots, or of many horses rushing to war.
- Revelation 11:7 πόλεμον n acc sg masc When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.
- Revelation 12:7 πόλεμος n nom sg masc There was war in the sky. Michael and his angels made war on the dragon. The dragon and his angels made war.
- Revelation 12:17 πόλεμον n acc sg masc The dragon grew angry with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep God's commandments and hold Jesus' testimony.
- Revelation 13:7 πόλεμον n acc sg masc It was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them. Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him.
- Revelation 16:14 πόλεμον n acc sg masc for they are spirits of demons, performing signs; which go forth to the kings of the whole inhabited earth, to gather them together for the war of that great day of God, the Almighty.
- Revelation 19:19 πόλεμον n acc sg masc I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse, and against his army.
- Revelation 20:8 πόλεμον n acc sg masc and he will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
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, πολεμος (pólemos) means “war.” Its uses cluster heavily in Revelation (56% of all occurrences). Spanning 16 verses in 7 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Matthew 24:6. Ranging over 3 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4171 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #664
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 664 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 16 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Revelation 9 verses 56%
- Luke 2 verses 13%
- Matthew 1 verse 6%
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 16 distinct verses.
- Johannine 9 verses · 56%
- Revelation 9 verses · 56%
- Gospels 4 verses · 25%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 13%
- Pauline corpus 1 verse · 6%
- Hebrews 1 verse · 6%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 6%
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: War 6×, Battle 5×, Wars 5×
- American Standard Version: War 12×, Wars 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Battle 6×, War 5×, Wars 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: War 7×, Wars 6×, Battle 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4171 across 18 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 G4171 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4171 across 18 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4171 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- a war
- a fight, a battle
- a dispute, strife, quarrel
Word origin
Origin: from pelomai (to bustle)
From πέλομαι pelomai (to bustle ); warfare (literally or figuratively; a single encounter or a series): - battle fight war.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G4171 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πόλεμον pólemon | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Luke 14:31 | 10 |
| πολέμους polémous | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 24:6 | 3 |
| πολέμων polémōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 24:6 | 2 |
| πολέμῳ polémō | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Hebrews 11:34 | 1 |
| πόλεμοι pólemoi | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | James 4:1 | 1 |
| πόλεμος pólemos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Revelation 12:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4171, 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 πολεμος appears 255 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 249 verses in 28 books.
- 255
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 249
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 28 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 28 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 14:2 πόλεμος
- Exodus 1:10 πόλεμος
- Leviticus 26:6 πόλεμος
- Numbers 10:9 πόλεμος
- Deuteronomy 2:5 πόλεμος
- Joshua 4:13 πόλεμος
- Judges 3:1 πόλεμος
- 1 Samuel 4:1 πόλεμος
- 2 Samuel 1:4 πόλεμος
- 1 Kings 2:5 πόλεμος
- 2 Kings 3:7 πόλεμος
- 1 Chronicles 5:10 πόλεμος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4171) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 249. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 14:2 πόλεμος that they made war with Bera, king of Sodom, and with Birsha, king of Gomorrah, Shinab, king of Admah, and Shemeber, king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar).
- Genesis 14:8 πόλεμος There went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar); and they set the battle in array against them in the valley of Siddim;
- Exodus 1:10 πόλεμος Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land."
- Exodus 13:17 πόλεμος It happened, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God didn't lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt;"
- Exodus 15:3 πόλεμος Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is his name.
- Exodus 32:17 πόλεμος When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, "There is the noise of war in the camp."
- Leviticus 26:6 πόλεμος "'I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid; and I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
- Leviticus 26:36 πόλεμος "'As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies: and the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword; and they will fall when no one pursues.
- Leviticus 26:37 πόλεμος They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues: and you will have no power to stand before your enemies.
- Numbers 10:9 πόλεμος When you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets; and you shall be remembered before Yahweh your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.
- Numbers 14:3 πόλεμος Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will be a prey: wouldn't it be better for us to return into Egypt?
- Numbers 20:18 πόλεμος Edom said to him, You shall not pass through me, lest I come out with the sword against you.
- Numbers 21:14 πόλεμος Therefore it is said in the book of the Wars of Yahweh, Vaheb in Suphah, The valleys of the Arnon,
- Numbers 21:33 πόλεμος They turned and went up by the way of Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.
- Numbers 31:14 πόλεμος Moses was angry with the officers of the host, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who came from the service of the war.
- Numbers 31:21 πόλεμος Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who went to the battle, This is the statute of the law which Yahweh has commanded Moses:
- Numbers 31:36 πόλεμος The half, which was the portion of those who went out to war, was in number three hundred thirty-seven thousand five hundred sheep:
- Numbers 32:6 πόλεμος Moses said to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brothers go to the war, and shall you sit here?
- Numbers 32:20 πόλεμος Moses said to them, If you will do this thing, if you will arm yourselves to go before Yahweh to the war,
- Numbers 32:27 πόλεμος but your servants will pass over, every man who is armed for war, before Yahweh to battle, as my lord says.
- Numbers 32:29 πόλεμος Moses said to them, If the children of Gad and the children of Reuben will pass with you over the Jordan, every man who is armed to battle, before Yahweh, and the land shall be subdued before you; then you shall give them the land of Gilead for a possession:
- Numbers 32:30 πόλεμος but if they will not pass over with you armed, they shall have possessions among you in the land of Canaan.
- Deuteronomy 2:5 πόλεμος don't contend with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on; because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession.
- Deuteronomy 2:9 πόλεμος Yahweh said to me, Don't bother Moab, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give you of his land for a possession; because I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession.
- Deuteronomy 2:19 πόλεμος and when you come near over against the children of Ammon, don't bother them, nor contend with them; for I will not give you of the land of the children of Ammon for a possession; because I have given it to the children of Lot for a possession.
- Deuteronomy 2:24 πόλεμος Rise up, take your journey, and pass over the valley of the Arnon: behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land; begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle.
- Deuteronomy 2:32 πόλεμος Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz.
- Deuteronomy 3:1 πόλεμος Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.
- Deuteronomy 4:34 πόλεμος Or has God tried to go and take him a nation from the midst of [another] nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
- Deuteronomy 20:1 πόλεμος When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and see horses, and chariots, [and] a people more than you, you shall not be afraid of them; for Yahweh your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
- Deuteronomy 20:2 πόλεμος It shall be, when you draw near to the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people,
- Deuteronomy 20:3 πόλεμος and shall tell them, Hear, Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies: don't let your heart faint; don't be afraid, nor tremble, neither be scared of them;
- Deuteronomy 20:5 πόλεμος The officers shall speak to the people, saying, What man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it.
- Deuteronomy 20:6 πόλεμος What man is there who has planted a vineyard, and has not used the fruit of it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man use the fruit of it.
- Deuteronomy 20:7 πόλεμος What man is there who has pledged to be married a wife, and has not taken her? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.
- Deuteronomy 20:12 πόλεμος If it will make no peace with you, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it:
- Deuteronomy 20:20 πόλεμος Only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down; and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it fall.
- Deuteronomy 21:10 πόλεμος When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and Yahweh your God delivers them into your hands, and you carry them away captive,
- Deuteronomy 24:5 πόλεμος When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out in the host, neither shall he be charged with any business: he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer his wife whom he has taken.
- Deuteronomy 29:6 πόλεμος You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am Yahweh your God.
- Joshua 4:13 πόλεμος about forty thousand ready armed for war passed over before Yahweh to battle, to the plains of Jericho.
- Joshua 8:14 πόλεμος It happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hurried and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at the time appointed, before the Arabah; but he didn't know that there was an ambush against him behind the city.
- Joshua 10:11 πόλεμος It happened, as they fled from before Israel, while they were at the descent of Beth Horon, that Yahweh cast down great stones from the sky on them to Azekah, and they died: they were more who died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel killed with the sword.
- Joshua 10:24 πόλεμος It happened, when they brought forth those kings to Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who went with him, Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. They came near, and put their feet on the necks of them.
- Joshua 11:18 πόλεμος Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.
- Joshua 11:19 πόλεμος There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: they took all in battle.
- Joshua 11:20 πόλεμος For it was of Yahweh to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that he might utterly destroy them, that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them, as Yahweh commanded Moses.
- Joshua 14:11 πόλεμος As yet I am as strong this day as I as in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, and to go out and to come in.
- Joshua 14:15 πόλεμος Now the name of Hebron before was Kiriath Arba; [which Arba was] the greatest man among the Anakim. The land had rest from war.
- Joshua 22:33 πόλεμος The thing pleased the children of Israel; and the children of Israel blessed God, and spoke no more of going up against them to war, to destroy the land in which the children of Reuben and the children of Gad lived.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4171) 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.
