πρεσβύτης
old man
‘old man’ 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
2 distinct verses where G4246 appears in the Nominative case, across 2 books. 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.
Luke 1 verse
Philemon 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.
πρεσβυτης — transliterated presbýtēs — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “old man.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. More than a third of its appearances fall in Luke. It first appears in Luke 1:18. Its lexical range runs to 2 senses. 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 G4246 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 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 3 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 67%
- Gospels 1 verse · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 33%
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: Aged 1×, Aged men 1×, Old man 1×
- American Standard Version: Aged 1×, Aged men 1×, Old man 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Aged 1×, Old man 1×, Older 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Elder 1×, Old man 1×, Older men 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4246 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4246 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4246 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4246 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- an old man, an aged man
- ambassador
Word origin
Derived from πρεσβυτερος (presbýteros) (G4245) — elder.
From the same as G4245 ; an old man : - aged (man) old man.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G4246 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| πρεσβύτης presbýtēs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Luke 1:18 | 2 |
| πρεσβύτας presbýtas | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Masculine | Titus 2:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4246, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word πρεσβυτης appears 29 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 29 verses in 14 books.
- 29
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 29
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 14 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 14 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 25:8 πρεσβύτης
- Numbers 10:31 πρεσβύτης
- Deuteronomy 28:50 πρεσβύτης
- Joshua 6:21 πρεσβύτης
- Judges 19:16 πρεσβύτης
- 1 Samuel 2:22 πρεσβύτης
- 1 Kings 1:15 πρεσβύτης
- 2 Kings 4:14 πρεσβύτης
- 1 Chronicles 23:1 πρεσβύτης
- Job 15:10 πρεσβύτης
- Psalms 148:12 πρεσβύτης
- Isaiah 3:5 πρεσβύτης
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4246) 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 25:8 πρεσβύτης Abraham gave up the spirit, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years, and was gathered to his people.
- Numbers 10:31 πρεσβύτης He said, Don't leave us, please; because you know how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and you shall be to us instead of eyes.
- Deuteronomy 28:50 πρεσβύτης a nation of fierce facial expressions, that shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young,
- Deuteronomy 32:25 πρεσβύτης Outside shall the sword bereave, In the chambers terror; [It shall destroy] both young man and virgin, The suckling with the man of gray hairs.
- Joshua 6:21 πρεσβύτης They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox, and sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword.
- Judges 19:16 πρεσβύτης Behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even: now the man was of the hill-country of Ephraim, and he sojourned in Gibeah; but the men of the place were Benjamites.
- Judges 19:17 πρεσβύτης He lifted up his eyes, and saw the wayfaring man in the street of the city; and the old man said, Where go you? and whence come you?
- Judges 19:20 πρεσβύτης The old man said, Peace be to you; howsoever let all your wants lie on me; only don't lodge in the street.
- Judges 19:22 πρεσβύτης As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain base fellows, beset the house round about, beating at the door; and they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man who came into your house, that we may know him.
- 1 Samuel 2:22 πρεσβύτης Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did to all Israel, and how that they lay with the women who served at the door of the tent of meeting.
- 1 Samuel 2:32 πρεσβύτης You shall see the affliction of [my] habitation, in all the wealth which [God] shall give Israel; and there shall not be an old man in your house forever.
- 1 Samuel 3:21 πρεσβύτης Yahweh appeared again in Shiloh; for Yahweh revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of Yahweh.
- 1 Samuel 4:18 πρεσβύτης It happened, when he made mention of the ark of God, that [Eli] fell from off his seat backward by the side of the gate; and his neck broke, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. He had judged Israel forty years.
- 1 Kings 1:15 πρεσβύτης Bathsheba went in to the king into the chamber: and the king was very old; and Abishag the Shunammite was ministering to the king.
- 1 Kings 13:11 πρεσβύτης Now there lived an old prophet in Bethel; and one of his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel: the words which he had spoken to the king, them also they told to their father.
- 1 Kings 13:25 πρεσβύτης Behold, men passed by, and saw the body cast in the way, and the lion standing by the body; and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived.
- 2 Kings 4:14 πρεσβύτης He said, What then is to be done for her? Gehazi answered, Most assuredly she has no son, and her husband is old.
- 1 Chronicles 23:1 πρεσβύτης Now David was old and full of days; and he made Solomon his son king over Israel.
- Job 15:10 πρεσβύτης With us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men, Much elder than your father.
- Job 29:8 πρεσβύτης The young men saw me and hid themselves, The aged rose up and stood;
- Psalms 148:12 πρεσβύτης Both young men and maidens; Old men and children:
- Isaiah 3:5 πρεσβύτης The people will be oppressed, Everyone by another, And everyone by his neighbor. The child will behave himself proudly against the old man, And the base against the honorable.
- Isaiah 9:14 πρεσβύτης Therefore Yahweh will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day.
- Isaiah 20:4 πρεσβύτης so shall the king of Assyria lead away the captives of Egypt, and the exiles of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
- Isaiah 65:20 πρεσβύτης There shall be no more there an infant of days, nor an old man who has not filled his days; for the child shall die one hundred years old, and the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.
- Jeremiah 38:13 πρεσβύτης So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
- Lamentations 2:21 πρεσβύτης The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets; My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: You have killed them in the day of your anger; you have slaughtered, [and] not pitied.
- Lamentations 4:16 πρεσβύτης The anger of Yahweh has scattered them; he will no more regard them: They didn't respect the persons of the priests, they didn't favor the elders.
- Lamentations 5:14 πρεσβύτης The elders have ceased from the gate, The young men from their music.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4246) 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.
