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ῥῆμα

word

‘word’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

G4487 Strong's Greek
rhēma Transliteration
/hray'-mah/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 67 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

ρημα — transliterated rhēma — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “word.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 4:4. Spanning 64 verses in 12 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Luke (27% of all occurrences). Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
+ evil
Modern gloss
word
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G4487 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 →

64
distinct verses
The word appears in 64 distinct verses.
12 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 12 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 4:4
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 4:4.
Jude 1:17
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Jude 1:17.
#247
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 247 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 64 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 36 · 56%
  • Acts 14 · 22%
  • Pauline Epistles 7 · 11%
  • General Epistles 7 · 11%
  • Revelation 0 · 0%

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 64 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 36 verses · 56%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 31 verses · 48%
  • Johannine 12 verses · 19%
  • Pauline corpus 7 verses · 11%
  • Hebrews 4 verses · 6%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 3 verses · 5%

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: Words 31×, Word 25×, Saying 5×
  • American Standard Version: Words 24×, Word 21×, Saying 8×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Words 19×, Word 17×, Message 6×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Word 31×, Words 29×, Things 4×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G4487 across 67 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Words” 31×
  • “Word” 25×
  • “Saying” 5×
  • “Sayings” 3×
  • “Things” 2×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G4487 across 66 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Words” 24×
  • “Word” 21×
  • “Saying” 8×
  • “Sayings” 6×

Plus 7 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 G4487 across 60 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Words” 19×
  • “Word” 17×
  • “Message” 6×
  • “Statement” 4×
  • “Things” 3×
  • “Matter” 2×

Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 5 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G4487 across 70 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Word” 31×
  • “Words” 29×
  • “Things” 4×

Plus 6 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.

  1. that which is or has been uttered by the living voice, thing spoken, word
  2. subject matter of speech, thing spoken of

Word origin

Derived from ρεω (rhéō) (G4483) — to utter.

Part of speech: Noun Neuter TDNT: 05:09,5

From G4483 ; an utterance (individually collectively or specifically); by implication a matter or topic (especially of narration command or dispute); with a negative naught whatever : - + evil + nothing saying word.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 10 distinct written forms G4487 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ῥήματα rhḗmata Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter Luke 2:19 24
ῥῆμα rhē̂ma Noun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 12:36 18
ῥήματος rhḗmatos Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter Matthew 26:75 6
ῥημάτων rhēmátōn Noun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter Luke 24:8 6
ῥήματι rhḗmati Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter Matthew 4:4 4
ῥήματά rhḗmatá Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter John 12:48 3
ῥῆμά rhē̂má Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Luke 1:38 3
ῥήμα rhḗma Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Luke 2:15 1
ῥήμασιν rhḗmasin Noun, Dative, Plural, Neuter John 5:47 1
ῥήματί rhḗmatí Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter Luke 5:5 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4487, 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

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 ρημα appears 467 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 439 verses in 27 books.

467
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
439
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

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4487) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 439. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4487) 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.