σίκερα
strong drink
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Every verse where G4608 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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
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.
σικερα (síkera) is a Greek noun most often rendered “strong drink.” It is rare — just 1 verse in the entire Greek New Testament. It clusters heavily in Luke, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Scripture uses it exactly once, at Luke 1:15. From the same root come שכר and Συχαρ. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4608 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #3,503
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 3,503 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Luke 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Gospels 1 verse · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 100%
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: Strong drink 1×
- American Standard Version: Strong drink 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Strong drink 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Strong drink 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4608 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4608 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4608 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4608 across 1 tagged occurrence — 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.
- strong drink…
Word origin
Derived from שכר (shêkâr) (H7941) — strong drink.
Of hebrew origin [ H7941 ]; an intoxicant that is intensely fermented liquor : - strong drink.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4608, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σικερα appears 13 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 11 verses in 5 books.
- 13
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 11
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Leviticus 10:9 σικερα
- Numbers 6:3 σικερα
- Deuteronomy 14:26 σικερα
- Judges 13:14 σίκερα
- Isaiah 5:11 σίκερα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4608) 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.
- Leviticus 10:9 σικερα "Drink no wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, that you don't die: it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations:
- Numbers 6:3 σικερα he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of fermented drink, neither shall he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or dried.
- Numbers 28:7 σίκερα The drink-offering of it shall be the fourth part of a hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shall you pour out a drink-offering of strong drink to Yahweh.
- Deuteronomy 14:26 σικερα and you shall bestow the money for whatever your soul desires, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever your soul asks of you; and you shall eat there before Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.
- Deuteronomy 29:5 σικερα I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoe has not grown old on your foot.
- Judges 13:14 σίκερα She may not eat of anything that comes of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing; all that I commanded her let her observe.
- Isaiah 5:11 σίκερα Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; Who stay late into the night, until wine inflames them!
- Isaiah 5:22 σίκερα Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, And champions at mixing strong drink;
- Isaiah 24:9 σίκερα They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter to those who drink it.
- Isaiah 28:7 σίκερα Even these reel with wine, and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.
- Isaiah 29:9 σίκερα Stay you and wonder; take your pleasure and be blind: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4608) 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.
