σκοτία
darkness
‘darkness’ 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 Dative-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
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine 9 times (56%)
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine 6 times (38%)
- Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4653 appears — 12 distinct verses across 4 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
Luke 1 verse
John 6 verses
- John 1:5 σκοτίᾳ σκοτία n dat sg fem n nom sg fem The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't overcome it.
- John 6:17 σκοτία n nom sg fem and they entered into the boat, and were going over the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not come to them.
- John 8:12 σκοτίᾳ n dat sg fem Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."
- John 12:35 σκοτία σκοτίᾳ n nom sg fem n dat sg fem Jesus therefore said to them, "Yet a little while the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness doesn't overtake you. He who walks in the darkness doesn't know where he is going.
- John 12:46 σκοτίᾳ n dat sg fem I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness.
- John 20:1 σκοτίας n gen sg fem Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb, and saw the stone taken away from the tomb.
1 John 4 verses
- 1 John 1:5 σκοτία n nom sg fem This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
- 1 John 2:8 σκοτία n nom sg fem Again, I write a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shines.
- 1 John 2:9 σκοτίᾳ n dat sg fem He who says he is in the light and hates his brother, is in the darkness even until now.
- 1 John 2:11 σκοτίᾳ σκοτίᾳ σκοτία n dat sg fem n dat sg fem n nom sg fem But he who hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and doesn't know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
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, σκοτια (skotía) means “darkness.” The word gravitates to John (50%), then 1 John and Matthew. It appears 12 verses across 4 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Matthew 10:27, it enters the text early. Catalogued under 3 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. 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 G4653 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #726
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 726 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Johannine 10 verses · 83%
- Gospels 8 verses · 67%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 4 verses · 33%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 8%
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: Darkness 14×, Dark 2×
- American Standard Version: Darkness 14×, Dark 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Darkness 13×, Dark 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Darkness 16×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4653 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4653 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4653 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4653 across 17 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.
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.
- darkness
- the darkness due to want of light
- metaph. used of ignorance of divine things, and its associated wickedness, and the resultant misery in hell
Word origin
Derived from σκοτος (skótos) (G4655) — darkness.
From G4655 ; dimness obscurity (literally or figuratively): - dark (-ness).
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4653 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σκοτίᾳ skotía | Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine | Matthew 10:27 | 9 |
| σκοτία skotía | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine | John 1:5 | 6 |
| σκοτίας skotías | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine | John 20:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4653, 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 σκοτια appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 3 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Job 28:3 σκοτία
- Isaiah 16:3 σκοτία
- Micah 3:6 σκοτία
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4653) 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.
- Job 28:3 σκοτία Man sets an end to darkness, And searches out, to the furthest bound, The stones of obscurity and of thick darkness.
- Isaiah 16:3 σκοτία Give counsel, execute justice; make your shade as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; don't betray the fugitive.
- Micah 3:6 σκοτία "Therefore night is over you, with no vision, And it is dark to you, that you may not divine; And the sun will go down on the prophets, And the day will be black over them.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4653) 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.
