σκότος
darkness
‘darkness’ 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 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
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where G4655 appears in the Genitive case in the Book of Acts. 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.
Acts
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.
σκοτος — transliterated skótos — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “darkness.” Debuting at Matthew 4:16, it then recurs through the corpus. The Greek New Testament uses it across 30 verses — moderately common. Thayer's distinguishes 2 senses for it. It shares a root with σκια, σκοτεινος and σκοτια. See the sense tree, 30-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4655 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 →
- 30
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 30 distinct verses.
- 15 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 15 of 27 New Testament books.
- #448
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 448 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 30 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 30 distinct verses.
- Gospels 12 verses · 40%
- Pauline corpus 11 verses · 37%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 7 verses · 23%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 4 verses · 13%
- Johannine 2 verses · 7%
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 30×
- American Standard Version: Darkness 31×
- Berean Standard Bible: Darkness 30×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Darkness 30×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4655 across 32 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 G4655 across 32 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 G4655 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4655 across 31 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 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.
- darkness
- metaph.
Word origin
Derived from σκια (skiá) (G4639) — shadow.
From the base of G4639 ; shadiness that is obscurity (literally or figuratively): - darkness.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4655 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σκότος skótos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 6:23 | 14 |
| σκότους skótous | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Luke 22:53 | 12 |
| σκότει skótei | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 4:16 | 5 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4655, 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
Derived from this word
- σκοτεινος skoteinós G4652 dark
- σκοτια skotía G4653 darkness
- σκοτιζω skotízō G4654 to darken
- σκοτοω skotóō G4656 to darken
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σκοτος appears 98 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 91 verses in 20 books.
- 98
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 91
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 20 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 20 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 1:2 σκότος
- Exodus 10:21 σκότος
- Deuteronomy 4:11 σκότος
- Joshua 2:5 σκότος
- 2 Samuel 1:9 σκότος
- 2 Kings 7:5 σκότος
- Job 3:4 σκότος
- Psalms 17:12 σκότος
- Proverbs 2:13 σκότος
- Ecclesiastes 2:13 σκότος
- Isaiah 5:20 σκότος
- Jeremiah 13:16 σκότος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4655) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 91. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 1:2 σκότος Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
- Genesis 1:4 σκότος God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness.
- Genesis 1:5 σκότος God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. There was evening and there was morning, one day.
- Genesis 1:18 σκότος and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
- Exodus 10:21 σκότος Yahweh said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt."
- Exodus 10:22 σκότος Moses stretched forth his hand toward the sky, and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.
- Exodus 14:20 σκότος It came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud and the darkness, yet gave it light by night: and the one didn't come near the other all the night.
- Deuteronomy 4:11 σκότος You came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire to the heart of the sky, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness.
- Deuteronomy 5:22 σκότος These words Yahweh spoke to all your assembly on the mountain out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. He wrote them on two tables of stone, and gave them to me.
- Deuteronomy 28:29 σκότος and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways: and you shall be only oppressed and robbed always, and there shall be none to save you.
- Joshua 2:5 σκότος and it happened about the time of the shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out; where the men went I don't know: pursue after them quickly; for you will overtake them.
- 2 Samuel 1:9 σκότος He said to me, Stand, I pray you, beside me, and kill me; for anguish has taken hold of me, because my life is yet whole in me.
- 2 Samuel 22:12 σκότος He made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
- 2 Samuel 22:29 σκότος For you are my lamp, Yahweh; Yahweh will lighten my darkness.
- 2 Kings 7:5 σκότος They rose up in the twilight, to go to the camp of the Syrians; and when they were come to the outermost part of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no man there.
- 2 Kings 7:7 σκότος Therefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their donkeys, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.
- Job 3:4 σκότος Let that day be darkness; Don't let God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine on it.
- Job 3:5 σκότος Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.
- Job 3:6 σκότος As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
- Job 5:14 σκότος They meet with darkness in the day-time, And grope at noonday as in the night.
- Job 10:22 σκότος The land dark as midnight, Of the shadow of death, without any order, Where the light is as midnight.'"
- Job 12:22 σκότος He uncovers deep things out of darkness, And brings out to light the shadow of death.
- Job 12:25 σκότος They grope in the dark without light. He makes them stagger like a drunken man.
- Job 15:22 σκότος He doesn't believe that he shall return out of darkness, He is waited for by the sword.
- Job 15:30 σκότος He shall not depart out of darkness; The flame shall dry up his branches, By the breath of God's mouth shall he go away.
- Job 17:12 σκότος They change the night into day, Saying 'The light is near' in the presence of darkness.
- Job 18:6 σκότος The light shall be dark in his tent, His lamp above him shall be put out.
- Job 18:18 σκότος He shall be driven from light into darkness, And chased out of the world.
- Job 19:8 σκότος He has walled up my way so that I can't pass, And has set darkness in my paths.
- Job 20:26 σκότος All darkness is laid up for his treasures. An unfanned fire shall devour him. It shall consume that which is left in his tent.
- Job 22:11 σκότος Or darkness, so that you can not see, And floods of waters cover you.
- Job 23:17 σκότος Because I was not cut off before the darkness, Neither did he cover the thick darkness from my face.
- Job 24:14 σκότος The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief.
- Job 24:15 σκότος The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, Saying, 'No eye shall see me.' He disguises his face.
- Job 24:16 σκότος In the dark they dig through houses. They shut themselves up in the daytime. They don't know the light.
- Job 26:10 σκότος He has described a boundary on the surface of the waters, And to the confines of light and darkness.
- Job 28:3 σκότος Man sets an end to darkness, And searches out, to the furthest bound, The stones of obscurity and of thick darkness.
- Job 29:3 σκότος When his lamp shone on my head, And by his light I walked through darkness;
- Job 37:15 σκότος Do you know how God controls them, And causes the lightning of his cloud to shine?
- Job 38:19 σκότος "What is the way to the dwelling of light? As for darkness, where is the place of it,
- Psalms 17:12 σκότος He is like a lion that is greedy of his prey, As it were a young lion lurking in secret places.
- Psalms 17:29 σκότος
- Psalms 34:6 σκότος This poor man cried, and Yahweh heard him, And saved him out of all his troubles.
- Psalms 54:6 σκότος With a free will offering, I will sacrifice to you. I will give thanks to your name, Yahweh, for it is good.
- Psalms 81:5 σκότος He appointed it in Joseph for a testimony, When he went out over the land of Egypt, I heard a language that I didn't know.
- Psalms 87:13 σκότος
- Psalms 90:6 σκότος In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry.
- Psalms 103:20 σκότος Praise Yahweh, you angels of his, Who are mighty in strength, who fulfill his word, Obeying the voice of his word.
- Psalms 104:28 σκότος You give to them; they gather. You open your hand; they are satisfied with good.
- Psalms 106:10 σκότος He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, And redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4655) 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.
