σπέρμα
seed
‘seed’ is one of 4 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
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
2 verses where G4690 appears in the Nominative case in the Book of Galatians. 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.
Galatians
- Galatians 3:19 σπέρμα n nom sg neut What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
- Galatians 3:29 σπέρμα n nom sg neut If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to promise.
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.
“seed” is the headline sense of the Greek noun σπερμα (spérma). Translators differ — “seed” in the King James Version, then “descendants” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 41 verses in 13 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. First canonically at Matthew 13:24, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 4 senses. See the sense tree, 41-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4690 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 →
- 41
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 41 distinct verses.
- 13 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 13 of 27 New Testament books.
- #343
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 343 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 41 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 41 distinct verses.
- Gospels 17 verses · 41%
- Pauline corpus 15 verses · 37%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 6 verses · 15%
- Johannine 5 verses · 12%
- Hebrews 3 verses · 7%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 2%
- Revelation 1 verse · 2%
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: Seed 39×, Seeds 3×
- American Standard Version: Seed 33×, 's seed 5×, Seeds 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Descendants 10×, Offspring 10×, Seed 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Seed 35×, To 6×, Offspring 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4690 across 44 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 G4690 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 G4690 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4690 across 52 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 4 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.
- from which a plant germinates
- the product of this semen, seed, children, offspring, progeny
- family, tribe, posterity
- whatever possesses vital force or life giving power
Word origin
Derived from σπειρω (speírō) (G4687) — to sow.
From G4687 ; somethng sown that is seed (including the male sperm); by implication offspring ; specifically a remnant (figuratively as if kept over for planting): - issue seed.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G4690 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σπέρμα spérma | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 13:24 | 25 |
| σπέρματος spérmatos | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | John 7:42 | 8 |
| σπέρματι spérmati | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Luke 1:55 | 5 |
| σπερμάτων spermátōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter | Matthew 13:32 | 3 |
| σπέρματί spérmatí | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Acts 3:25 | 2 |
| σπέρμασιν spérmasin | Noun, Dative, Plural, Neuter | Galatians 3:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4690, 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 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σπερμα appears 218 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 197 verses in 24 books.
- 218
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 197
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 24 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 24 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 1:11 σπέρμα
- Exodus 16:31 σπέρμα
- Leviticus 11:37 σπέρμα
- Numbers 5:13 σπέρμα
- Deuteronomy 1:8 σπέρμα
- Joshua 24:3 σπέρμα
- Ruth 4:12 σπέρμα
- 1 Samuel 1:11 σπέρμα
- 2 Samuel 4:8 σπέρμα
- 1 Kings 1:48 σπέρμα
- 2 Kings 5:27 σπέρμα
- 1 Chronicles 16:13 σπέρμα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4690) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 197. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 1:11 σπέρμα God said, "Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the earth," and it was so.
- Genesis 1:12 σπέρμα The earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind: and God saw that it was good.
- Genesis 1:29 σπέρμα God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food.
- Genesis 3:15 σπέρμα I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."
- Genesis 4:25 σπέρμα Adam knew his wife again. She gave birth to a son, and named him Seth. For, she said, "God has appointed me another child instead of Abel, for Cain killed him."
- Genesis 7:3 σπέρμα Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth.
- Genesis 8:22 σπέρμα While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
- Genesis 9:9 σπέρμα "As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you,
- Genesis 12:7 σπέρμα Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said, "I will give this land to your seed." He built an altar there to Yahweh, who appeared to him.
- Genesis 13:15 σπέρμα for all the land which you see, I will give to you, and to your offspring forever.
- Genesis 13:16 σπέρμα I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then your seed may also be numbered.
- Genesis 15:3 σπέρμα Abram said, "Behold, to me you have given no seed: and, behold, one born in my house is my heir."
- Genesis 15:5 σπέρμα Yahweh brought him outside, and said, "Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." He said to Abram, "So shall your seed be."
- Genesis 15:13 σπέρμα He said to Abram, "Know for sure that your seed will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them. They will afflict them four hundred years.
- Genesis 15:18 σπέρμα In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:
- Genesis 16:10 σπέρμα The angel of Yahweh said to her, "I will greatly multiply your seed, that they will not be numbered for multitude."
- Genesis 17:7 σπέρμα I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your seed after you.
- Genesis 17:8 σπέρμα I will give to you, and to your seed after you, the land where you are traveling, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. I will be their God."
- Genesis 17:9 σπέρμα God said to Abraham, "As for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations.
- Genesis 17:10 σπέρμα This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your seed after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised.
- Genesis 17:12 σπέρμα He who is eight days old will be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he who is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner who is not of your seed.
- Genesis 17:19 σπέρμα God said, "No, but Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him.
- Genesis 19:32 σπέρμα Come, let's make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."
- Genesis 19:34 σπέρμα It came to pass on the next day, that the firstborn said to the younger, "Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine again, tonight. You go in, and lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."
- Genesis 21:12 σπέρμα God said to Abraham, "Don't let it be grievous in your sight because of the boy, and because of your handmaid. In all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice. For from Isaac will your seed be called.
- Genesis 21:13 σπέρμα Also of the son of the handmaid will I make a nation, because he is your seed."
- Genesis 21:23 σπέρμα Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son. But according to the kindness that I have done to you, you shall do to me, and to the land in which you have lived as a foreigner."
- Genesis 22:17 σπέρμα that in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore. Your seed will possess the gate of his enemies.
- Genesis 22:18 σπέρμα In your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice."
- Genesis 24:7 σπέρμα Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house, and from the land of my birth, who spoke to me, and who swore to me, saying, 'I will give this land to your seed.' He will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.
- Genesis 24:60 σπέρμα They blessed Rebekah, and said to her, "Our sister, may you be the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and let your seed possess the gate of those who hate them."
- Genesis 26:3 σπέρμα Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you. For to you, and to your seed, I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to Abraham your father.
- Genesis 26:4 σπέρμα I will multiply your seed as the stars of the sky, and will give to your seed all these lands. In your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed,
- Genesis 26:24 σπέρμα Yahweh appeared to him the same night, and said, "I am the God of Abraham your father. Don't be afraid, for I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham's sake."
- Genesis 28:4 σπέρμα and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you, and to your seed with you, that you may inherit the land where you travel, which God gave to Abraham."
- Genesis 28:13 σπέρμα Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, "I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed.
- Genesis 28:14 σπέρμα Your seed will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed.
- Genesis 32:13 σπέρμα He lodged there that night, and took from that which he had with him, a present for Esau, his brother:
- Genesis 35:12 σπέρμα The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and to your seed after you will I give the land."
- Genesis 38:8 σπέρμα Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her, and raise up seed to your brother."
- Genesis 38:9 σπέρμα Onan knew that the seed wouldn't be his; and it happened, when he went in to his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother.
- Genesis 46:6 σπέρμα They took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt-- Jacob, and all his seed with him,
- Genesis 46:7 σπέρμα his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and he brought all his seed with him into Egypt.
- Genesis 47:19 σπέρμα Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants to Pharaoh. Give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land won't be desolate."
- Genesis 47:23 σπέρμα Then Joseph said to the people, "Behold, I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh. Behold, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.
- Genesis 47:24 σπέρμα It will happen at the harvests, that you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four parts will be your own, for seed of the field, for your food, for them of your households, and for food for your little ones."
- Genesis 48:4 σπέρμα and said to me, 'Behold, I will make you fruitful, and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples, and will give this land to your seed after you for an everlasting possession.'
- Genesis 48:11 σπέρμα Israel said to Joseph, "I didn't think I would see your face, and, behold, God has let me see your seed also."
- Genesis 48:19 σπέρμα His father refused, and said, "I know, my son, I know. He also will become a people, and he also will be great. However, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his seed will become a multitude of nations."
- Exodus 16:31 σπέρμα The house of Israel called the name of it Manna, and it was like coriander seed, white; and its taste was like wafers with honey.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4690) 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.
