σπλάγχνον
bowels
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
- 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
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Nominative, Plural, Neuter 5 times (45%)
- Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter 4 times (36%)
- Noun, Dative, Plural, Neuter 2 times (18%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4698 appears — 11 distinct verses across 7 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.
Luke 1 verse
Acts 1 verse
2 Corinthians 2 verses
Philippians 2 verses
- Philippians 1:8 σπλάγχνοις n dat pl neut For God is my witness, how I long after all of you in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.
- Philippians 2:1 σπλάγχνα n nom pl neut If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassion,
Colossians 1 verse
Philemon 3 verses
- Philemon 1:7 σπλάγχνα n nom pl neut For we have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.
- Philemon 1:12 σπλάγχνα n nom pl neut I am sending him back. Therefore receive him, that is, my own heart,
- Philemon 1:20 σπλάγχνα n acc pl neut Yes, brother, let me have joy from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in the Lord.
1 John 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.
σπλαγχνον (splánchnon) is a Greek noun most often rendered “bowels.” Its English rendering has broadened — “bowels” classically, “inner parts” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. The Greek New Testament uses it across 11 verses — uncommon. Philemon dominates its distribution — 3 of 11 verses. It first appears in Luke 1:78. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4698 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 7 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 7 of 27 New Testament books.
- #978
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 978 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Philemon 3 verses 27%
- 2 Corinthians 2 verses 18%
- Philippians 2 verses 18%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 8 verses · 73%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 18%
- Gospels 1 verse · 9%
- Johannine 1 verse · 9%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 9%
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: Bowels 9×
- American Standard Version: Heart 3×, Tender mercies 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Affection 4×, Hearts 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Inner parts 5×, Affections 3×, Entrails 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4698 across 11 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 G4698 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 G4698 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4698 across 11 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 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.
- bowels, intestines, (the heart, lungs, liver, etc.)
Word origin
Origin: "probably strengthened from splen (the "spleen")"
Probably strengthened from σπλήν splē n (the spleen); an intestine (plural); figuratively pity or sympathy : - bowels inward affection + tender mercy.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G4698 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| σπλάγχνα splánchna | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Neuter | Acts 1:18 | 9 |
| σπλάγχνοις splánchnois | Noun, Dative, Plural, Neuter | 2 Corinthians 6:12 | 2 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4698, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word σπλαγχνον appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Proverbs 12:10 σπλάγχνον
- Jeremiah 28:13 σπλάγχνον
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4698) 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.
- Proverbs 12:10 σπλάγχνον A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
- Proverbs 26:22 σπλάγχνον The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, They go down into the innermost parts.
- Jeremiah 28:13 σπλάγχνον Go, and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus says Yahweh: You have broken the bars of wood; but you have made in their place bars of iron.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4698) 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.
