στῆθος
breast
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
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.
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter 3 times (60%)
- Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter 2 times (40%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4738 appears — 5 distinct verses across 3 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 2 verses
- Luke 18:13 στῆθος n acc sg neut But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'
- Luke 23:48 στήθη n acc pl neut All the multitudes that came together to see this, when they saw the things that were done, returned home beating their breasts.
John 2 verses
- John 13:25 στῆθος n acc sg neut He, leaning back, as he was, on Jesus' breast, asked him, "Lord, who is it?"
- John 21:20 στῆθος n acc sg neut Then Peter, turning around, saw a disciple following. This was the disciple whom Jesus sincerely loved, the one who had also leaned on Jesus' breast at the supper and asked, "Lord, who is going to betray You?"
Revelation 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.
στηθος (stēthos) is a Greek noun most often rendered “breast.” It occurs a mere 5 verses across Scripture. It concentrates in Luke, which alone accounts for 40% of its uses. It first appears in Luke 18:13. From the same root come ιστημι, σθενοω and σταδιον. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4738 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,648
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,648 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Luke 2 verses 40%
- John 2 verses 40%
- Revelation 1 verse 20%
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 5 distinct verses.
- Gospels 4 verses · 80%
- Johannine 3 verses · 60%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 40%
- Revelation 1 verse · 20%
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: Breast 3×
- American Standard Version: Breast 2×, Breasts 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Breast 1×, Breasts 1×, Chests 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Chest 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4738 across 5 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 G4738 across 5 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 G4738 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4738 across 5 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.
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.
- the breast
Word origin
Derived from ιστημι (hístēmi) (G2476) — to stand.
From G2476 (as standing prominently); the (entire external) bosom that is chest : - breast.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G4738 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| στῆθος stē̂thos | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Luke 18:13 | 3 |
| στήθη stḗthē | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Luke 23:48 | 2 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4738, 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
- σθενοω sthenóō G4599 to strengthen
- σταδιον stádion G4712 furlong
- σταμνος stámnos G4713 jar
- στασις stásis G4714 insurrection
- σταυρος staurós G4716 cross
- σταχυς stáchys G4719 ear of grain
- στελλω stéllō G4724 to set
- στενος stenós G4728 narrow
- στερεος stereós G4731 strong
- στηκω stḗkō G4739 to stand firm
- στηριζω stērízō G4741 to establish
- στοα stoá G4745 portico
- στυλος stŷlos G4769 pillar
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 15 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word στηθος appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 7 verses in 5 books.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 7
- 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
- Genesis 3:14 στῆθος
- Exodus 28:29 στῆθος
- Job 39:20 στῆθος
- Proverbs 6:10 στῆθος
- Daniel 2:32 στῆθος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4738) 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.
- Genesis 3:14 στῆθος Yahweh God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above every animal of the field. On your belly shall you go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.
- Exodus 28:29 στῆθος Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment on his heart, when he goes in to the holy place, for a memorial before Yahweh continually.
- Exodus 28:30 στῆθος You shall put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be on Aaron's heart, when he goes in before Yahweh: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel on his heart before Yahweh continually.
- Job 39:20 στῆθος Have you made him to leap as a locust? The glory of his snorting is awesome.
- Proverbs 6:10 στῆθος A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep:
- Proverbs 24:33 στῆθος A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep;
- Daniel 2:32 στῆθος As for this image, its head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of brass,
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4738) 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.
