σφόδρα
exceedingly
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
- Adverb
- A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.
Every verse where G4970 appears in the Book of Acts — 1 distinct verse. 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.
σφοδρα — transliterated sphódra — is a Greek verb carrying the sense “exceedingly.” More than half of its appearances fall in Matthew. The Greek New Testament uses it across 11 verses — uncommon. It first appears in Matthew 2:10. Related forms include σφοδρως. 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 G4970 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.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 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 →
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.
- Gospels 9 verses · 82%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 18%
- Johannine 1 verse · 9%
- Revelation 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: Exceeding 2×, Greatly 2×, They were exceeding 2×
- American Standard Version: Exceeding 5×, Exceedingly 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Extremely 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Very 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4970 across 11 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4970 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4970 across 4 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4970 across 11 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.
- exceedingly, greatly
Word origin
Origin: neuter plural of sphodros (violent, of uncertain derivation) as adverb
Neuter plural of σφοδρός sphodros ( violent ; of uncertain derivation) as adverb; vehemently that is in a high degree much : - exceeding (-ly) greatly sore very.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4970, 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 σφοδρα appears 304 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 284 verses in 28 books.
- 304
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 284
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 28 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 28 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Genesis 7:18 σφόδρα
- Exodus 1:7 σφόδρα
- Numbers 11:10 σφόδρα
- Deuteronomy 2:4 σφόδρα
- Joshua 3:16 σφόδρα
- Judges 2:15 σφόδρα
- Ruth 1:20 σφόδρα
- 1 Samuel 2:17 σφόδρα
- 2 Samuel 1:26 σφόδρα
- 1 Kings 1:4 σφόδρα
- 2 Kings 10:4 σφόδρα
- 1 Chronicles 10:4 σφόδρα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G4970) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 284. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Genesis 7:18 σφόδρα The waters prevailed, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the surface of the waters.
- Genesis 7:19 σφόδρα The waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered.
- Genesis 12:14 σφόδρα It happened that when Abram had come into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
- Genesis 13:2 σφόδρα Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
- Genesis 13:13 σφόδρα Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinners against Yahweh.
- Genesis 15:1 σφόδρα After these things the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Don't be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward."
- Genesis 17:2 σφόδρα I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."
- Genesis 17:6 σφόδρα I will make you exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of you. Kings will come out of you.
- Genesis 17:20 σφόδρα As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.
- Genesis 18:20 σφόδρα Yahweh said, "Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous,
- Genesis 19:9 σφόδρα They said, "Stand back!" They said, "This one fellow came in to live as a foreigner, and he appoints himself a judge. Now will we deal worse with you, than with them!" They pressed hard on the man, even Lot, and drew near to break the door.
- Genesis 20:8 σφόδρα Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ear. The men were very scared.
- Genesis 21:11 σφόδρα The thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight on account of his son.
- Genesis 24:16 σφόδρα The young lady was very beautiful to look at, a virgin, neither had any man known her. She went down to the spring, filled her pitcher, and came up.
- Genesis 24:35 σφόδρα Yahweh has blessed my master greatly. He has become great. He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and donkeys.
- Genesis 26:13 σφόδρα The man grew great, and grew more and more until he became very great.
- Genesis 26:16 σφόδρα Abimelech said to Isaac, "Go from us, for you are much mightier than we."
- Genesis 27:33 σφόδρα Isaac trembled violently, and said, "Who, then, is he who has taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before you came, and have blessed him? Yes, he will be blessed."
- Genesis 27:34 σφόδρα When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, my father."
- Genesis 30:43 σφόδρα The man increased exceedingly, and had large flocks, maid-servants and men-servants, and camels and donkeys.
- Genesis 32:8 σφόδρα and he said, "If Esau comes to the one company, and strikes it, then the company which is left will escape."
- Genesis 34:7 σφόδρα The sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it. The men were grieved, and they were very angry, because he had done folly in Israel in lying with Jacob's daughter; which thing ought not to be done.
- Genesis 34:12 σφόδρα Ask me a great amount for a dowry, and I will give whatever you ask of me, but give me the young lady as a wife."
- Genesis 39:6 σφόδρα He left all that he had in Joseph's hand. He didn't concern himself with anything, except for the food which he ate. Joseph was well-built and handsome.
- Genesis 41:31 σφόδρα and the plenty will not be known in the land by reason of that famine which follows; for it will be very grievous.
- Genesis 41:49 σφόδρα Joseph laid up grain as the sand of the sea, very much, until he stopped counting, for it was without number.
- Genesis 47:13 σφόδρα There was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.
- Genesis 47:27 σφόδρα Israel lived in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they got themselves possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly.
- Genesis 50:9 σφόδρα There went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company.
- Genesis 50:10 σφόδρα They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and sore lamentation. He mourned for his father seven days.
- Exodus 1:7 σφόδρα The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
- Exodus 1:12 σφόδρα But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They were grieved because of the children of Israel.
- Exodus 1:20 σφόδρα God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty.
- Exodus 9:3 σφόδρα behold, the hand of Yahweh is on your cattle which are in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the herds, and on the flocks with a very grievous pestilence.
- Exodus 9:18 σφόδρα Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as has not been in Egypt since the day it was founded even until now.
- Exodus 9:24 σφόδρα So there was very severe hail, and lightning mixed with the hail, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
- Exodus 10:14 σφόδρα The locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the borders of Egypt. They were very grievous. Before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.
- Exodus 11:3 σφόδρα Yahweh gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.
- Exodus 12:38 σφόδρα A mixed multitude went up also with them, with flocks, herds, and even very much cattle.
- Exodus 14:10 σφόδρα When Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them; and they were very afraid. The children of Israel cried out to Yahweh.
- Exodus 19:18 σφόδρα Mount Sinai, the whole of it, smoked, because Yahweh descended on it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
- Exodus 19:19 σφόδρα When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice.
- Numbers 11:10 σφόδρα Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, every man at the door of his tent: and the anger of Yahweh was kindled greatly; and Moses was displeased.
- Numbers 11:33 σφόδρα While the flesh was yet between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the people, and Yahweh struck the people with a very great plague.
- Numbers 12:3 σφόδρα Now the man Moses was very humble, above all the men who were on the surface of the earth.
- Numbers 13:28 σφόδρα However the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified, [and] very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.
- Numbers 14:7 σφόδρα and they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceeding good land.
- Numbers 14:39 σφόδρα Moses told these words to all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly.
- Numbers 16:15 σφόδρα Moses was very angry, and said to Yahweh, "Don't respect their offering: I have not taken one donkey from them, neither have I hurt one of them."
- Numbers 22:3 σφόδρα Moab was sore afraid of the people, because they were many: and Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G4970) 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.
