φέγγος
light
‘light’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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.
Every verse where G5338 appears in the Book of Luke — 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.
Luke
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.
“light” is the headline sense of the Greek noun φεγγος (phéngos). With only 3 verses it sits in the long tail of Greek New Testament vocabulary. It concentrates in Matthew, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 24:29. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. See the sense tree, 3-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G5338 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 3 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,203
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,203 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 3 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 3 distinct verses.
- Gospels 3 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 33%
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: Light 3×
- American Standard Version: Light 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Light 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Light 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5338 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G5338 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G5338 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5338 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- light
- the bright sunshine, the beam of light
Word origin
Derived from φως (phōs) (G5457) — light.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5338, 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
- φαινω phaínō G5316 to shine
- φημι phēmí G5346 to declare
- φωστηρ phōstḗr G5458 light-giver
- φωσφορος phōsphóros G5459 morning star
- φωτεινος phōteinós G5460 light
- φωτιζω phōtízō G5461 to enlighten
Derived from this word
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 10 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word φεγγος appears 20 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 19 verses in 7 books.
- 20
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 19
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- 2 Samuel 22:13 φέγγος
- Job 3:4 φέγγος
- Ezekiel 1:4 φέγγος
- Hosea 7:6 φέγγος
- Joel 2:10 φέγγος
- Amos 5:20 φέγγος
- Habakkuk 3:4 φέγγος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5338) 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.
- 2 Samuel 22:13 φέγγος At the brightness before him Coals of fire were kindled.
- 2 Samuel 23:4 φέγγος [He shall be] as the light of the morning, when the sun rises, A morning without clouds, [When] the tender grass [springs] out of the earth, Through clear shining after rain.
- Job 3:4 φέγγος Let that day be darkness; Don't let God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine on it.
- Job 10:22 φέγγος The land dark as midnight, Of the shadow of death, without any order, Where the light is as midnight.'"
- Job 22:28 φέγγος You shall also decree a thing, and it shall be established to you. Light shall shine on your ways.
- Job 38:12 φέγγος "Have you commanded the morning in your days, And caused the dawn to know its place;
- Job 41:10 φέγγος None is so fierce that he dare stir him up. Who then is he who can stand before me?
- Ezekiel 1:4 φέγγος I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, with flashing lightning, and a brightness round about it, and out of the midst of it as it were glowing metal, out of the midst of the fire.
- Ezekiel 1:13 φέγγος As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches: [the fire] went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.
- Ezekiel 1:27 φέγγος I saw as it were glowing metal, as the appearance of fire within it round about, from the appearance of his loins and upward; and from the appearance of his loins and downward I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness round about him.
- Ezekiel 1:28 φέγγος As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Yahweh. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke.
- Ezekiel 10:4 φέγγος The glory of Yahweh mounted up from the cherub, [and stood] over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of Yahweh's glory.
- Ezekiel 43:2 φέγγος Behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shined with his glory.
- Hosea 7:6 φέγγος For they have made ready their heart like an oven, While they lie in wait. Their baker sleeps all the night. In the morning it burns as a flaming fire.
- Joel 2:10 φέγγος The earth quakes before them. The heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, And the stars withdraw their shining.
- Joel 4:15 φέγγος
- Amos 5:20 φέγγος Will the day of Yahweh not be darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it?
- Habakkuk 3:4 φέγγος His splendor is like the sunrise. Rays shine from his hand, where his power is hidden.
- Habakkuk 3:11 φέγγος The sun and moon stood still in the sky, At the light of your arrows as they went, At the shining of your glittering spear.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5338) 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.
