χιλίαρχος
military commander
‘military commander’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Genitive-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).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G5506 appears in the Nominative case in the Book of Revelation. 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.
Revelation
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.
The Greek noun χιλιαρχος centers on the idea of “military commander.” The word gravitates to Acts (81%), then Revelation and Mark. It appears 21 verses across 4 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. Older and newer Bibles part ways — “chief captain” in the King James Version, “commander” (Berean Standard Bible) and “chiliarch” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. Dig into 21-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G5506 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 →
- 21
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 21 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #607
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 607 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 21 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 17 verses 81%
- Revelation 2 verses 10%
- Mark 1 verse 5%
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 21 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 17 verses · 81%
- Johannine 3 verses · 14%
- Gospels 2 verses · 10%
- Revelation 2 verses · 10%
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: Chief captain 17×, Chief captains 2×
- American Standard Version: Chief captain 13×
- Berean Standard Bible: Commander 17×, Commanders 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Chiliarch 15×, Chiliarchs 4×, Commander 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G5506 across 22 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 G5506 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 G5506 across 21 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G5506 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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.
- a chiliarch, the commander of a thousand soldiers
- the commander of a Roman cohort (a military tribunal)
- any military commander
Word origin
Derived from χιλιοι (chílioi) (G5507) — thousand.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms G5506 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| χιλίαρχος chilíarchos | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | John 18:12 | 10 |
| χιλιάρχῳ chiliárchō | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 21:31 | 4 |
| χιλίαρχον chilíarchon | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 21:32 | 3 |
| χιλιάρχοις chiliárchois | Noun, Dative, Plural, Masculine | Mark 6:21 | 2 |
| χιλίαρχοι chilíarchoi | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Revelation 6:15 | 1 |
| χιλιάρχων chiliárchōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Revelation 19:18 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G5506, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word χιλιαρχος appears 25 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 25 verses in 9 books.
- 25
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 25
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Exodus 18:21 χιλίαρχος
- Numbers 1:16 χιλίαρχος
- Deuteronomy 1:15 χιλίαρχος
- Joshua 22:14 χιλίαρχος
- 1 Samuel 8:12 χιλίαρχος
- 2 Samuel 18:1 χιλίαρχος
- 1 Chronicles 13:1 χιλίαρχος
- 2 Chronicles 1:2 χιλίαρχος
- Zechariah 9:7 χιλίαρχος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G5506) 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.
- Exodus 18:21 χιλίαρχος Moreover you shall provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God: men of truth, hating unjust gain; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.
- Exodus 18:25 χιλίαρχος Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.
- Numbers 1:16 χιλίαρχος These are those who were called of the congregation, the princes of the tribes of their fathers; they were the heads of the thousands of Israel.
- Numbers 31:14 χιλίαρχος Moses was angry with the officers of the host, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who came from the service of the war.
- Numbers 31:48 χιλίαρχος The officers who were over the thousands of the host, the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds, came near to Moses;
- Numbers 31:52 χιλίαρχος All the gold of the heave-offering that they offered up to Yahweh, of the captains of thousands, and of the captains of hundreds, was sixteen thousand seven hundred fifty shekels.
- Numbers 31:54 χιλίαρχος Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tent of meeting, for a memorial for the children of Israel before Yahweh.
- Deuteronomy 1:15 χιλίαρχος So I took the heads of your tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over you, captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens, and officers, according to your tribes.
- Joshua 22:14 χιλίαρχος and with him ten princes, one prince of a fathers' house for each of the tribes of Israel; and they were everyone of them head of their fathers' houses among the thousands of Israel.
- Joshua 22:21 χιλίαρχος Then the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh answered, and spoke to the heads of the thousands of Israel,
- 1 Samuel 8:12 χιλίαρχος and he will appoint them to him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and [he will set some] to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots.
- 1 Samuel 18:6 χιλίαρχος It happened as they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with instruments of music.
- 1 Samuel 22:7 χιλίαρχος Saul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, you Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds,
- 2 Samuel 18:1 χιλίαρχος David numbered the people who were with him, and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them.
- 1 Chronicles 13:1 χιλίαρχος David consulted with the captains of thousands and of hundreds, even with every leader.
- 1 Chronicles 15:25 χιλίαρχος So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the house of Obed-edom with joy.
- 1 Chronicles 26:26 χιλίαρχος This Shelomoth and his brothers were over all the treasures of the dedicated things, which David the king, and the heads of the fathers' [houses], the captains over thousands and hundreds, and the captains of the host, had dedicated.
- 1 Chronicles 27:1 χιλίαρχος Now the children of Israel after their number, the heads of fathers' [houses] and the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and their officers who served the king, in any matter of the divisions which came in and went out month by month throughout all the months of the year--of every division were twenty-four thousand.
- 1 Chronicles 29:6 χιλίαρχος Then the princes of the fathers' [houses], and the princes of the tribes of Israel, and the captains of thousands and of hundreds, with the rulers over the king's work, offered willingly;
- 2 Chronicles 1:2 χιλίαρχος Solomon spoke to all Israel, to the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and to the judges, and to every prince in all Israel, the heads of the fathers' [houses].
- 2 Chronicles 17:14 χιλίαρχος This was the numbering of them according to their fathers' houses: Of Judah, the captains of thousands: Adnah the captain, and with him mighty men of valor three hundred thousand;
- 2 Chronicles 25:5 χιλίαρχος Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together, and ordered them according to their fathers' houses, under captains of thousands and captains of hundreds, even all Judah and Benjamin: and he numbered them from twenty years old and upward, and found them three hundred thousand chosen men, able to go forth to war, who could handle spear and shield.
- Zechariah 9:7 χιλίαρχος I will take away his blood out of his mouth, And his abominations from between his teeth; And he also will be a remnant for our God; And he will be as a chieftain in Judah, And Ekron as a Jebusite.
- Zechariah 12:5 χιλίαρχος The chieftains of Judah will say in their heart, 'The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in Yahweh of Hosts their God.'
- Zechariah 12:6 χιλίαρχος In that day I will make the chieftains of Judah like a pan of fire among wood, and like a flaming torch among sheaves; and they will devour all the surrounding peoples, on the right hand and on the left; and Jerusalem will yet again dwell in their own place, even in Jerusalem.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G5506) 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.