ἄρα
therefore
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
- Particle
- A short, often untranslatable function word adding nuance or connection.
Every verse where G686 appears in the Book of Hebrews — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Hebrews
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.
At its core, αρα (ára) means “therefore.” First canonically at Matthew 7:20, it enters the text early. With 36 verses in 11 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Romans (31% of all occurrences). From the same root come αιρω, αιρεομαι and αρα. Dig into 36-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G686 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 →
- 36
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 36 distinct verses.
- 11 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 11 of 27 New Testament books.
- #406
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 406 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 36 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Romans 11 verses 31%
- 1 Corinthians 5 verses 14%
- Galatians 5 verses 14%
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 36 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 26 verses · 72%
- Gospels 5 verses · 14%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 5 verses · 14%
- Hebrews 2 verses · 6%
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: Then 20×, Therefore 11×, Haply 2×
- American Standard Version: Then 10×, So 8×, Therefore 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Then 19×, So 8×, Therefore 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Then 27×, So 12×, Therefore 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G686 across 44 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 7 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G686 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 G686 across 38 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 9 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G686 across 49 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.
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.
- therefore, so then, wherefore
Word origin
Derived from αιρω (aírō) (G142) — to raise up.
Probably from G142 (through the idea of drawing a conclusion); a particle denoting an inference more or less decisive (as follows): - haply (what) manner (of man) no doubt perhaps so be then therefore truly wherefore. Often used in connection with other particles especially G1065 or G3767 (after) or G1487 (before). Compare also G687 .
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 4 distinct written forms G686 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἄρα ára | Particle | Matthew 12:28 | 30 |
| ἄραγε árage | Particle | Matthew 7:20 | 3 |
| Ἄρα Ára | Particle | Romans 5:18 | 2 |
| ἆράγε âráge | Particle | Acts 8:30 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G686, 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
- αιρεομαι hairéomai G138 to choose
- αρα ará G685 curse
- αρεσκω aréskō G700 to please
- αριθμος arithmós G706 number
- αρκεω arkéō G714 to ward off
- αρρην árrhēn G730 male
- αρτι árti G737 now
- αρτος ártos G740 bread
- αρτυω artýō G741 to season
- αρωμα árōma G759 spice
- ορος óros G3735 mountain
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 14 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
