βῆμα
judgment seat
‘judgment seat’ is one of 2 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
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter 9 times (75%)
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter 2 times (17%)
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G968 appears — 12 distinct verses across 5 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.
Matthew 1 verse
John 1 verse
Acts 8 verses
- Acts 7:5 βῆμα n acc sg neut He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he still had no child.
- Acts 12:21 βήματος n gen sg neut On an appointed day, Herod dressed himself in royal clothing, sat on the throne, and gave a speech to them.
- Acts 18:12 βῆμα n acc sg neut But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat,
- Acts 18:16 βήματος n gen sg neut He drove them from the judgment seat.
- Acts 18:17 βήματος n gen sg neut Then all the Greeks laid hold on Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. Gallio didn't care about any of these things.
- Acts 25:6 βήματος n gen sg neut When he had stayed among them more than ten days, he went down to Caesarea, and on the next day he sat on the judgment seat, and commanded Paul to be brought.
- Acts 25:10 βήματος n gen sg neut But Paul said, "I am standing before Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be tried. I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you also know very well.
- Acts 25:17 βήματος n gen sg neut When therefore they had come together here, I didn't delay, but on the next day sat on the judgment seat, and commanded the man to be brought.
Romans 1 verse
2 Corinthians 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.
βημα (bēma) is a Greek noun most often rendered “judgment seat.” It clusters heavily in Acts, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. With 12 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Matthew 27:19. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G968 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #904
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 904 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 8 verses · 67%
- Gospels 2 verses · 17%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 17%
- Johannine 1 verse · 8%
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: Judgment seat 10×
- American Standard Version: Judgment-seat 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Judgment seat 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Judgment seat 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G968 across 13 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 G968 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 G968 across 12 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G968 across 12 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 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.
- a step, pace, the space which a foot covers, a foot-breath
- a raised place mounted by steps
Word origin
Derived from βασις (básis) (G939) — foot.
From the base of G939 ; a step that is foot breath ; by implication a rostrum that is tribunal : - judgment-seat set [foot] on throne.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G968 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| βήματος bḗmatos | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 27:19 | 9 |
| βῆμα bē̂ma | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Acts 7:5 | 2 |
| βήματι bḗmati | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Romans 14:10 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G968, 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
- βαθυς bathýs G901 deep
- βαΐον baḯon G902 palm branch
- βαρος báros G922 heaviness
- βασανος básanos G931 touchstone
- βασιλευς basileús G935 king
- βασταζω bastázō G941 to take up
- βεβαιος bébaios G949 firm
- βεβηλος bébēlos G952 profane
- βωμος bōmós G1041 elevated place
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word βημα appears 2 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 2 verses in 2 books.
- 2
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 2
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Deuteronomy 2:5 βῆμα
- Ezra 18:4 βῆμα
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G968) 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.
- Deuteronomy 2:5 βῆμα don't contend with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on; because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession.
- Ezra 18:4 βῆμα
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G968) 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.
