βίος
life
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Accusative-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
- 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.
Every verse where G979 appears in the Book of 1 John — 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.
1 John
- 1 John 2:16 βίου n gen sg masc For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn't the Father's, but is the world's.
- 1 John 3:17 βίον n acc sg masc But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart of compassion against him, how does the love of God remain in him?
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.
“life” is the headline sense of the Greek noun βιος (bíos). It clusters heavily in Luke, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. With 10 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. Scripture first uses it in Mark 12:44. From the same root come βιαζω and βιοω. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G979 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 5 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 5 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,056
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,056 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 10 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 10 distinct verses.
- Gospels 6 verses · 60%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 5 verses · 50%
- Johannine 2 verses · 20%
- Pauline corpus 2 verses · 20%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 20%
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: Life 5×, Living 5×
- American Standard Version: Life 4×, Living 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Life 2×, Live on 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Life 6×, Livelihood 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G979 across 11 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G979 across 10 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 G979 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G979 across 10 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.
- life
Word origin
Origin: a primary word
A primary word; life that is (literally) the present state of existence; by implication the means of livelihood : - good life living.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G979 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| βίον bíon | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Mark 12:44 | 7 |
| βίου bíou | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine | Luke 8:14 | 3 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G979, 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 βιος appears 23 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 23 verses in 4 books.
- 23
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 23
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Ezra 7:26 βίος
- Job 7:1 βίος
- Proverbs 3:2 βίος
- Song of Solomon 8:7 βίος
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G979) 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.
- Ezra 7:26 βίος Whoever will not do the law of your God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed on him with all diligence, whether it be to death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.
- Job 7:1 βίος "Isn't a man forced to labor on earth? Aren't his days like the days of a hired hand?
- Job 7:6 βίος My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, And are spent without hope.
- Job 7:16 βίος I loathe my life. I don't want to live forever. Leave me alone; for my days are but a breath.
- Job 8:9 βίος (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, Because our days on earth are a shadow.)
- Job 9:25 βίος "Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
- Job 10:5 βίος Are your days as the days of mortals, Or your years as man's years,
- Job 10:20 βίος Aren't my days few? Cease then, Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,
- Job 12:12 βίος With aged men is wisdom, In length of days understanding.
- Job 14:5 βίος Seeing his days are determined, The number of his months is with you, And you have appointed his bounds that he can't pass;
- Job 14:6 βίος Look away from him, that he may rest, Until he shall accomplish, as a hireling, his day.
- Job 14:14 βίος If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, Until my release should come.
- Job 15:20 βίος The wicked man travails with pain all his days, Even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor.
- Job 21:13 βίος They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol.
- Proverbs 3:2 βίος For length of days, and years of life, And peace, will they add to you.
- Proverbs 3:16 βίος Length of days is in her right hand. In her left hand are riches and honor.
- Proverbs 4:10 βίος Listen, my son, and receive my sayings. The years of your life will be many.
- Proverbs 5:9 βίος Lest you give your honor to others, And your years to the cruel one;
- Proverbs 16:13 βίος Righteous lips are the delight of kings. They value one who speaks the truth.
- Proverbs 31:3 βίος Don't give your strength to women, Nor your ways to that which destroys kings.
- Proverbs 31:12 βίος She does him good, and not harm, All the days of her life.
- Proverbs 31:14 βίος She is like the merchant ships. She brings her bread from afar.
- Song of Solomon 8:7 βίος Many waters can't quench love, Neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, He would be utterly scorned. Friends
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G979) 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.
