At its core this word names food, the thing that is eaten. It runs from a hungry crowd needing something to eat before nightfall, to the shared foods that early Christians argued over, to a piece of solid food set against a cup of milk.
The same word stretches naturally into a picture of nourishment that is not physical. Jesus says his food is to do the will of the one who sent him; Paul calls the manna in the wilderness spiritual food and contrasts solid food with the milk fit for beginners. In each case the point rides on the ordinary meaning: just as the body lives on what it eats, so a person is sustained by something deeper.
A close relative is βρῶσις, which leans toward the act of eating while this word is the food itself. τροφή is another near-neighbor for nourishment, and ἄρτος narrows to bread in particular.
Nuances
1afood, something to eat: a meal, provisions, or the items eaten
Names food as the concrete item that is set out and eaten, the dish or portion itself.Mat 14:15Luk 9:13Luk 3:11
Marks the contrast between solid food and milk, the diet of the mature against that of infants.1Co 3:2
Carries the debates over which foods are clean and whether to eat food offered to idols, treating the food as a defined item.Mrk 7:19Rom 14:151Co 8:81Ti 4:3
Both
Both name the physical food a person takes in as nourishment for the body.1Co 6:13Jhn 6:55
Points to a particular item or kind of food, a specific dish set before someone, which is why it turns up wherever the question is which foods may be eaten.Mrk 7:19Rom 14:151Co 8:81Ti 4:3
Names solid food as opposed to milk, the fare of the grown rather than the infant.1Co 3:2Heb 9:10
Both
Both simply name the ordinary food people eat, receive, and share with one another.Luk 3:11Luk 9:13Act 2:46Act 9:19
Names food in general, whatever is eaten, so it is the natural word for questions about diet and what may or may not be put on the table.Rom 14:15Rom 14:201Co 8:81Ti 4:3
Marks the contrast between solid food and milk, standing for mature, substantial nourishment rather than a starter diet.1Co 3:2
Points to eating as a bodily process, the food that passes through the stomach, where the concern is digestion rather than any particular dish.Mrk 7:191Co 6:13
Both
Both name what people eat to stay alive, so the two can stand side by side for provision: the loaves already in hand and the further food that must be bought for a hungry crowd.Luk 9:13
Names a specific baked thing, the loaf, so it can be counted and handed out one by one, as when a crowd is fed from a fixed number of loaves.Mat 14:19Mrk 6:41Mrk 8:6
Stands for daily sustenance as a whole in the fixed prayer for provision, where the single loaf represents everything a person needs to live.Mat 6:11Luk 11:3
Carries a set religious sense that "food" never does: the consecrated loaves kept in the sanctuary, and the loaf taken and broken at the Lord's table.Mat 12:4Mrk 2:26Mat 26:26Mrk 14:22
Names a category rather than a substance: whatever a person happens to eat, which is why it can simply be bought in quantity or handed to someone who has none.Mat 14:15Luk 9:13Luk 3:11
Because it names no particular food, it is the word the letters reach for when the question is what may or may not be eaten, and whether eating rules count for anything.Rom 14:151Co 8:81Ti 4:3Heb 9:10Mrk 7:19
Its emptiness of any particular content lets it be filled with something other than physical food at all, so Jesus can call doing the will of the one who sent him his own food, and Paul can measure teaching by whether people are ready for milk or for solid food.Jhn 4:341Co 3:2
Both
Both can cover the wilderness provision, from opposite directions: Paul calls what Israel ate "spiritual food" without ever naming the substance, while John's crowd names the substance itself.1Co 10:3Jhn 6:31
Both name something people really ate, and both turn up in arguments that eating it settles nothing on its own: food does not bring anyone before God, and the generation that ate manna died all the same.1Co 8:8Jhn 6:49
It is a name for one substance welded to one story, so using it always points back to what the ancestors ate in the desert; nobody buys it, shares it, or debates whether it may be eaten.Jhn 6:31Jhn 6:49
Because it is one identifiable thing with a history, a portion of it can be kept as a memorial, sealed in a gold jar inside the covenant chest.Heb 9:4
The same name can be held out as a gift still to come, the hidden manna promised to the one who holds out to the end.Rev 2:17
Naming that one provision lets it be set against something greater: the fathers ate it and still died, so the bread that came down from heaven is not simply more of the same.Jhn 6:49Jhn 6:58
brōma in the other biblical languages
אֹכֶלHebrew“food”the ordinary Hebrew word for food, what is eaten
carries the New Testament's running debate over whether food touches a person's standing with God, where eating becomes a test of conscience rather than a matter of survivalRom 14:151Co 8:81Co 8:13
names the dietary rules and ritual food regulations that the new covenant sets aside, so it points to food as a category of religious obligationHeb 9:10Heb 13:91Ti 4:3
stretches to spiritual nourishment, contrasting the milk a beginner can take with the solid teaching a mature believer needs, or naming a person's deepest sustenance1Co 3:2Jhn 4:34
Both
both name plain food as the thing a person eats, shared with the hungry or set before someone to keep them aliveLuk 3:11Rut 2:14
both are the ordinary word reached for when a New Testament writer renders, or an Old Testament writer states, simply what there is to eatMat 14:15Gen 43:2
denotes food as a stockpiled supply: grain gathered and stored against famine, the provisions a household lays up or carries on a journeyGen 41:35Gen 41:48Gen 42:10
names food as a ration measured out person by person, the daily portion each one is to gather or be allottedExo 12:4Exo 16:16Exo 16:18
is the food God hands out to every living creature in its season, the provision the whole created order waits on him to givePsa 104:27Psa 145:15Job 38:41
לֶחֶםHebrew“food: bread”bread, and by extension food or a meal, the everyday Hebrew staple word
Names food as a general category, the solid stuff a person eats, often set against drink; it never means a baked loaf in particular.Heb 9:101Co 6:13
Carries a figurative sense of nourishment for the inner life: mature teaching as solid food set against milk, and doing God's will described as one's food.1Co 3:2Jhn 4:34
Sits at the center of the early church's disputes over clean and unclean eating and meat offered to idols, where a believer's freedom must yield to a weaker conscience.Rom 14:151Co 8:81Co 8:13
Both
Both name the food a person eats to stay alive, the ordinary sustenance shared out at a meal.Gen 25:34Luk 9:13
reaches into figurative, spiritual nourishment: the teaching a person feeds on, with basic instruction as "milk" and deeper truth as solid food1Co 3:21Co 10:3
carries a whole debate about conscience and defilement: whether eating certain food makes a person clean or unclean, and how one believer's eating affects anotherMrk 7:19Rom 14:151Co 8:81Co 8:13
Both
both are the plain word for food: the edible provision given to living creatures to eat and keep aliveGen 1:29Gen 9:3Mat 14:15Luk 9:13
names fuel handed over to the fire: wood or a doomed city given to the flames to be burned up, food in the sense of what fire devoursEzk 15:4Ezk 15:6Ezk 21:32
names prey given to scavengers: corpses of the slain handed to wild beasts and birds to be devoured, a picture of judgmentEzk 29:5Ezk 34:5Ezk 39:4Jer 12:9
Food treated as a matter of religious dispute in the early church: what may be eaten, whether it was offered to idols, and how eating affects a weaker believer. Paul insists food itself does not commend us to God.Rom 14:151Co 8:81Ti 4:3
Food as a figure for spiritual nourishment and mature teaching, set against milk for the immature. Jesus calls doing the Father's will his food.Jhn 4:341Co 3:21Co 10:3
Both
Both simply name that which is eaten, the nourishment people gather and consume. Noah stores up all kinds of food, and the crowds need to buy food for themselves.Gen 6:21Mat 14:15
Food as the fruit and produce of trees and plants given for eating. The garden's trees are pleasant to the sight and good for food.Gen 2:9Gen 3:6Lev 19:23
The grim picture of corpses left as food for birds and wild beasts, a standing image of judgment. The dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky.Deu 28:26Jer 7:33Psa 79:2
What scholars say about brōma
Standard lexica gloss the term simply as "food, that which is eaten," formed from the verb meaning "to eat." BDAG separates the literal sense from figurative extensions, including the "solid food" of 1 Corinthians 3:2 set against milk, and the sustenance imagery of John 4:34. Behm's TDNT article notes the word's frequent appearance in early Christian debates over dietary law and food offered to idols, where it carries no cultic weight of its own but takes its force from the surrounding context.