StrongerBible

gastēr

γαστήρ

GreekG1064“with child, pregnant, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 1:18Mat 1:23Mat 24:19Mrk 13:17Luk 1:31Luk 21:231Th 5:3Tit 1:12Rev 12:2
Word studygas-TAIRnoun

What gastēr means

1

the womb: a woman's belly as the place where a child is conceived and carried, nearly always inside the everyday phrase for being pregnant

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

The Greek word names the belly, the soft front of the body below the ribs. In the New Testament that plain physical sense is only ever put to one use: describing a woman who is carrying a child. Greek said this with a blunt, ordinary phrase, literally "to have in the belly," which was simply how the language said "to be pregnant." English Bibles smooth it into "with child" or "pregnant," and the belly drops out of sight.

Because the phrase was so ordinary, it brings no special reverence of its own. It turns up in an angel's announcement and in a warning about war in exactly the same plain form. The weight of each passage comes from the situation, not from the word: the shock of Mary being found pregnant before the wedding, the pity in the cry of woe over pregnant women caught in a siege, the sudden and unstoppable onset of labor pains as a picture of the day of the Lord.

One verse tilts the word slightly. When Gabriel tells Mary what will happen, the Greek pairs this word with the verb for conceiving rather than the verb for having, so it names the womb itself as the place where the child begins. Versions that read "you will conceive in your womb" are following that wording closely.

The word also stands behind one of the most quoted lines in the New Testament. Matthew 1:23 cites Isaiah 7:14 in its old Greek translation, where this same phrase renders the Hebrew word for a woman who is already pregnant (הָרָה).

Nuances

1ato be pregnant: the fixed phrase "to have in the belly," said of a woman who is carrying a child
Mat 1:18Mat 1:23Mat 24:19Mrk 13:17Luk 21:231Th 5:3Rev 12:2
1bthe womb itself, named as the place where a child is conceived
TranslatabilityDirect
Luk 1:31
2

a belly in the sense of an appetite: a name thrown at people who live to be fed and will not work

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

In one place the word has nothing to do with pregnancy. The letter to Titus quotes a stinging line of Cretan verse: the islanders are "always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies." Calling people bellies was an old insult in Greek, and it works by reduction. Strip a person of everything else and what is left is the stomach he keeps filling.

The pairing with laziness is the point. The charge is not only that these people eat too much but that eating is all they do, so they live off other people's work. Most English versions turn the phrase into "lazy gluttons," which states the accusation clearly but is tidier than the original, because the Greek never says "glutton" at all. It just says "bellies."

Tit 1:12

What scholars say about gastēr

The lexica treat γαστήρ as a single physical noun (belly, paunch) with two derived uses that between them account for every New Testament occurrence. BDAG and LSJ both list the belly as the seat of appetite, with γαστέρες ἀργαί in Titus 1:12 as the standing example of the metonymy, and both list the womb, where the periphrasis ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχειν functions as the ordinary idiom for pregnancy; LSJ documents the same idiom well outside biblical Greek. The eight pregnancy occurrences divide between ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχω (seven) and συλλαμβάνω ἐν γαστρί (Luke 1:31), the latter reflecting Septuagint annunciation diction (compare Judges 13:3, 5). Matthew 1:23 reproduces the Septuagint of Isaiah 7:14, where ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει renders the Hebrew הָרָה; commentators note that Matthew's citation follows the Greek closely, and that the celebrated exegetical dispute at that verse concerns παρθένος rendering עַלְמָה, not γαστήρ, whose sense is not in question. The Titus quotation is attributed in antiquity to Epimenides of Crete, and the Pastorals commentators read ἀργαί as sharpening the charge from mere appetite to parasitic idleness.

Sources

  • Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., s.v. γαστήρlexicon
  • Liddell, Scott, and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. γαστήρlexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. γαστήρlexicon
  • Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. H. Balz and G. Schneider, s.v. γαστήρtheological-dictionary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1, International Critical Commentary, on Matthew 1:18 and 1:23commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, International Critical Commentary, on Titus 1:12commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of γαστήρ

dative f s

γαστρὶ

Mat 1:18, Mat 1:23, Mat 24:19, Mrk 13:17, Luk 1:31, Luk 21:23, 1Th 5:3, Rev 12:2

nominative f p

γαστέρες

Tit 1:12