rhēma

At its core this word means a word once it has left the mouth: a thing said. The name comes from the verb "to say," and points to that which has been spoken. Where its close relative logos can stretch to name speech as a whole, a connected argument, or even reason itself, this word stays on the ground of an actual utterance, a saying you could quote. Almost all of its New Testament uses are exactly this.

Within that one sense the word covers a wide range. Sometimes it is an ordinary saying: a remark someone made, a charge brought against a person, a report passed along, a remembered word of Jesus. Very often it is the word of God: what God speaks, what the prophets and apostles proclaimed, the gospel preached to be believed, the words of Jesus that carry the Spirit and life. The two groupings below sort the occurrences along that line to help the reader find them.

That split is a reading aid, not two different meanings. The word means the same thing whether an accuser or God is speaking; what changes is who speaks and to what end, not the word itself. In particular there is no special sense in which this word means a fresh, personal word from God as against the written word: the New Testament uses this word and its relative logos for God's word and for everyday speech alike, and trades them freely. Because the line between an everyday saying and a divine word is often soft, a few verses could reasonably sit on either side, and the grouping is offered as a guide rather than a hard rule.

This second meaning grows straight out of the first and is owed to Hebrew. The Greek translators of the Old Testament used this word to render the Hebrew word dabar, which means both a word and the thing a word is about, so that a spoken matter and the event it reports blur together. Writers steeped in that Greek Old Testament carry the habit over, especially Luke: the angel tells Mary that no thing will be impossible, the shepherds go to see this thing that has happened, and in both places the word for it is this one. The saying and the affair it names are felt as one.

The same Hebrew background gives the word a narrower legal use as well: a matter or charge to be settled. The Law required that every charge stand only on the testimony of two or three witnesses, and both Jesus and Paul quote that rule using this word for the case at issue. Which shade is in view is usually settled by the verb and the setting, whether the focus falls on an event that has happened or a matter to be established.