seed: the living source from which a plant grows or a line of descendants comes
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
One picture runs through every use of this word: a seed is the small thing planted now that carries a whole future inside it. A grain dropped in a field becomes a plant; the seed a parent passes on becomes children and a whole family line. The New Testament moves easily between these because they are the same idea, the source out of which new life unfolds.
Most often the word does not mean a literal grain at all but people: a person's offspring, and beyond them the long chain of descendants. This is why it is everywhere in talk of God's promises, which were made to Abraham and to his "seed," meaning the family and nation that came from him. The word looks both backward to an ancestor and forward to all who spring from him.
In a handful of places it narrows to one promised descendant rather than a crowd, and the writers use it to point to Jesus as the long-awaited heir of Abraham and David. It can also name the physical capacity to have children, and once it is used as an image for the new nature God plants in a person who is born of him. The senses below sort these out, but they are shades of one thing, not separate words.
Nuances
1aa seed that is sown in the ground and grows into a plant
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 13:24Mat 13:27Mat 13:32Mat 13:37Mat 13:38*Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
1boffspring: a person's children and the wider line of descendants who come from an ancestor
1cthe one promised descendant, used to point to Jesus as the heir of Abraham and David
Act 13:23Rom 1:3Gal 3:16 (3×)*Gal 3:192Ti 2:8
1dthe capacity to father or conceive children, and by extension the new life God plants in a person
Heb 11:111Jn 3:9*
Disputed
Whether the singular "seed" in the promise to Abraham can carry the weight of a single individual, as opposed to its ordinary meaning of a collective line of descendants.
majorityThe word is a collective singular that normally means descendants as a group, but here functions as a representative singular that legitimately focuses on one heir, Christ, as the one in whom the whole line is summed up.; BDAG, s.v. σπέρμα; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (NIGTC)
minorityPaul is reading the singular form against its plain collective sense, an interpretive move rooted in early Jewish exegesis rather than ordinary grammar.; TDNT, s.v. σπέρμα
in most of its uses it does not mean a grain at all but a person's offspring and line of descendantsRom 9:7Gal 3:29
Both
both name the small sown thing that grows into a plantMat 13:321Co 15:38
Only seed
the English word "seed" for human descendants now sounds old-fashioned or biblical, where the Greek word was the ordinary everyday term for one's children and family
it reaches beyond immediate children to the whole descending line from an ancestor, which is why it carries the promises made to AbrahamRom 4:13Act 3:25
Both
both name those who descend from a person rather than the person themselvesJhn 8:33
Only offspring
the English word "offspring" tends to suggest the immediate young of a parent, missing the long ancestral line the Greek word stretches across
“descendants”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“children”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How sperma differs from similar Greek words
γενεάa generation, the people alive at one time, where this word is the line of descent that runs across generations
names the people alive together at one time, a single age or era, often the present crowd Jesus rebukes as wicked or unbelievingMat 12:39Mrk 8:38Luk 11:29
counts the spans of history themselves, as when an ancestry is tallied in so many generations or a promise reaches to all generationsMat 1:17Luk 1:48Eph 3:21
τέκνονa child considered as one born to a parent, where this word can mean a single descendant but usually the whole posterity
Names descendants collectively, as a whole line stretching across generations rather than any one person; this is the word for a family's offspring as a single ongoing lineage.Act 7:6Rom 9:29Rom 11:1
Carries the covenant promise made to Abraham and his offspring, the technical promise-word that Paul can press down to a single heir; this theological weight is built into the word and has no parallel in the ordinary word for a child.Gal 3:16Rom 4:13Act 3:25
Keeps its literal farming sense of seed that is sown, and the related picture of biological seed, an image of planting and growth that the word for a child never carries.Mat 13:24Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
Both
Both can name physical descendants, and the levirate command uses them together: a man who dies childless is to have offspring raised up for him, which is to leave children behind.Mat 22:24Mrk 12:19
Both appear in the argument over who truly counts as Abraham's family, where being his offspring and being his children are weighed against each other to ask whether descent alone makes one an heir.Rom 9:7Rom 9:8
Names an individual child seen in relation to a parent, the one who was born to a particular mother and father; it is a relational word, not a word for a line of descent.Mat 2:18Luk 1:7Luk 2:48
Used as a tender form of address and a term of affection, where an elder calls a younger person his child; the word for offspring is never warmed this way.Mrk 2:51Co 4:14Gal 4:19
Extends to belonging and likeness, naming people as the children of God or children of a place because they share its nature, a figurative kinship the word never reduces to biology.Jhn 1:12Rom 8:16Jhn 11:52
It can mean plain agricultural seed: the good grain a farmer scatters in his field, the tiny mustard seed, the various kinds of seed God gives bodies to.Mat 13:24Mat 13:27Mat 13:32Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
Of people it runs forward from a named ancestor: the descendants who will come after him, and who inherit what was promised to him.Luk 1:55Act 3:25Act 7:5Rom 4:13
It can mean the child who keeps a man's household going, so that leaving none behind is the way of saying a man died childless.Mat 22:25Mrk 12:20Mrk 12:22Luk 20:28
It can narrow from a whole line down to one person, which is how Paul reads the promise to Abraham as pointing at a single heir.Gal 3:16Gal 3:19
It is something people boast about. To say "we are Abraham's offspring" is to claim standing, freedom, and a share in his honor.Jhn 8:332Co 11:22Rom 11:1
Both
Both name people as the offspring of a parent, so who produced them is what settles how they are described.Mat 3:7Jhn 8:37
Both borrow the language of breeding and sowing and turn it on people rather than on animals or crops.Mat 12:34Mat 13:38
Both can gather a whole group of people under one collective word instead of counting individuals.Luk 3:7Rev 12:17
It names people by the creature that bred them, so the label is a verdict on what they are like. Calling a crowd "brood of vipers" says they are poisonous by breeding.Mat 3:7Luk 3:7
Every one of its four uses is an accusation thrown at an audience, tied to a warning about the judgment they are trying to dodge.Mat 23:33Mat 3:7Luk 3:7
It looks back at the stock that produced someone and stops there. The parent it names is a kind of animal, not an ancestor with a name, a promise, or a family line to inherit.Mat 12:34Mat 23:33
Names the single physical kernel itself, one tiny grain held up as the smallest thing a person plants, as with the proverbial mustard grain.Mat 17:20Luk 17:6Mat 13:31
Points to the individual kernel that must fall into the ground and die before it can bear fruit, the grain as a countable planted unit.Jhn 12:241Co 15:37
It is the ordinary farming word for a seed dropped into the ground that grows into a plant, from a grain sown in a field to the tiny mustard seed.Mat 13:24Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
When it speaks of family it names the descendants themselves, the actual people who came from an ancestor, and it can stretch to a whole nation claiming one forefather centuries later.Jhn 8:33Rom 9:7Gal 3:29
It can narrow from a crowd of descendants down to one promised heir, which is how the New Testament writers use it to identify Jesus as the descendant of David and of Abraham.Rom 1:3Gal 3:162Ti 2:8
It also covers the power to have children in the first place, and once it pictures the new life God plants inside a person who belongs to him, uses that have no connection to a belt or a body part.Heb 11:111Jn 3:9
Both
Both words say that someone belongs to a particular family line, so an English Bible can render either one as "descendants": Peter says God swore to David that a king would come from his own body, and Paul says God brought Israel a Savior out of David's offspring.Act 2:30Act 13:23
Both do heavy work in arguments about who counts as belonging to Abraham, one saying the priestly tribe came out of his body, the other saying it is his offspring that God came to help.Heb 7:5Heb 2:16
It names a real part of the body, the band of the lower back and hips that a belt is fastened around, which is simply what John the Baptist wore his leather belt on.Mat 3:4Mrk 1:6
Because a long robe had to be gathered up and belted before anyone could run or work, this word becomes the stock picture of being dressed and ready for action, with nothing to do with family at all.Luk 12:35Eph 6:141Pe 1:13
Even where it does speak of a family line, it points at the ancestor rather than at the children: it names the man's own body as the place the line starts, which is how Hebrews can say Levi was still inside his forefather when Melchizedek met him.Heb 7:5Heb 7:10
Names the literal seed that is sown in the ground to produce a plant, the smallest grain that grows into something large.Mat 13:24Mat 13:32Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
Points forward to offspring and descendants, the posterity that carries a family line into the future, above all the seed of Abraham.Rom 4:13Rom 9:7Gal 3:16Jhn 8:33
Serves the law of raising up children for a dead brother, where a man leaves seed so his name continues.Mat 22:24Mrk 12:19Luk 20:28
Both
Both take a plant image and apply it to family descent, tying a person to the line of David and to the promise carried through it.Rev 22:16Rom 1:32Ti 2:8
Names the underground root of a tree or plant, the part that anchors it and draws up life, so that without it the plant withers.Mat 3:10Mat 13:6Mrk 11:20Luk 8:13
Points backward to the source or origin from which something grows, the hidden cause that feeds a result.1Ti 6:10Heb 12:15Rom 11:16
Marks a person as the ancestral stock or origin of a line, the one others spring from, as in the Root of Jesse and of David.Rom 15:12Rev 5:5Rev 22:16
sperma in the other biblical languages
זֶרַעHebrew“seed: children”the standard Hebrew word for seed and offspring that this Greek word translates throughout the Old Testament, carrying the same range from sown grain to descendants
Paul's argument in Galatians presses the word's singular form: because the promise says seed (one) and not seeds (many), he reads the single offspring as Christ. The Greek word becomes the hinge of a grammatical and theological argument.Gal 3:16
In the New Testament it can name a new-birth principle planted in the believer by God, an image the Old Testament word does not carry.1Jn 3:9
Both
Both name literal seed sown in the ground, the kernel a farmer plants to raise a crop.Gen 1:11Mrk 4:31
Both move from seed to people, naming a person's offspring and line of descendants.Gen 12:7Rom 9:7
The Greek word is what the New Testament uses to carry the Hebrew word when it quotes God's promise of descendants to Abraham, so the same promise is voiced in both languages.Gen 22:18Act 3:25
The Hebrew word also means human semen, the bodily emission that makes a man unclean, a plainly physical use the Greek word does not take on in the New Testament.Lev 15:16Lev 18:20
It can mean the act or season of sowing itself, the planting that pairs with harvest, not only the grain that is sown.Gen 8:22
Names the actual grain that a farmer puts into the ground, so the same word covers both planting and family line.Mat 13:24Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
Can narrow to one single descendant rather than a crowd, which is how Paul reads the promise to Abraham as pointing to one person.Gal 3:16Rom 1:32Ti 2:8
Works as a legal term in the law about a man who dies childless: a surviving brother marries the widow and "raises up seed" so the dead man's line and inheritance continue.Mat 22:24Mrk 12:19Luk 20:28
Stretches to something planted in a person rather than in soil, naming the life from God that stays in someone born of him.1Jn 3:9
Both
Both name the descendants a person leaves behind, the children and grandchildren spoken of together as one line.Jhn 8:33Rom 9:7Job 5:25Isa 48:19
Both measure God's blessing on a person by the descendants who come after, and both put that blessing in the language of promise.Act 3:25Rom 4:13Isa 61:9Isa 65:23
Names children by what they do rather than by what they are: they are the ones who come out from a parent, so it is always a group and never a planted seed.Job 5:25Isa 48:19Isa 22:24
Reaches past people to whatever the ground sends up, so the earth itself has "offspring": its produce and everything that comes out of it.Isa 42:5Isa 34:1Job 31:8
Belongs to poetry and works as the matching partner of the ordinary word for children, filling the second half of a line that has already said "seed" or "sons".Isa 44:3Job 21:8Job 27:14
It still names a real seed dropped in the ground and the plant that comes up from it, so the farming picture is live and literal, not only a figure of speech.Mat 13:24Mrk 4:311Co 15:38
It runs forward in time along a whole line of descent from one ancestor, which is why it carries the promises made to Abraham and everyone who comes after him.Luk 1:55Act 3:25Rom 4:13Gal 3:29
It can narrow from a crowd of descendants to one promised heir, and the writers use that narrowing to point at Jesus.Gal 3:16Rom 1:32Ti 2:8
It is the legal word for direct children in questions of inheritance: whether a man died leaving any, and who therefore carries the family on.Mat 22:24Mrk 12:19Luk 20:28
It reaches past people to the power of having children at all, and once to the new life God plants inside a person born of him.Heb 11:111Jn 3:9
Both
Both take a picture from growing things and apply it to a family, so the people who come from a household are spoken of as what it puts out.Gal 3:29Isa 22:24
Both gather many people under one word instead of naming them one by one, which is why English has to reach for a plural such as "descendants" or "offshoots".Jhn 8:33Rom 9:7Isa 22:24
It names the side branches of a household rather than the main line: the lesser relatives and dependents, set apart in the verse from the ordinary word for a man's own offspring standing right beside it.Isa 22:24
These relatives are pictured as weight hung on one man at a single moment, and the point is a warning rather than a promise, since the next verse pulls the peg out of the wall and everything on it falls.Isa 22:24
The sense itself is uncertain: the word turns up only here, so it has to be reasoned out from the verse around it, and some readers hear contempt in it while others do not take it as people at all.Isa 22:24
What scholars say about sperma
The standard lexica treat σπέρμα as a single word with a related range: the seed of plants, the male seed or procreative power, and most frequently human offspring or posterity, the last reflecting the Septuagint's use of the term to render Hebrew zera (H2233). The collective singular for descendants is well attested in both Greek and the Septuagint, which is the background to the contested singular argument of Galatians 3:16, where commentators divide over whether Paul exploits an ordinary representative singular or an exegetical move drawn from Jewish interpretation. 1 John 3:9 is generally read as a figurative use for the divine generative principle implanted in the believer.