Bible word study

Agathos (Strong’s G18): Meaning in the Bible

Agathos (ἀγαθός) is the Greek word numbered G18 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as "good" (in any sense, often as noun). In the King James Bible it is translated benefit, good(-s, things), well..

• Original wordἀγαθός
• Transliterationagathós
• Pronunciationag-ath-os'
• Strong’s numberG18
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. a primary word;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Agathos appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Agathos (G18) stands behind 102 English renderings in 90 verses across 21 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Romans (21), Matthew (17), Luke (16).

How the King James Bible renders Agathos, by count

• good75 of 102 (74 percent)
• things5 of 102 (5 percent)
• good things4 of 102 (4 percent)
• thing4 of 102 (4 percent)
• a good2 of 102 (2 percent)
• goods2 of 102 (2 percent)

Three places to read Agathos

• Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
• Acts 9:36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.
• Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Agathos in the original Greek lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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