Bible word study

Nomos (Strong’s G3551): Meaning in the Bible

Nomos (νόμος) is the Greek word numbered G3551 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as law (through the idea of prescriptive usage), genitive case (regulation), specially, (of Moses (including the volume); also of the Gospel), or figuratively (a principle). In the King James Bible it is translated law..

• Original wordνόμος
• Transliterationnómos
• Pronunciationnom'-os
• Strong’s numberG3551
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from a primary (to parcel out, especially food or grazing to animals);

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Nomos appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Nomos (G3551) stands behind 198 English renderings in 158 verses across 12 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Romans (75), Galatians (33), Acts (19).

How the King James Bible renders Nomos, by count

• law181 of 198 (91 percent)
• the law12 of 198 (6 percent)
• laws2 of 198 (1 percent)
• of the law2 of 198 (1 percent)
• the1 of 198 (1 percent)

Three places to read Nomos

• Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
• Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
• 1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

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 Nomos 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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