Bible word study

Hagios (Strong’s G40): Meaning in the Bible

Hagios (ἅγιος) is the Greek word numbered G40 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as sacred (physically, pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially, consecrated). In the King James Bible it is translated (most) holy (one, thing), saint..

• Original wordἅγιος
• Transliterationhágios
• Pronunciationhag'-ee-os
• Strong’s numberG40
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from (an awful thing) (compare G53, G2282);

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Hagios appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Hagios (G40) stands behind 232 English renderings in 219 verses across 23 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Acts (54), Revelation (27), Luke (20).

How the King James Bible renders Hagios, by count

• holy151 of 232 (65 percent)
• saints61 of 232 (26 percent)
• the holy8 of 232 (3 percent)
• one4 of 232 (2 percent)
• ghost2 of 232 (1 percent)
• he that is holy1 of 232 (0 percent)

Three places to read Hagios

• Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
• Acts 10:44 While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.
• Ephesians 5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

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 Hagios 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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