Bible word study

Skotos (Strong’s G4655): Meaning in the Bible

Skotos (σκότος) is the Greek word numbered G4655 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as shadiness, i.e. obscurity (literally or figuratively). In the King James Bible it is translated darkness..

• Original wordσκότος
• Transliterationskótos
• Pronunciationskot'-os
• Strong’s numberG4655
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from the base of G4639;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Skotos appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Skotos (G4655) stands behind 32 English renderings in 31 verses across 16 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Matthew (7), Luke (4), Acts (3).

How the King James Bible renders Skotos, by count

• darkness30 of 32 (94 percent)
• of darkness1 of 32 (3 percent)
• that darkness1 of 32 (3 percent)

Three places to read Skotos

• Matthew 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
• Luke 23:44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
• Ephesians 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

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 Skotos 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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