Bible word study

Phos (Strong’s G5457): Meaning in the Bible

Phos (φῶς) is the Greek word numbered G5457 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as luminousness (in the widest application, natural or artificial, abstract or concrete, literal or figurative). In the King James Bible it is translated fire, light..

• Original wordφῶς
• Transliterationphōs
• Pronunciationfoce
• Strong’s numberG5457
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from an obsolete (to shine or make manifest, especially by rays; compare G5316, G5346);

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Phos appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Phos (G5457) stands behind 71 English renderings in 59 verses across 15 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in John (23), Acts (10), Matthew (7).

How the King James Bible renders Phos, by count

• light49 of 71 (69 percent)
• the light15 of 71 (21 percent)
• fire2 of 71 (3 percent)
• of light2 of 71 (3 percent)
• a light1 of 71 (1 percent)
• lights1 of 71 (1 percent)

Three places to read Phos

• 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.
• John 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
• Romans 2:19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,

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 Phos 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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