Bible word study

Arche (Strong’s G746): Meaning in the Bible

Arche (ἀρχή) is the Greek word numbered G746 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as (properly abstract) a commencement, or (concretely) chief (in various applications of order, time, place, or rank). In the King James Bible it is translated beginning, corner, (at the, the) first (estate), magistrate.

• Original wordἀρχή
• Transliterationarchḗ
• Pronunciationar-khay'
• Strong’s numberG746
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from G756;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Arche appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Arche (G746) stands behind 58 English renderings in 56 verses across 18 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in 1 John (9), John (8), Hebrews (6).

How the King James Bible renders Arche, by count

• beginning26 of 58 (45 percent)
• the beginning12 of 58 (21 percent)
• principalities6 of 58 (10 percent)
• first3 of 58 (5 percent)
• corners2 of 58 (3 percent)
• principality2 of 58 (3 percent)

Three places to read Arche

• Matthew 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
• John 16:4 But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.
• Hebrews 3:14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;

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 Arche 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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