A woman; specially, a wife
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γυνή names a woman or wife, with context deciding whether the stress falls on female personhood, marital relation, public worship, household order, or widowed need. In the Pastoral Epistles, the word is not a token for culture-war abstraction.
Reader summary
Full entry for γυνή (G1135) · Open the biblical lexicon
γυνή names a woman or wife, with context deciding whether the stress falls on female personhood, marital relation, public worship, household order, or widowed need. In the Pastoral Epistles, the word is not a token for culture-war abstraction.
The BSB source-word alignment has 216 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include woman (65), wife (54), women (24), a woman (21), wives (9).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 1:20. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Corinthians (41), Luke (41), Matthew (30), John (22).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
γυνή names a woman or wife, with context deciding whether the stress falls on female personhood, marital relation, public worship, household order, or widowed need. In the Pastoral Epistles, the word is not a token for culture-war abstraction. Paul speaks to women who profess godliness, women who must learn, wives whose husbands are evaluated for household faithfulness, women connected with deacon qualifications, and widows who may be enrolled for church care.
The word therefore requires careful reading. It can guard dignity, discipleship, modest worship, marital fidelity, and mercy for vulnerable women, while refusing to make any one disputed text carry every claim about women in the church.
γυνή functions in the Pastoral Epistles as woman and wife language within worship, learning, household qualification, service character, and widow care. First Timothy 2 addresses women who profess worship of God and must learn. First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 use wife language inside overseer and deacon qualification contexts. First Timothy 5 uses the word for an older widow whose faithful life and need require careful church attention.
Likewise, I want the women to adorn themselves with respectable apparel, with modesty, and with self-control, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,
Paul addresses women who worship God and calls for modesty, self-control, and a visible profession of godliness. The concern is not to diminish women but to shape public worship by reverent order.
But with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess to worship God.
The adornment Paul commends is good deeds. γυνή is tied to visible godliness, not to a merely external social code.
A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness.
The command that a woman learn must not be missed. The verse governs posture in the gathered setting, but it also assumes women are disciples who receive instruction.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet.
This restriction belongs in the argument of 1 Timothy 2. It must be handled with seriousness and restraint, without turning γυνή into a denial of female dignity or discipleship.
An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
Here γυνή is wife language inside overseer qualification. The phrase tests covenant faithfulness and household integrity, not generic male status.
In the same way, the women must be dignified, not slanderers, but temperate and faithful in all things.
The identity of the women in 1 Timothy 3:11 is debated, but the character demand is plain. Dignity, truthful speech, sobriety, and faithfulness govern service near church office.
A widow should be enrolled if she is at least sixty years old, faithful to her husband,
The widowed woman is evaluated by faithful life and real need. The church's household care must include older women who have lived faithfully and now require support.
An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, having children who are believers and who are not open to accusation of indiscretion or insubordination.
Titus uses wife language inside elder qualification. Marriage, children, and household credibility are part of evaluating a man's public care for the church.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. Denotes woman or wife; vocative form conveys respect and affection rather than reproof or severity.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 221 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read versea woman, wife, my lady
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 10 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 5 selected witnesses from 212 lexical occurrence verses.
γυνή is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
γυνή helps readers see that the Pastoral Epistles speak about women and wives within the ordered household of God, not as an isolated topic to be handled by slogans. The same letters that restrict certain teaching authority also command women to learn, honor women who profess worship with good works, require dignity and faithfulness from women connected to service, evaluate leaders by marital fidelity, and protect faithful widows through church care.
The word therefore requires both conviction and restraint. Responsible teaching must not mute Paul’s instructions, but it also must not use those instructions to erase female discipleship, embodied godliness, covenant faithfulness, or the church’s duty of mercy.
1Tim.2.9
γυνή can mean woman or wife. The word itself does not settle the sense apart from context. Possessive phrases, husband language, household setting, and qualification lists often signal wife, while worship and learning contexts may speak more broadly of women.
Genesis presents woman as created by God in relation to man and blessed within the created order. The Pastoral Epistles do not erase that creation frame, but they apply household, worship, and church-order concerns within the new covenant people of God.