Grain, especially wheat
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G4621 names grain, especially wheat, as food, crop, stored wealth, trade commodity, seed, or an image within a teaching. Its fifteen New Testament occurrences keep material and figurative uses close together.
Reader summary
Full entry for σῖτος (G4621) · Open the biblical lexicon
G4621 names grain, especially wheat, as food, crop, stored wealth, trade commodity, seed, or an image within a teaching. Its fifteen New Testament occurrences keep material and figurative uses close together.
The BSB source-word alignment has 15 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include wheat (6), grain (4), of wheat (4), [the] wheat (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 3:12. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (4), Matthew (4), Acts (2), Revelation (2).
G4621 names grain, especially wheat, as food, crop, stored wealth, trade commodity, seed, or an image within a teaching. Its fifteen New Testament occurrences keep material and figurative uses close together. Luke 12:18 puts grain inside the rich man’s plan for larger barns, where abundance becomes hoarded security and his life is demanded before he can enjoy it.
John 12:24 points to a kernel of wheat falling into the ground and dying so that it bears much fruit, a saying Jesus uses as His hour and death come into view. Luke 3:17 distinguishes gathered wheat from burned chaff in John’s judgment proclamation. Revelation 6:6 prices wheat at a denarius per quart, evoking scarcity under the horsemen, while Revelation 18 lists wheat among the goods of an exploitative commercial system.
The noun does not inherently mean believers, prosperity, judgment, or resurrection. The passage assigns those relationships. Because grain is basic food, G4621 helps teachers connect ordinary provision with economic justice, mortality, fruitfulness, and final accountability without losing sight of hunger and real bodies.
G4621 moves from ordinary wheat and food supply to barns, debts, voyages, parables, scarcity, judgment, and Jesus’ seed image for fruitful death. Grain remains material even when a passage gives it symbolic force.
Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and will build bigger ones, and there I will store up all my grain and my goods.
The rich man plans larger barns for his grain and goods, turning a genuine harvest into self-secured abundance while ignoring mortality, God, and generosity toward others.
Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Jesus uses a wheat kernel’s burial and fruitfulness to interpret the approach of His death, so the agricultural image serves the Gospel’s christological hour rather than a general law of success.
His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John portrays the coming One gathering wheat and burning chaff, using threshing-floor separation to announce decisive judgment and not to authorize human sorting of people by prejudice.
And I heard what sounded like a voice from among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine.”
The price of a daily wheat ration reflects severe scarcity within the seal vision, making food cost part of the passage’s portrayal of economic suffering and judgment.
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.
Greek word. Grain crop—especially wheat—fundamental to ancient Mediterranean survival and frequently used metaphorically for spiritual fruitfulness.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
14 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
wheat, grain
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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 2 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.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 14 lexical occurrence verses.
σῖτος is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G4621 carries the weight of ordinary food into some of the New Testament’s most searching scenes. The rich man’s grain is a real harvest, yet his monologue turns abundance into an architecture of self-protection. Jesus’ wheat kernel is also real agricultural knowledge, but in John 12 He uses it to speak of His approaching death and the fruit that follows His self-giving.
John the Baptist’s threshing image intensifies the question of judgment: the coming One, not anxious religious communities, owns the winnowing fork. Revelation 6 returns readers to economics as the announced price of wheat makes staple food painfully expensive. Acts 27 shows grain thrown overboard during a life-threatening voyage, and Revelation 18 places wheat within a luxury economy entangled with human exploitation.
These uses forbid a thin metaphor. Grain feeds bodies, carries monetary value, can be stored responsibly or hoarded foolishly, and becomes a fitting image because seed, harvest, separation, and bread already belong to human life. Faithful teaching lets each passage control the movement. It can call wealthy hearers from self-secured accumulation, proclaim Christ’s fruitful death, warn of divine judgment, and awaken concern for food scarcity without claiming that one noun proves a complete economic or eschatological system.
John.12.24
G4621 is a masculine noun for grain or wheat. Agricultural setting, measures, barns, seed language, threshing, and trade lists determine whether the referent is a crop, commodity, kernel, or figurative member of a comparison.
Old Testament law, wisdom, and prophecy treat grain as covenant provision, tithe, wage, stored resource, and a measure of famine or blessing. The New Testament continues that material world while using wheat in christological, judgment, and apocalyptic images that must remain accountable to their immediate contexts.