Hand
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Cheir means hand, and by extension may refer to touch, grasp, agency, action, strength, or entrusted responsibility. The New Testament uses hand language in very concrete ways: Jesus stretches out His hand and touches a leper, believers are secure in His hand, God stretches out His hand to heal, and the hand of the Lord is with gospel witness.
Reader summary
Full entry for χείρ (G5495) · Open the biblical lexicon
Cheir means hand, and by extension may refer to touch, grasp, agency, action, strength, or entrusted responsibility. The New Testament uses hand language in very concrete ways: Jesus stretches out His hand and touches a leper, believers are secure in His hand, God stretches out His hand to heal, and the hand of the Lord is with gospel witness.
The BSB source-word alignment has 177 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include hand (65), hands (57), . . . (15), [the] hands (6), [the] hand (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 3:12. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (45), Luke (26), Mark (26), Matthew (24).
Cheir means hand, and by extension may refer to touch, grasp, agency, action, strength, or entrusted responsibility. The New Testament uses hand language in very concrete ways: Jesus stretches out His hand and touches a leper, believers are secure in His hand, God stretches out His hand to heal, and the hand of the Lord is with gospel witness. The same word also appears in warnings about laying on hands too quickly and about the fearful reality of falling into the hands of the living God.
Cheir is therefore not a single symbol. It is a concrete body word that Scripture uses for mercy, security, divine action, human responsibility, ministry recognition, and judgment.
Cheir ranges from literal touch to divine agency, human action, ministry recognition, secure keeping, and judgment. The word must be read by context: a healing hand, a protecting hand, a commissioning hand, and the hands of judgment are not the same claim.
Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said. “Be clean!” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
Jesus reaches out His hand and touches the leper. The hand displays willing mercy and cleansing authority.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.
Jesus says no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand. Hand language marks secure keeping by the Shepherd.
As You stretch out Your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.”
The church prays for God to stretch out His hand to heal. The hand is divine action through the name of Jesus.
The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
The hand of the Lord is with the witnesses, and many believe. The phrase marks divine favor and effective mission.
Do not be too quick in the laying on of hands and thereby share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.
Paul warns against hasty laying on of hands. The act carries public responsibility and shared accountability.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Falling into the hands of the living God is fearful. Hand language can also name judgment before God.
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. Metonymically represents personal power or agency, especially divine power when used of God's activity.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 179 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a hand
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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 8 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 1 selected witness from 176 lexical occurrence verses.
χείρ is built from these roots:
Leadership recognition carries spiritual weight and shared responsibility.1 Timothy 5:17-25
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Cheir is one of those ordinary body words that becomes theologically rich because Scripture keeps it concrete. Jesus hand touches the unclean man and cleanses him. His hand holds His sheep so securely that no one can snatch them away. The church prays for Gods hand to heal, and Acts says the hand of the Lord is with gospel witnesses. Yet hands also carry accountability: leaders must not lay hands on someone hastily, and sinners must reckon with the hands of the living God.
The word therefore helps teachers connect embodied action with divine agency and human responsibility. It should make readers ask what a hand is doing in the passage, not assume one fixed symbol.
John.10.28
Cheir usually means hand, but it can also function idiomatically for agency, control, grasp, power, or responsibility. Identify whose hand is named and what action it performs.
Old Testament hand language often speaks of power, deliverance, judgment, and human work. The New Testament continues that range, centering mercy, security, mission, and judgment around Christ and His people.