Earth: soil
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γῆ (ge) covers earth in four related senses: the planet as a whole, a specific region of land, the soil or ground itself, and the earthly realm in contrast to the heavenly. All four meanings appear in the NT, and they are held together by a common theological conviction: the earth was created good, has been subjected to futility through human sin, and is destined for renewal, not abandonment.
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Full entry for γῆ (G1093) · Open the biblical lexicon
γῆ (ge) covers earth in four related senses: the planet as a whole, a specific region of land, the soil or ground itself, and the earthly realm in contrast to the heavenly. All four meanings appear in the NT, and they are held together by a common theological conviction: the earth was created good, has been subjected to futility through human sin, and is.
The BSB source-word alignment has 250 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include earth (152), Land (28), ground (18), soil (10), [the] land (8).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 2:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (82), Matthew (43), Acts (33), Luke (25).
This entry includes 3 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
γῆ (ge) covers earth in four related senses: the planet as a whole, a specific region of land, the soil or ground itself, and the earthly realm in contrast to the heavenly. All four meanings appear in the NT, and they are held together by a common theological conviction: the earth was created good, has been subjected to futility through human sin, and is destined for renewal, not abandonment. The local Greek index currently counts about 248 local-index occurrences for exact Strong's ID G1093, making it the most frequent of the four words treated in Session 87-88.
Revelation 21:1 announces the climax of the earth's story: 'Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth (ge), for the first heaven and the first earth (ge) had passed away, and the sea was no more.' The word 'new' is kainos, fresh, renewed, not neos (newly made from nothing). The new earth is the renovation of the old earth, not its replacement with something entirely different. The creation is not discarded; it is made new. Romans 8:21 frames the same reality: the creation itself 'will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.' The earth is not the problem to be escaped; it is the object of God's redemptive purpose alongside humanity.
Matthew 5:5 makes the earth the inheritance of the meek: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (ge).' The Beatitude draws on Psalm 37:11 and anticipates the new earth of Revelation 21, the meek's inheritance is not a disembodied heaven but the renewed ge. The inheritance of the earth is the NT's way of saying that the redemption God is working toward is material and this-worldly, even as it transcends current categories.
John 12:24 uses ge for the soil in Jesus' grain-of-wheat parable: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth (ge) and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.' The ge here is the soil of death and resurrection, the physical image for the paradox of the cross. The earth receives the seed in death and returns it in new life. The creation's own rhythms of death-and-germination anticipate the central pattern of the gospel.
For the preacher, γῆ (ge) is the word that insists the earth matters to God and that the gospel is a ge-renewing, not ge-escaping, story.
γῆ (ge) The local Greek index currently counts about 248 local-index occurrences for exact Strong's ID G1093 in the NT. The Synoptics use it for the physical soil (parables), specific regions (the land of Judea, the land of Egypt), and the earth as a whole in contrast to heaven. John uses it for the soil of death and germination (12:24) and for the origin of the earthly as opposed to the heavenly (3:31).
Paul uses it for the material creation in contrast to the heavenly (Eph 1:10; Col 1:16, 1:20). Revelation uses it for the earth as the theater of divine judgment and the object of eschatological renewal (21:1).
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
The eschatological new earth: kainos (renewed) rather than neos (entirely new). The passing away of the first earth is not annihilation but transformation, the same earth under new conditions. 'The sea is no more' is not a geographic statement but a theological one: in the ANE, the sea was the realm of chaos and the power of death (the beast comes from the sea in Rev 13:1).
The new earth is an earth from which chaos and death have been permanently removed. The new creation is the fulfillment of what the first creation was always intended to be.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The meek's inheritance is the ge, the renewed earth, drawn from Psalm 37:11. The Beatitude is not about acquiring earthly real estate in the present age; it is an eschatological promise about the inheritance of the new creation. The meek are those who, like Jesus (Mat 11:29, 'I am gentle and lowly'), do not grasp and seize but wait for God's gift. Their inheritance is the earth that God will give, the new ge that replaces the earth where the aggressive and powerful currently appear to win.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
The Lord's Prayer places the ge at the center of the kingdom prayer: God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven. The direction is heaven-to-earth, not earth-to-heaven. The prayer is not for souls to escape the ge into heaven but for the character of heaven to come down and transform the ge. This is the same direction as the new Jerusalem descending in Revelation 21, the divine purpose moves from heaven toward earth, not the other way.
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.
The ge as the medium of death and resurrection: the seed falls into the soil, dies, and bears fruit. This is the creation's own parable of the cross, the pattern of dying-and-rising written into the physical world. Jesus applies it directly to himself: 'And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself' (Jhn 12:32). The grain-of-wheat parable shows that the cross is not an interruption of the natural order but its deepest expression, the life-through-death pattern built into the ge by the Creator.
And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross.
The scope of reconciliation through the cross: ta epi tes ges (the things on the earth) and ta en tois ouranois (the things in the heavens). The reconciliation is cosmic, the ge is not left outside the scope of what Christ's blood accomplishes. The earth and everything on it is the object of God's reconciling purpose, not merely the stage on which individual souls are saved. The new earth of Revelation 21 is the completed form of what the cross has already accomplished in principle.
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. earth: soil
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 252 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
the earth, soil, land
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Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
Read versethe earth, soil, land
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 5 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.
γῆ is a primary word - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
γῆ (ge) is the word that corrects one of the most persistent distortions of Christianity: the idea that the goal is to escape the earth and live in a bodiless heaven. Matthew 6:10 (the kingdom coming to the ge), Matthew 5:5 (the meek inheriting the ge), Revelation 21:1 (the new ge), and Colossians 1:20 (the ge reconciled through the cross) all point in the same direction: the earth is not a problem to be left behind but a creation to be renewed.
The preacher who handles ge faithfully will resist the dualism that treats the physical world as spiritually irrelevant. The new creation of Revelation 21 is not the soul's liberation from matter; it is matter renewed, the ge made fresh. The Lord's Prayer shapes the congregation's imagination in the right direction: the petition is for heaven's character to come down and fill the ge, not for the faithful to escape the ge and ascend to heaven.
This has immediate practical implications: the earth's care matters because the earth is the object of God's redemptive purpose; the resurrection of the body matters because the ge is the home of resurrected, embodied life; and the seeds that fall into the ge and die (Jhn 12:24) are the pattern of every ministry that gives itself for the sake of what God will bring forth.
Rev.21.1
γῆ (ge) is a first-declension feminine noun. The English prefix 'geo-' (geography, geology, geometry, literally 'earth-measuring') derives directly from it. In the NT, ge is distinct from kosmos (G2889, the world as an ordered system) and oikumene (G3625, the inhabited world). Ge emphasizes the physical material substance, soil, ground, land. The LXX uses ge to translate the Hebrew eretz in Genesis 1:1 ('In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth').
The NT's use of 'heaven and earth' (ouranos kai ge) as a merism for all creation (Mat 5:18; 24:35; Rev 14:7) follows LXX usage. The new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21:1 directly alludes to Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, 'Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth', using the same LXX phrasing.
The OT foundation for ge is the Hebrew eretz (H776), which appears over 2,500 times. The theological uses of eretz in the OT span: the created world (Gen 1:1), the specific land promised to Abraham (Gen 12:1, 'go to the land I will show you'), and the earth as the domain of human life under divine governance (Ps 24:1, 'the earth is the Lord's'). The OT covenant is fundamentally a land covenant: God promises Abraham a specific ge (eretz) for his descendants, and the prophets anticipate a renewal of that land in eschatological terms.
Isaiah 65:17-25 is the key text: the new heavens and new earth (the ge renewed) are described in terms of lasting community, productive work, long life, and the peaceable kingdom, not escape from the material world but its transformation. Romans 8:19-23 translates this into NT terms: the creation was subjected to futility not by its own choice but by human sin, and it waits with eager longing for the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
The ge is not passive scenery for human salvation but an active participant in the story, groaning toward the same renewal that the gospel promises to human beings.
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