A usage (prescribed by habit or law)
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G1485 names an established custom, habitual practice, or recognized usage, including personal routines, communal traditions, legal procedures, and inherited religious observances. A custom may support faithful worship, ordinary care, social order, or repeated prayer, but it may also be disputed or wrongly made a condition of salvation; age and repetition do not settle its authority.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἔθος (G1485) · Open the biblical lexicon
G1485 names an established custom, habitual practice, or recognized usage, including personal routines, communal traditions, legal procedures, and inherited religious observances. A custom may support faithful worship, ordinary care, social order, or repeated prayer, but it may also be disputed or wrongly made a condition of salvation; age and repetition do.
The BSB source-word alignment has 12 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include custom (4), customs (4), . . . (1), [have made a] habit (1), [our] customs (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Luke 1:9. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (7), Luke (3), Hebrews (1), John (1).
G1485 names an established custom, habitual practice, or recognized usage, including personal routines, communal traditions, legal procedures, and inherited religious observances. A custom may support faithful worship, ordinary care, social order, or repeated prayer, but it may also be disputed or wrongly made a condition of salvation; age and repetition do not settle its authority.
In Luke. 22. 39, jesus goes out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples follow him into the setting of prayer before his arrest. In John. 19. 40, joseph and Nicodemus wrap Jesus body with linen and spices according to Jewish burial custom. G1485 opens teaching on how repeated practices shape people and communities while asking which customs serve faithfulness, which remain optional, and which claims burden the gospel.
It corrects contempt for all tradition and uncritical appeals to custom that elevate inherited practice above Christ, grace, truth, or the welfare of neighbors. G1485 keeps custom contextual: Jesus goes as usual to the Mount of Olives in a pattern of prayer, Joseph and Nicodemus honor Jewish burial practice as they care for Jesus body, and teachers in Acts wrongly make circumcision according to Moses custom necessary for salvation.
For G1485, responsible teaching keeps lexical meaning, passage context, canonical synthesis, and present application distinguishable. The noun does not make every old practice binding, every new practice suspect, or every repeated habit spiritually healthy; customs remain accountable to the gospel and to love of God and neighbor.
G1485 appears across passages that develop habit, tradition, worship, burial care, communal gathering, legal order, discernment, and the difference between practice and saving grace. For G1485, the immediate setting decides which part of the range is active, so the witnesses must remain distinct rather than being merged into one formula.
Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him.
Jesus goes out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples follow him into the setting of prayer before his arrest.
So they took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in linen cloths with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom.
Joseph and Nicodemus wrap Jesus body with linen and spices according to Jewish burial custom.
Then some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Some teachers make circumcision according to the custom of Moses a requirement for salvation, prompting the churchs Jerusalem deliberation.
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. Habit or customary practice, often approaching the force of binding law or religious obligation.
Habit or customary practice, often approaching the force of binding law or religious obligation.
(ἔθω), [in LXX: Wis.14:16, Da TH Bel 15, 1Ma.10:89, 2Ma.11:25 13:4, 4Ma.18:5 א R* ;] habit, custom; Luk.22:39, Jhn.19:40, Act.16:21 25:16, Heb.10:25; in Luk.1:9 Act.6:14 15:1 21:21 26:3 28:17, almost in the narrower sense of law (Deiss., BS, 251 f.).
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
12 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
Read versea custom
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 6 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.
ἔθος 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.
G1485 keeps custom contextual: Jesus goes as usual to the Mount of Olives in a pattern of prayer, Joseph and Nicodemus honor Jewish burial practice as they care for Jesus body, and teachers in Acts wrongly make circumcision according to Moses custom necessary for salvation. G1485 names an established custom, habitual practice, or recognized usage, including personal routines, communal traditions, legal procedures, and inherited religious observances.
The selected witnesses keep the teaching concrete: Luke. 22. 39 shows that jesus goes out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples follow him into the setting of prayer before his arrest. , while John. 19. 40 shows that joseph and Nicodemus wrap Jesus body with linen and spices according to Jewish burial custom.. Acts. 15. 1 adds that some teachers make circumcision according to the custom of Moses a requirement for salvation, prompting the churchs Jerusalem deliberation..
G1485 opens teaching on how repeated practices shape people and communities while asking which customs serve faithfulness, which remain optional, and which claims burden the gospel. It corrects contempt for all tradition and uncritical appeals to custom that elevate inherited practice above Christ, grace, truth, or the welfare of neighbors. A church teaching G1485 faithfully will name both the promise and the boundary carried by these contexts, attend to vulnerable hearers, and refuse to make the lexical item prove more than its passages support.
The noun does not make every old practice binding, every new practice suspect, or every repeated habit spiritually healthy; customs remain accountable to the gospel and to love of God and neighbor.
Luke.22.39
G1485 is a Greek noun for habit, custom, usage, or established practice; the surrounding genitive, group, action, or legal setting identifies whether the usage is personal, religious, ethnic, civic, or procedural.
Scripture receives many embodied rhythms of prayer, gathering, remembrance, burial, and communal order while prophets and apostles challenge traditions that obscure divine commands or burden grace. In Christ, inherited practices are tested without treating culture itself as either savior or enemy.