A "lance"
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λόγχη names a spear or lance, a soldier's standard weapon. ' John records this detail with unusual insistence, interrupting the narrative in the following verses to stress his own eyewitness testimony to it (John 19:35).
Reader summary
Full entry for λόγχη (G3057) · Open the biblical lexicon
λόγχη names a spear or lance, a soldier's standard weapon. ' John records this detail with unusual insistence, interrupting the narrative in the following verses to stress his own eyewitness testimony to it (John 19:35).
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include with a spear (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 19:34. Its strongest book concentrations include John (1).
λόγχη names a spear or lance, a soldier's standard weapon. Its only New Testament occurrence describes the act that confirms Jesus' death in John 19:34: 'one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.' John records this detail with unusual insistence, interrupting the narrative in the following verses to stress his own eyewitness testimony to it (John 19:35).
The spear thrust served a practical purpose within the scene, confirming death so the bodies could be removed before the Sabbath (John 19:31), but John treats the resulting flow of blood and water as significant enough to require personal certification and explicit scriptural connection (John 19:36-37). Teachers should hold together the physical, forensic function of the spear thrust, proving genuine death, with John's clear signal that the detail carries theological weight he wants readers to receive as reliably attested fact, not legend.
John 19:34 records a soldier's routine, practical act, confirming a death before sundown, and turns it into one of the most carefully attested details in the entire Gospel. John does not merely report the spear thrust; he stops the narrative to insist personally on its truth and to tie it explicitly to prophecy already written.
Instead, one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.
John 19:34 records that 'one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.'
The one who saw it has testified to this, and his testimony is true. He knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.
John 19:35 immediately interrupts the narrative to insist on his own eyewitness testimony to this detail, 'He who saw this has testified, and his testimony is true,' an unusually direct authorial intrusion in this Gospel.
And, as another Scripture says: “They will look on the One they have pierced.”
John 19:36-37 ties the scene to two Scripture citations, that none of Jesus' bones would be broken and that 'they will look on Him whom they have pierced,' anchoring the spear thrust in explicit prophetic fulfillment.
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. A soldier's piercing weapon, appearing in the Crucifixion narrative as instrument of Christ's final wound.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
1 Greek text appearance shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a lance, spear
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 1 case and number pattern. 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.
λόγχη is a primary word - no further derivation.
John 19:34 records a soldier's routine, practical act, confirming a death before sundown, and turns it into one of the most carefully attested details in the entire Gospel. John does not merely report the spear thrust; he stops the narrative to insist personally on its truth and to tie it explicitly to prophecy already written. The scene confirms the full, physical reality of Jesus' death against any later suggestion that he had merely fainted or appeared to die, while simultaneously fulfilling specific scriptural expectation.
Preachers can use this word to show John's Gospel treating a soldier's ordinary action as both verifiable history and fulfilled prophecy at once. This word opens a teaching doorway on the reliability of the Passion witness: John interrupts his own narrative to insist personally on the truth of the spear thrust, tying an ordinary soldier's confirming act to specific prophecy in Zechariah 12:10, and modeling careful, attested testimony rather than legend.
It gives preachers a strong text for the historical seriousness of the Gospel's Passion account. It corrects readings that treat the spear thrust as a minor physical detail; John's own emphatic personal testimony in John 19:35 signals its unusual importance in the narrative. Frame λόγχη as a real, forensic detail confirming Jesus' genuine death, deliberately tied by John to specific fulfilled prophecy and personally attested as true.
John.19.34
Frame λόγχη as a real, forensic detail confirming Jesus' genuine death, deliberately tied by John to specific fulfilled prophecy and personally attested as true. Linguistically, λόγχη should be allowed to name a spear or lance without carrying claims the cited passages do not make.
Zechariah 12:10 prophesies that Israel would one day 'look on Me, the One they have pierced,' and John 19:34-37 presents the spear thrust and the resulting sight of Jesus' wounded body as the fulfillment of that prophetic word, alongside the Passover-lamb pattern of unbroken bones.
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