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Oikia is the Greek word for a house, a household, or a dwelling. In the New Testament it covers the physical structure (a house built on rock or sand), the social unit of a household (including all who dwell under its head), and by extension a family's property or estate.
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Full entry for οἰκία (G3614) · Open the biblical lexicon
Oikia is the Greek word for a house, a household, or a dwelling. In the New Testament it covers the physical structure (a house built on rock or sand), the social unit of a household (including all who dwell under its head), and by extension a family's property or estate.
The BSB source-word alignment has 94 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include house (53), home (10), household (6), houses (5), a house (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 2:11. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (25), Matthew (25), Mark (18), Acts (12).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Oikia is the Greek word for a house, a household, or a dwelling. In the New Testament it covers the physical structure (a house built on rock or sand), the social unit of a household (including all who dwell under its head), and by extension a family's property or estate. The word is closely related to oikos (house, household — used more for the social institution) and the two terms often overlap.
Oikia appears in some of the most foundational teaching of Jesus: the two houses (built on rock and sand) at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the house divided against itself, the house swept clean and then re-occupied by unclean spirits. It appears in Paul's letters in the context of household governance (caring for one's own household before claiming care for the church), in the description of house-churches (the church in someone's oikia), and in the Corinthian passage about the earthly tent/house that will be dissolved and the eternal house from God (2 Cor.
5. 1). The word is ordinary enough to appear in narratives without theological weight, but it carries the recurring biblical theme that the household is the primary social unit through which God's purposes move: Israel's households at the Passover, Rahab's household spared, the households of Cornelius, Lydia, and the Philippian jailer who believe and are baptized in Acts.
The local NT index currently counts about 93 selected occurrences of oikia, concentrated especially in Matthew, Luke, and John. It functions both as a simple location marker (went into a house) and as a theologically loaded unit in parables, household-church references, and Paul's teaching on household leadership. The related oikos carries more of the institutional household weight, but oikia carries the same range in many contexts.
Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
The closing parable of the Sermon on the Mount uses oikia to establish the stakes of hearing and obeying Jesus' teaching. The house is not incidental; it is the life that is built over time by accumulated choices. Its foundation determines what remains when the storm comes. The oikia built on Jesus' words is the life formed by his teaching.
Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
Jesus' response to the Pharisees who accuse him of casting out demons by Beelzebul uses oikia for the internal coherence required for effective action. A household divided against itself cannot stand. The same logic applies to the accusation: if Satan casts out Satan, his oikia is divided — he is fighting himself. The word here is political and social before it is spiritual.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is dismantled, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
Paul contrasts the earthly oikia (here identified with the tent/body) with the eternal oikia from God in heaven. The physical dwelling is temporary; the heavenly one is permanent. This is the eschatological use: the believer's final oikia is not this body or this address but the God-built, eternal dwelling.
An overseer must manage his own household well and keep his children under control, with complete dignity.
The qualification for church leadership is grounded in oikia management: one who cannot lead an oikia cannot lead the church (v.5 makes the logic explicit). The household is the proving ground for leadership character. This is a consequential use of the word for ecclesiology: church governance is modeled on and proved by household governance.
Then he brought them into his home and set a meal before them. So he and all his household rejoiced that they had come to believe in God.
The Philippian jailer's household believes and is baptized. The oikia becomes the first unit of belief and the first gathering of the church in Philippi. This household-as-first-church pattern appears in Acts repeatedly (Cornelius, Lydia, Crispus) and establishes the household as the natural cell of early Christian community.
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. Physical dwelling structure itself, distinct from οἶκος which emphasizes the entire estate or household members.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 95 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
Read versea house, household
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.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 93 lexical occurrence verses.
οἰκία 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.
Oikia is the word at the intersection of where people live and where ministry is often received. In Acts, several key scenes show the gospel reaching households, such as Lydia, the Philippian jailer, and Cornelius. Those texts should not be flattened into a single household doctrine, but they do show that the word can name the lived setting where faith, hospitality, leadership, and witness take shape.
Jesus' two-houses parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount makes discipleship concrete: hearing and doing are like building on rock, while hearing without obedience is like building on sand. Paul's household leadership qualification in 1 Timothy 3:4 also keeps character close to ordinary life. The home is not a private exemption from discipleship; it is one of the places where faithfulness becomes visible.
Matt.7.24
Oikia and oikos are closely related — both come from the root oik- (dwelling, home). Classical Greek distinguished them (oikia = the physical dwelling; oikos = the household as social and economic institution), but in Koine and NT Greek the distinction is often blurred and the words appear interchangeably. The broader oikos family includes oikodomō (to build a house), oikodespotēs (master of the house), oikonomia (household management, stewardship — origin of 'economy'), and oikoumenē (the inhabited world — the household at maximum scale).
The household vocabulary in Greek is therefore a wide conceptual world, and oikia sits at its concrete center.
The Hebrew bayit (house, household) is the Old Testament background for oikia. The covenant promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 turns on the double meaning of bayit: David wants to build God a house (temple), but God promises to build David a house (dynasty). The theological play on the word — physical structure and dynastic lineage — runs through the Old Testament's covenant promises.
The New Testament picks up this double meaning when Jesus speaks of the Father's house (John 14. 2 — the dwelling place he prepares) and when Paul describes the church as the household of God (Eph. 2. 19: you are members of the household — oikeioi — of God). The household that Passover Israel gathered in to eat the lamb, the household of David whose throne would be established forever, the household into which the Philippian jailer's family was gathered by baptism — these are all part of one long story about the oikia as the place where God meets his people and forms his community.
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