The head of a family
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G3617 names the person responsible for a household or estate, commonly rendered householder, master of the house, or landowner. Matthew 10:25 compares disciples with their teacher and household servants with their master while warning about slander directed at Jesus and His household.
Reader summary
Full entry for οἰκοδεσπότης (G3617) · Open the biblical lexicon
G3617 names the person responsible for a household or estate, commonly rendered householder, master of the house, or landowner. Matthew 10:25 compares disciples with their teacher and household servants with their master while warning about slander directed at Jesus and His household.
The BSB source-word alignment has 12 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include homeowner (2), owner (2), . . . (1), a homeowner (1), a landowner (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 10:25. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (7), Luke (4), Mark (1).
G3617 names the person responsible for a household or estate, commonly rendered householder, master of the house, or landowner. Matthew 10:25 compares disciples with their teacher and household servants with their master while warning about slander directed at Jesus and His household. Matthew 13:52 portrays a trained scribe as a householder bringing new and old treasures from storage.
Matthew 20:1 introduces the vineyard owner who hires laborers, and Matthew 24:43 uses a householder's watchfulness in a warning about an unexpected thief. The noun identifies a social role; it does not itself declare the person's conduct just, divine, male in every modern application, or an image of God. Parable context supplies comparisons and limits. G3617 helps teachers examine stewardship, authority, labor, readiness, and the use of household resources without baptizing domination or importing every detail of a story into theology.
G3617 appears chiefly in Jesus' teaching, where household responsibility supports sayings and parables about discipleship, teaching, labor, stewardship, vigilance, conflict, and judgment. The role is concrete, but each comparison has a distinct point.
It is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
Jesus pairs disciple and teacher with servant and householder while preparing His followers for slander, so the comparison concerns shared treatment and allegiance.
Then He told them, “For this reason, every scribe who has been discipled in the kingdom of heaven is like a homeowner who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
A kingdom-trained scribe resembles a householder bringing out new and old treasures, commending responsible teaching rather than novelty or antiquity by itself.
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.
The vineyard householder hires laborers at different hours, beginning a parable whose generosity and complaint must be read within Jesus' kingdom teaching.
But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.
The householder who would stay alert if he knew the thief's hour supports Jesus' call to readiness, not suspicion toward every neighbor.
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. Master of household with absolute authority; used of both literal householders and God's authority in parables.
Master of household with absolute authority; used of both literal householders and God's authority in parables.
(οἶκος, δεσπότης), the master of a house, a householder: Mat.10:25 13:27 20:11 24:43, Mrk.14:14, Luk.12:39 13:25 14:21; ἄνθρωπος οἰ., Mat.13:52 20:1 21:33; pleonast., oἰ. τ. οἰκίας, Luk.22:11 (see Bl., § 81, 4).
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 head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a household
Read versea head of a 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 4 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 3 selected witnesses from 12 lexical occurrence verses.
οἰκοδεσπότης is built from these roots:
G3617 places authority inside a household economy. A householder holds resources, makes decisions, protects property, deploys stored goods, hires laborers, and shapes the experience of dependents and guests. Jesus uses that recognizable role in several distinct ways. Matthew 10 emphasizes association: disciples should not expect better public treatment than their teacher, and slander against the master reaches the household.
Matthew 13 pictures teaching stewardship, where the trained scribe brings out treasures both new and old for others' benefit. Matthew 20 places labor and generosity at the center of a vineyard story, but the parable is not a complete wage policy and its landowner should not be used to silence modern workers. Matthew 24 uses a householder's vigilance to call disciples to readiness for the Son of Man.
Elsewhere, household masters may reject, receive, or judge, and each narrative controls the analogy. The noun itself neither sanctifies hierarchy nor condemns ownership. Faithful preaching asks how entrusted power is exercised and refuses to make vulnerable household members invisible. Leaders, parents, employers, teachers, and property stewards may recognize analogies to their responsibilities, but none receives absolute authority from the label.
Under Jesus' teaching, household power becomes accountable, resources are brought out for faithful service, and readiness answers to the coming Lord.
Matt.13.52
G3617 combines household language with the term for master or despot and denotes the responsible head or owner of a house or estate. Narrative setting determines whether the role concerns family, property, teaching stores, labor, vigilance, or parabolic judgment.
Scripture's household and stewardship patterns include Abrahamic households, wisdom's ordered home, prophetic critiques of landowners, and apostolic household responsibilities. These parallels illuminate accountability but do not transfer every ancient social arrangement directly into a timeless institutional hierarchy.