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Προφητεία names the gift and exercise of speaking God's word — the prophetic declaration that interprets the divine will and makes it intelligible and applicable to the community of faith. The word encompasses both OT predictive prophecy (Jesus using the term for Isaiah's fulfillment in Matthew 13:14) and the NT gift of prophecy given by the Spirit for the building up of the church (1 Corinthians 12:10; 14:22).
Reader summary
Full entry for προφητεία (G4394) · Open the biblical lexicon
Προφητεία names the gift and exercise of speaking God's word — the prophetic declaration that interprets the divine will and makes it intelligible and applicable to the community of faith. The word encompasses both OT predictive prophecy (Jesus using the term for Isaiah's fulfillment in Matthew 13:14) and the NT gift of prophecy given by the Spirit for the.
The BSB source-word alignment has 19 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include prophecy (12), of prophecy (2), [the] prophecy spoken (1), [there are] prophecies (1), prophecies (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 13:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (7), 1 Corinthians (5), 1 Timothy (2), 2 Peter (2).
This entry includes 4 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Προφητεία names the gift and exercise of speaking God's word — the prophetic declaration that interprets the divine will and makes it intelligible and applicable to the community of faith. The word encompasses both OT predictive prophecy (Jesus using the term for Isaiah's fulfillment in Matthew 13:14) and the NT gift of prophecy given by the Spirit for the building up of the church (1 Corinthians 12:10; 14:22).
These are not two separate things being called by the same name; they are two expressions of the same fundamental reality: God speaking through human agency by his Spirit. The NT's most concentrated treatment of προφητεία as a community gift is 1 Corinthians 12-14, where Paul places it among the gifts of the Spirit (12:10), ranks it above tongues for the community's benefit (14:5, 22), and places it in the sobering context of 1 Corinthians 13: prophecy without love is nothing (13:2), and prophecy — unlike love — will one day cease, when the partial gives way to the complete (13:8-10).
That last point is exegetically contested (does 'the complete' refer to the canon's completion or to the eschatological arrival of the age to come?) , but in either reading, Paul's point stands: prophecy in its present form is not the final, complete word. It serves the community in its current condition, but it points beyond itself. The ground of NT prophecy is stated with precision in 2 Peter 1:20-21: no prophecy of Scripture came from a human being's own interpretation, because no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.
Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The origin of prophecy is divine; the medium is human; the result is reliable precisely because the Spirit carried the speakers beyond their own insight. Revelation frames the entire prophetic enterprise with 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' (19:10) — suggesting that all genuine prophecy, from the OT forward, is finally testimony to Christ.
The spirit that animates true prophecy is not merely the Holy Spirit in the abstract but the Spirit whose fullest work is the disclosure of Jesus. First Thessalonians 5:20 provides the community's ongoing instruction: 'Do not treat prophecies with contempt.' The command is paired with 'test everything; hold on to what is good' (5:21) — meaning the proper response to prophecy is neither uncritical acceptance nor wholesale dismissal, but discerning reception.
Προφητεία appears about 19 times in the local NT index, distributed across Matthew, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Peter, and Revelation. It refers both to the OT prophetic tradition fulfilling in Christ and to the Spirit-given charismatic gift of speaking God's word in NT communities. Revelation's use gives the word its widest canonical scope, framing the entire book as prophetic testimony and establishing the spirit of prophecy as witness to Jesus.
For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The theological foundation of all προφητεία: its origin is divine, not human. The language of being 'carried along' (pheromenoi) by the Spirit describes an active divine agency that does not eliminate the human speaker but moves through them beyond their own capacity. This verse establishes the authority of prophetic speech: its reliability rests on its origin, not on the ability of the prophet.
So I fell at his feet to worship him. But he told me, “Do not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who rely on the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
The most comprehensive NT definition of the prophetic spirit: all genuine prophecy is, at its core, testimony to Jesus. This statement reaches backward through all OT prophecy (which the NT consistently reads as pointing to Christ) and forward through NT prophetic speech. The angel refuses worship and redirects it to God, demonstrating that prophecy and the prophetic spirit are not ends in themselves but instruments of witness to the one who is their center.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
The most searching limit placed on prophecy in the NT: even the fullest exercise of the prophetic gift, without love, amounts to nothing. Paul does not diminish prophecy by saying this — he has just ranked it first among the spoken gifts (12:31; 14:1). But he situates it under love's judgment. The gift is real and valuable; its value is expressed in the community only when it operates within and through the character that love produces.
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers, but for unbelievers. Prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers.
Paul's functional distinction: tongues addresses the unbeliever as a sign (echoing Isaiah 28:11-12); prophecy serves the believing community's understanding and building up. This grounds the pastoral priority of prophecy in the assembled community: it speaks intelligibly to those who belong to the body and strengthens them in their knowledge of God and his purposes.
We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If one’s gift is prophecy, let him use it in proportion to his faith;
Prophecy as grace-gift: the word χάρισμα (charism) frames prophecy as gift, not achievement or office earned. The instruction to prophesy 'in proportion to faith' (kata ten analogian tes pisteos) grounds the exercise of the gift in the prophet's actual faith-relationship to God, not in claims of special status. This prevents both grandiose claims and false modesty about the gift.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near.
Revelation designates itself as prophecy and pronounces a beatitude on those who read, hear, and keep it. The public reading of prophetic words in the gathered community — and the community's obedient response — is the intended end of prophetic utterance. Prophecy is not completed in the speaking; it is completed when the community hears and lives accordingly.
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. Divinely-inspired interpretation of God's will, not merely predicting the future but declaring His purpose
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 19 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
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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 19 lexical occurrence verses.
προφητεία is built from this root:
Προφητεία is one of the most contested words in NT studies and in contemporary church life, and the pastor who preaches from it without care will either shut down a gift the Spirit gives or open a door to manipulation and disorder. The NT itself models both the valuing and the governing of prophecy. Paul says 'do not treat prophecies with contempt' (1 Thessalonians 5:20) in the same breath as 'test everything' (5:21).
Revelation calls its entire contents prophecy and pronounces blessings on those who obey it. First Corinthians 14 shows prophecy at work in the community, building up and encouraging those who hear. None of this is abstract; all of it assumes a gathered community where the prophetic word is spoken, heard, tested, and acted on. The preacher who handles this word well will help the congregation see that prophecy is not primarily about predicting the future.
The word in both OT and NT usage overwhelmingly names the act of speaking what God has said — interpreting the divine will, applying God's word to the community's current situation, bearing witness to the purposes of God in the present moment. Revelation 19:10 puts it most sharply: the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. That means any claim to prophetic speech that does not in some way bear witness to Christ and bring the community into alignment with his purposes has failed the primary test.
Prophecy in the NT is never independent of the Word it serves.
Rev.19.10
Προφητεία derives from προφητεύω (to prophesy) and ultimately from πρό (before, in front of) + φημί (to speak). The prefix πρό in the NT usage functions more often as 'forth' than 'before' — prophecy is speaking forth, declaring, giving voice to the divine word, rather than primarily predicting future events. Abbott-Smith notes that the LXX uses the word for both נְבוּאָה (prophetic utterance) and חָזוֹן (vision), indicating a range from received vision to spoken declaration.
NT usage inherits this range and adds the charismatic dimension of Spirit-given community speech that 1 Corinthians 12-14 develops.
The OT foundation of προφητεία is the entire prophetic tradition from Moses through Malachi. Numbers 11:29 records Moses's wish that all the Lord's people were prophets — a longing that Joel 2:28-29 takes up as eschatological promise: 'I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters will prophesy.' Acts 2:17-21 explicitly cites this promise as fulfilled at Pentecost, establishing NT prophetic speech as the eschatological fulfillment of the OT expectation.
The NT receives the OT prophetic tradition as a body of testimony to Christ (Luke 24:27, 44; 1 Peter 1:10-12) and adds to it the charismatic gift of Spirit-empowered speech in the community. Revelation 19:10 draws these strands together: the spirit that animated Moses, the writing prophets, and the NT prophets is the same Spirit — the Spirit of witness to Jesus, whose coming the whole prophetic tradition was preparing the world to receive.
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