Chest
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Stethos names the chest or breast, the front of the body, and it appears in passages where bodily posture reveals inner response or relational nearness. In Luke 18, the tax collector beats his breast while pleading for mercy.
Reader summary
Full entry for στῆθος (G4738) · Open the biblical lexicon
Stethos names the chest or breast, the front of the body, and it appears in passages where bodily posture reveals inner response or relational nearness. In Luke 18, the tax collector beats his breast while pleading for mercy.
The BSB source-word alignment has 5 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include . . . (1), [against Jesus] (1), breast (1), breasts (1), chests (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Luke 18:13. Its strongest book concentrations include John (2), Luke (2), Revelation (1).
Stethos names the chest or breast, the front of the body, and it appears in passages where bodily posture reveals inner response or relational nearness. In Luke 18, the tax collector beats his breast while pleading for mercy. In Luke 23, the crowds return beating their breasts after seeing the crucifixion. In John, the beloved disciple leans back near Jesus at the supper, and that memory is recalled in John 21.
Revelation uses the plural for the chests of angelic messengers girded with golden sashes. The word is not a psychology term by itself. It marks embodied response, closeness, and presentation in scenes where the passage explains the meaning.
Stethos names the chest or breast in scenes of repentance, grief, table fellowship, remembered nearness to Jesus, and angelic presentation. The word serves embodied posture within each passage.
But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’
The tax collector beats his breast while asking God for mercy.
And when all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts.
The crowd returns beating their breasts after witnessing the crucifixion.
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked, “Lord, who is it?”
The beloved disciple leans near Jesus while asking about the betrayer.
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. He was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper to ask, “Lord, who is going to betray You?”
John recalls the same table scene as Peter turns and sees the beloved disciple.
And out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues, dressed in clean and bright linen and girded with golden sashes around their chests.
Revelation describes the angels with golden sashes around their chests.
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. Physical chest as the seat of emotion and conscience; striking it signals deep penitence or grief.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
5 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
the breast
Read versethe breast
Read versethe breast
Read versethe breast
Read versethe breast
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 2 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.
στῆθος 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.
Stethos helps teachers notice that Scripture often shows inward realities through embodied posture without reducing faith to outward performance. The tax collector's beaten breast fits his plea for mercy, and the crowd's beaten breasts fit their reaction after the crucifixion. In John, the beloved disciple's nearness to Jesus at the meal belongs to the intimacy and tension of the betrayal scene, then becomes a remembered marker in John 21.
Revelation uses the term descriptively for angelic appearance. The word itself does not guarantee repentance, love, or holiness. The passage supplies the meaning. Used carefully, stethos teaches readers to respect bodily details as part of narrative witness while refusing to make a universal rule out of every gesture.
John.13.25
The word refers to the chest or breast as a bodily location. Its interpretive value changes by scene, so the same term can appear in repentance, grief, fellowship, memory, or visual description.
Biblical narratives often use bodily posture to display humility, grief, nearness, fear, or honor. Stethos belongs to that larger pattern, but each New Testament passage controls the meaning of the gesture or description.