{"id":119479,"date":"2026-10-26T19:12:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=119479"},"modified":"2026-10-26T19:12:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T23:12:57","slug":"greek-word-for-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/articles\/greek-word-for-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek Word for Rock: What Does “Petra” Really Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>13 Minute, 58 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

Quick Answer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Petra<\/strong> (\u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1), pronounced PET-rah<\/em>, Strong’s G4073<\/strong>, is the Greek word for rock<\/em>. It is a feminine noun, and it does not mean a stone you could pick up. It means the connected mass: bedrock, a cliff face, a projecting crag, the rock that is part of the ground itself. It appears 15 times<\/strong> in the Greek New Testament, across 14 verses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourteen of those are ordinary stone \u2014 a hillside, a tomb wall, thin soil over bedrock. One of them says the rock was a person, and says it in the past tense, as a plain statement of fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word Study: Where It Comes From<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Petra<\/em> stands beside a masculine twin, petros<\/strong> (\u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, G4074), and in classical Greek the two divide the work between them. A petros<\/em> is a piece broken off \u2014 a stone a man could lift, carry or throw. A petra<\/em> is what it broke off from: the ledge, the outcrop, the mass rising out of the earth that is not going anywhere. Thayer notes the distinction is generally observed in classical Greek, which is worth remembering later, because the New Testament puts both words in one famous sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thayer’s range for petra<\/em> runs from a rock or ledge, to a projecting crag, to rocky ground, to a large stone, and figuratively to a person of firm and steadfast character. The 15 New Testament occurrences are spread across five grammatical forms: \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd (5 times), \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u1fb3 (4), \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2 (4), \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9 (1), \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9\u03c2 (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the most important thing about petra<\/em> is not in the New Testament at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the first century, most Greek-speaking Jews read their Scriptures in the Septuagint<\/strong>, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And the Septuagint uses petra<\/em> for the rock in both of the desert water miracles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Exodus 17:6<\/strong>, at Horeb \u2014 \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f10\u03bd \u03a7\u03c9\u03c1\u03ae\u03b2<\/em>, “upon the rock in Horeb.” The underlying Hebrew is tzur<\/em> (H6697).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Numbers 20:8 and 20:11<\/strong>, at Meribah, forty years later \u2014 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd<\/em>, the rock Moses was told to speak to and struck instead. The underlying Hebrew is a different word, sela<\/em> (H5553).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Two different Hebrew words. Two different rocks, two separate incidents, four decades apart. In Greek, both of them are simply petra<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So for anyone reading Scripture in Greek, “the rock” was never an abstraction that had to be explained. It was a specific place in the wilderness where water came out of stone, and it had one name.<\/p>\n\n\n