Greek word · G2785

κῆτος

kētos

sea monster

A huge sea creature: sea monster, great fish, sea serpent, or large sea mammal. It covers anything vast and dangerous in the deep. The word says nothing about the creature's species.

Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

κῆτος, -εος (-ους), τό

[in LXX: Jonah 2.1; Jonah 2.10 (דָּג) Genesis 1:21 (תַּנִּין), etc. ;]

a huge fish, sea-monster: Matthew 12:40 (LXX).†

(AS)

From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Matthew 12:40

Range of meaning

A huge sea creature: sea monster, great fish, sea serpent, or large sea mammal. It covers anything vast and dangerous in the deep. The word says nothing about the creature's species.

Against the English

KJV 'whale' (via Latin cetus, from which 'cetacean' comes); BSB/ESV/NLT 'great fish'; WEB/NIV 'huge fish'; NASB 'sea monster'. 'Sea monster' is closest to how the Greek word lands; 'great fish' matches the Hebrew of Jonah.

How it drifted

English 'whale' once covered almost any great sea beast; Tyndale and the KJV even use it for sea monsters in Genesis 1:21. Once modern zoology narrowed 'whale' to a particular mammal, the KJV wording started to sound like a claim about species. That has fed centuries of arguments about whale throats that the text never raises.

Used elsewhere in the period

Homer uses kētos for sea monsters (e.g. Odyssey 12.97), and it is the beast sent against Andromeda in Greek myth. The Greek Old Testament uses it for the 'great sea creatures' of Genesis 1:21 and for Leviathan-type monsters (Job 3:8 uses to mega kētos), and in Jonah 2:1, 2:11 for Jonah's swallower, which the Hebrew calls dag gadol, 'great fish'. Josephus retells Jonah with the same word (Antiquities 9.213).

Where it appears

Matthew · 1

  1. Matthew 12:40 κήτους great fish

    For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

    Here: The Greek Old Testament word for Jonah's 'great fish' (Hebrew dag gadol). It means a huge sea beast of any kind, often monstrous. It does not name a whale as a species.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.