What does ὀνάριον (onárion) mean in the Bible?
G3678 names a young donkey or donkey's colt. Its one governed New Testament form appears in John 12:14, where Jesus finds the animal and sits on it.
Greek · G3678
ὀνάριον
A little ass
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ὀνάριον G3678
Pronunciation onárion
What does ὀνάριον (onárion) mean in the Bible?
G3678 names a young donkey or donkey's colt. Its one governed New Testament form appears in John 12:14, where Jesus finds the animal and sits on it.
Reader summary
Full entry for ὀνάριον (G3678) · Open the biblical lexicon
Questions this entry answers
How does the BSB render G3678?
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include a young donkey (1).
Where does ὀνάριον (onárion) appear in Scripture?
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 12:14. Its strongest book concentrations include John (1).
What This Word Actually Means
G3678 names a young donkey or donkey's colt. Its one governed New Testament form appears in John 12:14, where Jesus finds the animal and sits on it. The noun identifies the animal; it does not by itself mean humility, peace, kingship, prophecy, or rejection of military power. Those themes, where warranted, arise from John's action, citation, and wider narrative context.
John 12:15 cites the promised king coming seated on a donkey's colt, and verse 16 says the disciples understood the written connection after Jesus was glorified. Those verses explain why the animal matters in John's account, but they do not add G3678 tokens to the direct witness. Zechariah 9:9 is the cited scriptural background and must likewise remain a canonical context rather than a Greek occurrence.
Teaching may hold Jesus' royal reception together with the kind of mount named in the scene, but it should not make a supposed diminutive feeling carry the theology. It should also avoid romanticizing domination, assigning contempt to Jewish participants, or treating animals as disposable sermon props. The scene offers no permission for cruelty, triumphalism, coercive leadership, or claims that every humble appearance proves righteous authority.
Lexical sourcePassage contextCanonical parallelBook contextPastoral application
How the Bible Uses It
The complete governed witness is John 12:14. The verse names the young donkey Jesus finds and rides; the following citation and retrospective explanation supply the narrative significance.
- John.12.14
Finding a young donkey, Jesus sat on it
The direct occurrence names the animal within Jesus' public entry. John's next line makes the scriptural connection explicit, so the interpreter need not manufacture symbolic force from the noun's form.
Passage context
Source Word Evidence
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders It a young donkey 1× John 12:14
Show sample aligned rows
Usage map
A compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
First aligned row John 12:14
Aligned rows 1
Books represented 1
John 1
Source forms
ὀνάριον 1x onarion John 12:14
Parsing patterns
Noun - Accusative Neuter Singular 1x John 12:14
Using This Word Well
Be careful not to...
- Let John's citation explain the animal's narrative importance instead of assigning symbolism from the noun alone.
- Hold royal identity and the manner of Jesus' entry together while testing every modern authority by truth, service, and accountability.
- Speak of the animal without treating harm, exhaustion, or domination of creatures as spiritually insignificant.
Avoid claiming...
- Do not claim that G3678 itself means humble king, peaceful ruler, or prophetic fulfillment.
- Do not claim that John 12:15-16 or Zechariah 9:9 are additional occurrences of this Strong's identity.
- Do not claim that a modest public style proves a leader is trustworthy or exempts that leader from review.
- Do not claim that every person in the entry scene understood or opposed Jesus in the same way.
Evidence Summary
Greek word. A young donkey, emphasizing smallness or youth rather than full-grown beast of burden.
Strong's G3678
Lexical occurrences 1 verse Greek text appearances 1 time Word forms 1 form 1 reference Verse guides 0 guides
Source Gloss
a little ass
Extended definition Source: STEPBible TBESG + Abbott-Smith
A young donkey, emphasizing smallness or youth rather than full-grown beast of burden.
(dimin. of ὄνος), a young ass: Jhn.12:14.
Greek Text Appearances
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
1 Greek text appearance shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
John 12:14 Noun Accusative Singular Neuter
ὀνάριον, onarion
a young ass
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.
Grammatical Forms
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 1 case and number pattern. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Form patterns 1 Aligned forms 1 Case pattern Accusative (1) Number pattern Singular (1)
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Accusative · Singular · Neuter John 12:14 1×
Word Origins
ὀνάριον is built from this root:
For the Preacher and Teacher
G3678 does a modest lexical job: it names the young donkey Jesus finds in John 12:14. John, not the noun's sound or supposed emotional coloring, supplies the theological frame by citing the promised king in verse 15 and explaining the disciples' later remembrance in verse 16. This distinction strengthens preaching. It allows the concrete animal, Jesus' royal reception, the cited Scripture, and delayed understanding to remain connected without making one word carry them all.
The scene can challenge displays of domination, but it does not prove that every quiet leader is safe or that authority escapes accountability when it appears humble. Teaching should also respect the animal as a living creature and avoid anti-Jewish blame or simplistic claims about the crowd.
Anchor passage
John.12.14
Doctrinal connections
- John 11:45-12:19 - Lazarus, public response, opposition, entry, and remembered Scripture
- John 12:12-16 - royal acclamation, the young donkey, the citation, and delayed understanding
- Zechariah 9:9-10 - the promised king and the wider peace announcement
- John 18:33-38 - Jesus' kingship discussed before Pilate
- John 20:30-31 - the signs John chose to narrate and the life-giving belief toward which his testimony points
The sole governed form is an accusative neuter singular noun functioning as the object of finding in John 12:14. Lexicons support the identity young donkey or colt. The grammatical form does not independently establish symbolism, humility, age beyond the lexical range, the animal's sex, ownership, temperament, or the moral quality of a rider.
From Old to New Testament
John explicitly connects the entry to Israel's Scriptures. Zechariah 9 describes Zion's king and extends the scene toward peace among the nations. That canonical relationship is established by the Gospel's citation, but G3678 remains a Greek noun in John and should not be treated as the lexical owner of Zechariah's Hebrew or translation vocabulary.
Sources
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain