στόμα

G4750 ordinarily names the physical mouth and extends naturally to speech, a speaker, testimony, an opening, or an edge. Across its governed corpus, seventy-eight forms map to seventy-one distinct verses and seventeen books. The range includes eating and bodily action, opening one's mouth to speak, words proceeding from God or people, testimony established by witnesses, the edge of a sword, the mouths of lions, face-to-face idiom, and symbolic mouths in Revelation. Those uses share an image but do not make every reference a doctrine of speech.

Jesus connects speech with the heart in Matthew 12:34 and Luke 6:45, while Matthew 15 distinguishes what enters the mouth from the defiling evil that comes from the heart. These passages invite truthful examination, but they do not make every verbal mistake a transparent map of a person's entire character. Tone, fluency, accent, silence, a trauma response, disability, neurological difference, second-language speech, and difficulty recalling events must not be treated as moral verdicts. Heart-and-mouth teaching should lead to repentance and grace rather than surveillance or public humiliation.

Romans 10 places the near word in both mouth and heart, then explains outward confession and inward resurrection trust together. The parallel resists both hidden faith without public allegiance and a spoken formula detached from belief. Matthew 18:16 and Second Corinthians 13:1 preserve the idiom of a matter established at the mouth or testimony of witnesses. Neither confession nor testimony should be coerced. Churches must distinguish pastoral conversation from formal evidence, protect confidential disclosures, test claims fairly, avoid retaliation, and never silence a harmed person by demanding pleasant or forgiving speech.

The word also serves non-speech images. Luke 21:24 and Hebrews 11:34 use mouth for a sword's edge; Hebrews 11:33 speaks of lions' mouths; Second and Third John use mouth-to-mouth for direct presence; Revelation depicts mouths of Christ, beasts, horses, the dragon, and witnesses. Apocalyptic mouth imagery communicates authority, deception, judgment, or destructive power within a vision and cannot be converted into permission for physical violence. Christ's sword-bearing mouth does not arm religious coercion, and the beast's blasphemous mouth warns against propaganda without identifying every opponent as a beast.

Seventy-eight governed forms cover physical mouths, speech and speakers, divine utterance, confession, witness testimony, openings and edges, direct presence, animal mouths, and apocalyptic images.