A eunuch ; by implication, valet (especially of the female apartments), and thus, a minister of state
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through theConnect page. Screenshots are helpful.
The Hebrew noun sārîs can identify a eunuch and can also function as a title for a royal or court official. Some passages clearly concern eunuchs, including descendants forcibly taken to Babylon and those addressed by God in Isaiah’s promise.
Reader summary
Full entry for סָרִיס (H5631) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun sārîs can identify a eunuch and can also function as a title for a royal or court official. Some passages clearly concern eunuchs, including descendants forcibly taken to Babylon and those addressed by God in Isaiah’s promise.
The BSB source-word alignment has 42 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include eunuchs (7), official (5), the court officials (3), an officer (2), court official (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 37:36. Its strongest book concentrations include Esther (12), 2 Kings (7), Daniel (7), Jeremiah (5).
The Hebrew noun sārîs can identify a eunuch and can also function as a title for a royal or court official. Some passages clearly concern eunuchs, including descendants forcibly taken to Babylon and those addressed by God in Isaiah’s promise. Other passages translate the same term as officer or court official because the person’s administrative role is in view and bodily status is not established.
Esther’s court, Daniel’s exile setting, Joseph’s Egyptian household, and Jeremiah’s rescue all show officials operating inside powerful royal systems. The lexical range requires restraint: readers should not speculate about a named person’s anatomy when the text says only official, and they should not reduce a person called a eunuch to bodily condition, fertility, sexuality, or service to a ruler.
Isaiah 56 centers covenant faithfulness and God’s welcome, overturning the fear that lack of descendants makes a faithful person a dry, excluded tree.
Sārîs moves between bodily-status language and court office, appearing in royal administration, forced exile, risky acts of service, and Isaiah’s promise of an enduring name within God’s house.
Let no foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will utterly exclude me from His people.” And let the eunuch not say, “I am but a dry tree.”
The eunuch is forbidden to describe himself as a dry tree, and the joined foreigner is likewise forbidden to assume complete exclusion from God’s people.
For this is what the Lord says: “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, who choose what pleases Me and hold fast to My covenant—
God addresses eunuchs through covenant faithfulness, Sabbath keeping, and chosen obedience rather than through fertility or court usefulness.
And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, will be taken away to be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
The warning describes royal descendants taken away to serve as eunuchs in Babylon, placing the condition within conquest and forced displacement.
Now Ebed-melech the Cushite, a court official in the royal palace, heard that Jeremiah had been put into the cistern. While the king was sitting at the Gate of Benjamin,
Ebed-melech the Cushite is identified as a court official whose report begins the courageous effort to rescue Jeremiah from the cistern.
Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his court officials, to bring in some Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—
The Babylonian king commands his chief court official to bring selected Israelite captives into an imperial education and service program.
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.
Hebrew word. Castrated official who progresses from intimate court service to high political authority and administrative power
Castrated official who progresses from intimate court service to high political authority and administrative power
a eunuch; by implication, valet (especially of the female apartments), and thus, a minister of state BDB: eunuch Usage: chamberlain, eunuch, officer. Compare 7249.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 42 lexical occurrence verses.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Sārîs refuses a one-gloss reading. In royal narratives, it often identifies people entrusted with court access, administration, messages, or oversight. Some may have been eunuchs, but the title alone does not establish that in every passage. Elsewhere the bodily and dynastic loss is explicit, as when Judah’s descendants are taken to Babylon. Isaiah 56 then speaks directly into exclusion and fruitlessness: the faithful eunuch must not conclude that he is merely a dry tree, because the Lord promises covenant belonging and an enduring name.
This movement does not romanticize coercive courts or bodily harm. It shows that neither a ruler’s use of a person nor the absence of descendants determines that person’s worth before God. Faithful preaching should preserve the text’s lexical uncertainty where it exists and celebrate God’s welcome where he states it, without imposing modern identity categories or invasive assumptions on any individual.
Isa.56.3
Sārîs has a range from eunuch to chamberlain, officer, or court official. Where a narrative emphasizes administrative service, the noun does not independently prove physical castration; where eunuch status is explicit, translation should not hide it behind office language.
Jesus recognizes differing eunuch circumstances while commending voluntary kingdom singleness without commanding bodily harm. Acts 8 later presents an Ethiopian eunuch as a worshiper, Scripture reader, royal official, gospel hearer, and baptized disciple who continues rejoicing. That narrative resonates with Isaiah’s welcome without reducing the man to a symbol or claiming an explicit quotation of Isaiah 56.