ἄνυδρος means “waterless” and appears in four New Testament passages: two in Jesus’ teaching about an unclean spirit’s wanderings, and two in apostolic warnings that portray empty, deceptive people by images of “without water.” Across these scenes the adjective paints places and things as lacking the water that would normally be expected to provide rest, refreshment, or life.
Root and Related Words
ἄνυδρος is formed from α (Alpha) and hydor (ὕδωρ), “water.”
Occurrences
“When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and doesn’t find it.” (Matthew 12:43)
Here “waterless” marks the kind of “places” the unclean spirit traverses after leaving a man. The picture is of movement through a terrain characterized by lack—places not marked by water’s presence. Within the sentence, that description supports the clause that follows: the spirit is “seeking rest, and doesn’t find it.” The adjective helps shape the setting as one inhospitable to settling down. The word does not merely tell where the spirit goes; it frames those places as defined by an absence that matches the spirit’s failure to find what it seeks.
“The unclean spirit, when he has gone out of the man, passes through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none, he says, ‘I will turn back to my house from which I came out.’” (Luke 11:24)
This parallel scene uses “dry places” for the same wandering. In Luke’s wording, the spirit not only seeks rest but explicitly “finding none” decides to return: “I will turn back to my house from which I came out.” The adjective functions as a setting that explains the turn in the story: the spirit’s route takes it through places characterized by waterlessness, and the lack of rest in that environment becomes the immediate occasion for its resolve to go back. The description also sharpens the contrast inside the verse itself between “places” out there and “my house” back where the spirit had been; the former are dry, the latter is a place it can re-enter.
“These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever.” (2 Peter 2:17)
In this warning, “without water” is attached to “wells,” an object whose ordinary purpose is to supply water. The force of the adjective comes from that mismatch: a well that is “without water” looks like a source yet fails to provide what one comes to it for. The verse pairs that image with another: “clouds driven by a storm,” which evokes motion and instability. Together, the two pictures present “These” as offering no true supply and no settled benefit. The final clause, “for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever,” places the “without water” image inside a larger portrayal of severe, looming judgment; the emptiness signaled by the adjective becomes part of the moral diagnosis of the people being described.
“These are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;” (Jude 1:12)
Jude uses the adjective in a compact chain of images. “Clouds without water” stands among “hidden rocky reefs,” self-feeding “shepherds,” and “autumn trees without fruit.” In that sequence, “without water” contributes to a portrait of danger and disappointment: clouds promise moisture yet yield none, just as “trees without fruit” present an appearance of life but offer nothing edible. The phrase “carried along by winds” further intensifies the image by stressing that these clouds are not only empty but also directionless, moved by forces outside themselves. In the immediate setting—“in your love feasts when they feast with you”—the adjective supports the warning that the people in view are present among the community yet bring no nourishing contribution.
Sense and Usage
Across these four occurrences, “waterless” consistently signals a lack that matters in context. In Matthew 12:43 and Luke 11:24 it characterizes “places” as unsuitable for rest, providing a setting that matches the unclean spirit’s restless searching. The adjective helps the reader feel why the search yields nothing: the environment itself is marked by absence rather than provision.
In 2 Peter 2:17 and Jude 1:12, the word is applied not to open terrain but to familiar natural features—“wells” and “clouds.” In both, the description relies on expectation: wells are approached for water, and clouds are associated with water. Calling them “without water” (or, in Luke’s case, “dry”) highlights the gap between appearance and outcome. This is especially pointed in Jude, where “clouds without water” sits beside “autumn trees without fruit,” reinforcing a pattern of images in which something looks promising but yields nothing beneficial.
Because the adjective is used both for locations (“places”) and for objects (“wells,” “clouds”), it functions flexibly: it can describe a barren environment through which one passes, and it can expose the emptiness of something that seems like a source. In all cases, the word’s contribution is not merely descriptive but evaluative within the sentence: the lack of water corresponds to lack of rest (Matthew, Luke) and lack of genuine supply (2 Peter, Jude). The contexts keep the focus on what is missing and the consequences of that absence—rest not found, refreshment not given, and instability suggested by being “driven by a storm” or “carried along by winds.”
Imagery
The passages cluster around two strands of imagery. One is a bleak geography: “waterless places” / “dry places” where a restless spirit roams (Matthew 12:43; Luke 11:24). The other is a set of failed sources: “wells without water” and “clouds without water” (2 Peter 2:17; Jude 1:12). Together they give “waterless” a vivid rhetorical power: it can evoke a landscape where nothing settles, and it can expose the hollowness of what should have refreshed.
Sources:
Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).
