The curious noun αμμος (ammos) means sand and, although of unclear pedigree, is part of a small cluster of apparently related synonyms: αμαθος (amathos), υφαμμος (uphammos), ψαμμος (psammos); all meaning sand in vague nuances and obvious testimony that sand was to Greeks what snow is to Eskimos.

But note that the understanding that living things were made from the dust of mother earth (compare Genesis 2:7 to Psalm 139:13) was rather broadly attested in antiquity. Our noun αμμος (ammos), sand, is certainly similar to αμμα (amma), the familiar term for μητηρ (meter), mother — in Hebrew: אמה ('umma), means people and אם ('em), means mother. Our English words "matter" and "material" indeed derive from these broadly attested words for "mother".

Sand, of course, is proverbially innumerable and shifty, but that's only from the perspective of a rock, not from the perspective of the roaring sea. Sand is where dry land begins — and in antiquity, dry land broadly referred to solid reason whereas waters referred to emotions. The Hebrew name for Greece was Javan, which means mud, and mud could be baked into bricks by means of πυρ (pur), fire.

Sand is a quality of a dry-land wilderness, certainly a step up from the utter lawlessness of water, but still quite void of any universal laws that allows the binding of any loose things into larger structures. Its opposite is the πολις (polis), city, which is the state of hyper-order and hyper-connectedness that can only come about from the written word. Mere speech is much better than no speech at all, which is why the Hebrew word for wilderness is מדבר (midbar), from the root דבר (dabar), meaning "word" or science or Logos.

The Hebrew Bible tells of a man named Ammon, son of Lot and patriarch of the Ammonites. More relevant, probably, is an important shepherd deity — and note the Greek word for lamb, namely αμνος (amnos) — called Ammon, who originated in Ethiopia, was imported into Egypt and Libya (as Ammun or Amon) and from there to Greece. What his name originally meant is not so relevant; by the time he came to Greece it meant Sand and Ammos became Zeus Ammos. When Jesus warned to not build one's house on sand (Matthew 7:26), nobody in his original audience would have missed the obvious pun.

Our noun is used 5 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.

The noun αμοιβη (amoibe) means a change or an exchange (hence the amoeba). It occurs in the New Testament in 1 Timothy 5:4 only, and although it officially has nothing to do with the above, native Greek speakers may not necessarily have found this very obvious.

Our noun stems from the verb αμειβω (ameibo), to change or exchange or give in exchange. This verb could be used for all sorts of exchanges, from commercial supply and demand to rhetoric and banter. In the sense of to recompense or to fairly exchange, this word comes close to the familiar Hebrew verb שלם (shalem), to make whole or complete. Ultimately, our verb is part of the same Proto-Indo-European root "hmey-" from which Latin obtained its familiar verb migro, to wander (hence the English verb to migrate).