Pasture
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νομή names pasture, grazing ground, the place where sheep feed and are kept safe. " The image trades on ordinary shepherding life in the ancient Near East, where sheep moved between the safety of the fold and the feeding ground of the pasture under a shepherd's care.
Reader summary
Full entry for νομή (G3542) · Open the biblical lexicon
νομή names pasture, grazing ground, the place where sheep feed and are kept safe. " The image trades on ordinary shepherding life in the ancient Near East, where sheep moved between the safety of the fold and the feeding ground of the pasture under a shepherd's care.
The BSB source-word alignment has 2 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include pasture (1), spread (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 10:9. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Timothy (1), John (1).
νομή names pasture, grazing ground, the place where sheep feed and are kept safe. In John 10:9, Jesus makes it the outcome of entering through him as the gate: "he will come in and go out and find pasture." The image trades on ordinary shepherding life in the ancient Near East, where sheep moved between the safety of the fold and the feeding ground of the pasture under a shepherd's care.
Jesus does not describe pasture as a static destination; the movement, coming in and going out, is itself part of the promised security. νομή here names provision and freedom together: the sheep are fed, and they are not confined against their nature. Teachers should keep the term tied to its shepherding image rather than allegorizing every element of coming in and going out into a separate doctrine; the whole picture together describes life found through Jesus as the one true gate.
John 10:9 answers a real, practical question with a pastoral image: what does life look like for the sheep who enter through Jesus? Not confinement, and not exposure, but movement between safety and provision, coming in and going out, and finding pasture along the way.
I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture.
John 10:9 promises that whoever enters through Jesus, the gate, 'will come in and go out and find pasture.'
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
The promise sits inside the Good Shepherd discourse of John 10, where Jesus contrasts himself as gate and shepherd with thieves, robbers, and hired hands who do not care for the sheep.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters.
Psalm 23:2 pictures the Lord as shepherd who 'makes me lie down in green pastures,' giving the Old Testament background for pasture as a picture of God's own provision and care for his people.
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.
Greek word. Pasture as provision for sustenance; metaphorically extends to any spreading consumption or corrosive growth
Pasture as provision for sustenance; metaphorically extends to any spreading consumption or corrosive growth
(νέμω, to pasture), [in LXX chiefly for מִרְעֶה, also for נָוֶה, etc. ;]
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
2 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
pasturage, growth
Read versepasturage, growth
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.
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.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
νομή is built from this root:
John 10:9 answers a real, practical question with a pastoral image: what does life look like for the sheep who enter through Jesus? Not confinement, and not exposure, but movement between safety and provision, coming in and going out, and finding pasture along the way. The verse follows Jesus' claim to be the gate and precedes his description of the thief who comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.
Pasture, in that contrast, names what the true shepherd actually provides where false shepherds cannot: real, ongoing sustenance for the flock. Preachers can use this image to describe Christian life under Christ as neither anxious restriction nor unguarded wandering, but secure movement toward provision. This word opens a teaching doorway on the shape of life under Christ's care: John 10:9 pictures neither confinement nor exposure but secure movement, in and out, toward real provision, contrasted with the thief who offers only loss.
It gives teachers a concrete shepherding image for describing security and provision together rather than security alone. It corrects readings that treat entering through Jesus as reaching a static, motionless destination, missing the coming-in-and-going-out movement the verse itself describes. Frame νομή as the shepherding image of feeding ground the whole verse builds toward, not as an isolated word carrying independent doctrinal weight apart from the gate-and-shepherd picture.
John.10.9
Frame νομή as the shepherding image of feeding ground the whole verse builds toward, not as an isolated word carrying independent doctrinal weight apart from the gate-and-shepherd picture. Linguistically, νομή should be allowed to name pasture, feeding ground without carrying claims the cited passages do not make.
Scripture's shepherd-and-pasture imagery runs from Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34's promise that God himself will shepherd and feed his scattered flock, into John 10:9's claim that Jesus, as the gate, is where that promised provision is now found.
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