A town (properly, with walls, of greater or less size)
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πόλις (polis) means city or town, and it carries both the ordinary city sense (Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, the various cities of Paul's mission) and a profound eschatological meaning: the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, the polis whose builder and maker is God. It is currently counted about 162 times in the local NT index, and the theological trajectory runs from the earthly cities of the mission (Jesus weeping over.
Reader summary
Full entry for πόλις (G4172) · Open the biblical lexicon
πόλις (polis) means city or town, and it carries both the ordinary city sense (Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, the various cities of Paul's mission) and a profound eschatological meaning: the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, the polis whose builder and maker is God. It is currently counted about 162 times in the local NT index, and the theological trajectory.
The BSB source-word alignment has 164 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include city (76), town (35), a town (9), towns (9), cities (8).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 2:23. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (43), Luke (39), Matthew (27), Revelation (27).
This entry includes 4 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
πόλις (polis) means city or town, and it carries both the ordinary city sense (Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, the various cities of Paul's mission) and a profound eschatological meaning: the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, the polis whose builder and maker is God. It is currently counted about 162 times in the local NT index, and the theological trajectory runs from the earthly cities of the mission (Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, Paul entering Corinth) to the heavenly polis of Hebrews 11:10 and the descending city of Revelation 21.
Revelation 21:2 is the eschatological climax: 'And I saw the holy city (polis), new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.' The new creation is not a garden (though Eden imagery runs through it) but a city: a polis, a structured community of people dwelling together with God. The descent is significant — the new Jerusalem does not come as the destination the saints ascend to but as the reality that comes down to the renewed earth. God comes to dwell with his people (Rev 21:3), and the polis is the form in which this new creation community is organized.
Hebrews 11:10 grounds the patriarchal faith in the heavenly polis: Abraham 'was looking forward to the city (polis) that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.' Abraham's willingness to live in tents was not rootlessness but confidence in a better polis — the permanent one God was building, in contrast to the temporary dwelling of the wilderness. Hebrews 11:16 confirms: 'they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (polis).' The faith of the patriarchs was city-directed faith — they were not looking for private spiritual experiences but for a community built by God.
Hebrews 13:14 applies this to the Christian's present situation: 'For here we have no lasting city (polis), but we seek the city (polis) that is to come.' The tension of the Christian life is between the present earthly city (wherever the believer lives) and the coming heavenly polis. The believer is a resident alien in every earthly polis — not because earthly cities are worthless but because they are not the final home.
For the preacher, πόλις (polis) is the word that insists the goal of redemption is not the escape of individual souls from the world but the transformation of human community — the building of a polis whose architect is God.
πόλις (polis) is currently counted about 162 times in the local NT index. The Gospels and Acts use it consistently for literal cities — the cities of Galilee and Judea, the cities of Paul's mission. The theological depth develops in Hebrews and Revelation: Hebrews grounds the patriarchal faith in the hope of the heavenly polis, and Revelation presents the new Jerusalem as the eschatological polis that is the eschatological destination toward which the biblical story points.
The arc from earthly mission cities to the heavenly city is the spatial-communal dimension of the NT's eschatology.
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
The eschatological polis: not built by human hands but coming from God, descending to the renewed earth. The city is described as a bride — the communal, relational image of the people of God as a whole, adorned for the marriage supper of the Lamb. The descent rather than ascent is theologically significant: the new creation is not the soul escaping matter but the Creator coming to dwell within a renewed material world.
The city structure signals that the redeemed community will have order, walls, gates, streets — a genuine organized community, not a formless spiritual existence.
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Abraham's faith was polis-directed: he looked for the city with permanent foundations while living in tents. The contrast with the tents (v. 9) is deliberate — the patriarchs were not rootless wanderers but people whose roots were in a better polis. 'Builder and maker' (technites kai demiourgos) is language from Greek philosophical discussions of the cosmos — applied here to God as the architect of the heavenly city.
The OT patriarchs were not waiting for a personal spiritual experience but for a community God was building.
For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
The present-and-future tension of the Christian's polis-identity. The earthly city — any earthly polis — is not enduring (menousan, permanent). The heavenly city is what the believer seeks (epizetomen). This does not mean the believer is indifferent to earthly civic life; the context of Hebrews 13 includes caring for outsiders, prisoners, and the poor (vv. 1-3, 16). The seeking of the heavenly polis reorients and relativizes earthly civic attachments without dismissing them.
You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
The polis metaphor for the community of disciples: a visible, located community that cannot be hidden. The image draws on the reality that ancient cities were built on hills for defense — visible from the surrounding countryside. The disciples as a polis-on-a-hill are meant to be conspicuously present in the world, not withdrawn from it. The light metaphor (the disciples illuminate) and the city metaphor (the disciples are socially visible) work together: the community's visible life is its witness.
As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it
Jesus weeping over the polis of Jerusalem: the emotional intensity of God's relationship with the earthly city that represented his people. The tears are for a polis that will not receive its peace (v. 42) and will be destroyed (vv. 43-44). The divine pathos for the earthly city is not dismissed in the eschatological vision of the heavenly polis — it is intensified. God is not indifferent to earthly cities; the vision of the heavenly polis grows out of grief over what the earthly polis failed to become.
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. A fortified urban center distinct from villages and countryside, often metonymously representing its inhabitants.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 164 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a city
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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 8 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 162 lexical occurrence verses.
πόλις is built from these roots:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
πόλις (polis) tells the preacher that the goal of redemption is not the rescue of solitary souls but the building of a community. The new Jerusalem of Revelation 21 is a city: structured, inhabited, communal, organized — with gates and walls and streets and a river running through it. This corrects two common distortions: the individualism that treats salvation as a purely personal transaction with God, and the escapism that treats heaven as the soul's exit from the material world.
The redeemed existence is communal and material — a polis that God has built and into which he comes to dwell. Hebrews 11:10 and 13:14 give the present posture: the believer is living between two cities. The earthly polis is real, worth caring about, worth weeping over (as Jesus wept over Jerusalem). But it is not final. The believer is a city-seeking pilgrim whose ultimate home is the polis that is coming down from God — and that orientation gives the Christian the freedom to invest in earthly cities without idolizing them and to leave them without despair.
Rev.21.2
πόλις (polis) is a third-declension feminine noun and the root of the English political, politics, policy, police, and metropolitan. Greek political philosophy defined the polis as the highest form of human community — the organized city-state in which human flourishing was possible. Aristotle's opening line of the Politics: 'Man is a political animal' uses this word — the human is by nature a polis-dwelling creature.
The NT inherits this and transforms it: the highest form of human community is not the earthly city-state but the heavenly polis. The NT's use of politeuma (citizenship, G4175) and politeuomai (to live as a citizen) in Philippians 1:27 and 3:20 ('our citizenship is in heaven') is directly related to polis: the believer's politeuma — their city-membership — is in the heavenly polis.
The OT background for the heavenly polis runs through Zion theology: the city of God, the holy mountain, the place where the Lord dwells. Psalms 46, 48, 87, and 122 celebrate Jerusalem as the city of God — the polis from which God rules and to which the nations stream. Isaiah 60-66 envisions the nations bringing their wealth to the renewed Jerusalem. Ezekiel 40-48 gives an elaborate vision of the restored city and temple, culminating in the name 'The Lord is There' (Ezekiel 48:35).
Revelation 21 draws on all of these: the new Jerusalem has twelve gates named after the twelve tribes of Israel, walls with foundations named after the twelve apostles (21:12-14) — the continuity of both covenants in the one eschatological polis. The absence of a temple in the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:22 — 'I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple') is the fulfillment rather than the abandonment of the OT temple: what the temple signified (the presence of God with his people) is now the direct, unmediated reality.
The entire city is the holy of holies.
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