Gate
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G4440, pylṓn, is a Greek masculine noun for a gateway or entrance area, sometimes including the porch, vestibule, gatehouse, or fortified portal rather than only the opening itself. The BSB therefore renders it gate, gateway, outer gate, or city gates according to context.
Reader summary
Full entry for πυλών (G4440) · Open the biblical lexicon
G4440, pylṓn, is a Greek masculine noun for a gateway or entrance area, sometimes including the porch, vestibule, gatehouse, or fortified portal rather than only the opening itself. The BSB therefore renders it gate, gateway, outer gate, or city gates according to context.
The BSB source-word alignment has 18 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include gates (6), gate (5), - (3), [city] gates (1), gates [were] (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 26:71. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (11), Acts (5), Luke (1), Matthew (1).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
G4440, pylṓn, is a Greek masculine noun for a gateway or entrance area, sometimes including the porch, vestibule, gatehouse, or fortified portal rather than only the opening itself. The BSB therefore renders it gate, gateway, outer gate, or city gates according to context. In Luke 16 Lazarus lies at a rich man's gateway, physically near abundance yet left in suffering.
In Acts 12 Peter waits at Mary's outer gate while a praying household struggles to believe Rhoda's truthful report. At Lystra, public acclaim and intended sacrifice reach the city gates, where the apostles reject worship and direct the crowd to the living God. Revelation 21 uses plural gateways in its vision of the holy city, naming Israel's tribes, the Lamb's apostles, the nations' glory, unending light, and guarded holiness within one symbolic city.
These scenes make a gateway a socially charged zone of approach, recognition, welcome, refusal, worship, and public identity. The noun itself does not confer spiritual power on a building entrance, excuse neglect behind private property, or settle who belongs to God's people. G4440 helps churches examine the space between a public invitation and actual reception: whether suffering people are seen, witnesses are believed, false worship is refused, and entrances are both safe and genuinely accessible.
G4440 denotes a gateway or portal across household, city, and visionary settings. Luke and Acts place people at gateways where need, witness, prayer, recognition, or false worship becomes public. Revelation gathers the term into the architecture of the Lamb's holy city, whose open gates remain inseparable from God's light and holiness.
And a beggar named Lazarus lay at his gate, covered with sores
Lazarus lies at the rich man's gateway, making his suffering and the wealthy household's failure of mercy painfully close rather than distant or unknown.
He knocked at the outer gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer it.
After his deliverance from prison, Peter knocks at Mary's outer gate, and Rhoda becomes the first person there to answer and recognize him.
The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates, hoping to offer a sacrifice along with the crowds.
The priest of Zeus brings sacrificial animals and wreaths to the city gates, where public excitement becomes attempted idolatrous worship that the apostles urgently reject.
The city had a great and high wall with twelve gates inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve angels at the gates.
The holy city's twelve gateways bear the names of Israel's tribes and stand within a measured vision that joins covenant memory, angelic watch, and the Lamb's people.
Its gates will never be shut at the end of the day, because there will be no night there.
The city's gateways never close because night is absent, an image of secure openness governed by God's illuminating glory and the chapter's holiness boundary.
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. gate
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 18 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
Read versea large gate, a gateway, porch
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 6 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.
πυλών is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Luke 16:20 places Lazarus at the rich man's pylṓn, the gateway where private abundance and public suffering nearly touch. The parable does not invite speculation about the gateway's construction; it exposes a life in which a named sufferer remained visible and unaided while wealth was enjoyed inside. Other occurrences widen the picture. Peter's arrival at Mary's outer gate in Acts 12 shows a threshold between answered prayer and a community slow to believe Rhoda, whose report is correct.
At Lystra, the city gates become the staging place for worship the apostles refuse, proving that public enthusiasm and religious ceremony do not certify truth. Revelation 21 transforms the scale without erasing the term's entrance character. Twelve magnificent gateways belong to the city illuminated by God's glory and centered on the Lamb. They stand open where night is gone, yet the vision still excludes uncleanness and locates citizenship in the Lamb's Book of Life.
Faithful teaching therefore holds welcome, recognition, discernment, and holiness together. Churches can inspect their own entrance zones, including websites, reception desks, transportation, language access, security practices, and first conversations. A gateway fulfills its purpose not when it looks impressive, but when truth is heard, false worship is refused, vulnerable people are treated with dignity, and welcome becomes real without abandoning wise protection.
Luke.16.20
G4440 is a masculine noun related to G4439. Its case and number vary across household and city scenes, and its semantic emphasis often reaches beyond a gate leaf to the gateway, vestibule, gatehouse, or portal area, though context decides how much structure is implied.
Hebrew H8179 often marks city and sanctuary gates where public life occurs. G4440 carries related spatial and social force into household gateways, civic portals, and Revelation's holy-city vision, but the New Jerusalem develops those images around God's glory and the Lamb rather than merely repeating Israel's municipal arrangements.