στόμα (stoma) in Romans 3:19: Noun Nominative Singular Neuter
στόμα (stoma) in Romans 3:19
Textual Witness
The witness reads στόμα in Romans 3:19 within the phrase ἵνα πᾶν στόμα φραγῇ, in the textus receptus tradition noted in the record.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form strengthens the universal scope of the clause: the image is not one mouth but every mouth under the same silence before God.
How To Communicate It
Readers can understand the phrase as a concise courtroom image. The law leaves no human voice with grounds for boasting or protest.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- The nominative case here helps identify clause role, but it does not by itself settle every nuance of meaning.
- Do not turn neuter grammatical gender into a theological gender claim or infer more than the verse states.
What Does The Label Mean?
Noun: the word names a thing or reality, here the human mouth or speech as a concrete image.
Nominative: the form normally marks a subject or complement role, and here it fits the clause as the thing that is to be shut.
Singular: the form is grammatically singular in this occurrence, even though the scope can still be collective in sense.
Neuter: the noun belongs to the neuter grammatical class, which does not by itself make a theological or personal gender claim.
What The Form Does In This Verse
πᾶν
The noun works with the adjective phrase to name the target of the stated purpose, and the surrounding passive verb shows that it is the thing being closed rather than the actor.
It functions as the subject of the passive clause within the ἵνα purpose statement, naming every mouth or every speaking voice that is to be silenced before God.
It is not the doer of the action, and the nominative form here should not be read as introducing a separate new subject outside the purpose clause.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The nominative noun is central to Paul's universal silencing image before God.
Nominative subject in a passive purpose clause. names every mouth as what is shut in the purpose clause. Attached to πᾶν στόμα. Governed by φραγῇ. The grammar presents the silenced subject; Paul's law-court argument supplies the theological force.
What is shut in Paul's purpose clause? The noun names every mouth as the subject of the passive shutting.
Direct: The subject role directly supports rendering every mouth may be stopped.
The singular noun with πᾶν functions collectively in the argument and should not be limited to one literal mouth.
Singular noun means one individual mouth: The adjective πᾶν and the argument make the image universal rather than merely individual.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witness reads στόμα in Romans 3:19 within the phrase ἵνα πᾶν στόμα φραγῇ, in the textus receptus tradition noted in the record.
The lexeme is στόμα, a noun meaning mouth, and by extension speech or the organ of speaking.
The nominative singular neuter form joins πᾶν to form the subject of the passive verb φραγῇ, so the clause speaks of every mouth being stopped or silenced.
In this verse the grammar supports Pauls claim that the law leaves no human speaker able to answer God on the basis of self-defense or self-justification.
This fits the wider argument of Romans 3, where the law exposes guilt and leaves the whole world accountable before God.
In translation and teaching, the form can be communicated as every mouth or all speech being silenced, while keeping the image tied to accountability.
Do not derive a claim that the noun itself proves a specific theology of speech, personhood, or gender, and do not make the grammar override the sentence's purpose and judgment context.