χώρα

G5561 names a defined space, land, country, region, or rural area. It can identify political or geographic territory, the countryside in contrast with a city, landed ground, or fields viewed as an area. Because the noun marks where people live and act, its passages often expose relationships between place, power, mission, labor, exile, and belonging. In Acts.

13. 49, The word of the Lord spreads throughout the region after Paul and Barnabas proclaim the gospel in Pisidian Antioch amid both receptivity and opposition. In Luke. 15. 13, the younger son travels to a distant country and squanders his property, placing geographical distance within a larger story of estrangement, need, repentance, and a father’s welcome.

In Jas. 5. 4, the fields of wealthy landowners become the setting of withheld wages whose cry reaches the Lord of Hosts, making land and harvest inseparable from economic justice. G5561 opens teaching on the gospel crossing regions, distance from home, and accountability for what happens on land under one’s control. It corrects nationalist readings that treat a country as spiritually superior by vocabulary alone and corrects romantic images of rural land that ignore exploited workers.

A region is a real social space; its moral meaning comes from the people, powers, and actions described there.

G5561 appears for countries, provinces, districts, rural territory, landed property, and fields. Gospel narratives use it for travel and parable settings, Acts traces witness across regions, and James names agricultural land where injustice occurs. The noun’s breadth requires attention to political, geographic, and economic context.