east: the quarter of the world where the sun comes up, and the lands lying that way
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Greek names the eastern quarter of the world by what happens there: the sun comes up. The noun is built straight on the verb for rising (ἀνατέλλω), so saying "east" in Greek is nearer to saying "sunrise" than to naming a point on a compass. Hebrew works the same way with its common word for east (מִזְרָח), which also means the place of rising.
The word turns up in two shapes that do slightly different work. The plural points to the eastern lands in general, the direction travellers and armies come from, and English can only render it with the flat word "east". The singular is often spelled out as "the sun's rising", which is simply the ordinary way of saying east while keeping the picture in view.
Most often the word is set beside west, and the pair is a way of naming the whole. The two ends of the world stand for everything between them, so people streaming in "from east and west" means people from everywhere, and lightning that runs from east to west fills the entire sky.
Nuances
1athe east: the direction of sunrise, or the eastern lands and the people who come from them
Mat 2:1Rev 7:2Rev 16:12Rev 21:13
1beast set beside west, the two ends of the world or of the sky standing for the whole of it
Mat 8:11Mat 24:27Mrk 16:8*Luk 13:29
2
a rising: the moment a star or the sun climbs into view, and the light that comes up with it
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Before it settled into a compass word, this noun named an event: something coming up over the horizon. A star has its rising, the sun has its rising, and Greek writers used the word for that first moment of appearing above the skyline.
That plain sense is what lets the word do more than geography in a few places. When the visitors in Matthew's account say they saw the star, the Greek can mean either that they were in the east when they saw it or that they watched the star itself come up. When Zechariah sings that a rising "from on high" will visit his people, no direction on a map can be meant: something is breaking over the world like daybreak.
A second layer sits under that last line. The Greek Old Testament used this same word to translate the Hebrew for a shoot or branch (צֶמַח) in the promises of a coming king from David's line. Readers who knew those promises would hear two pictures at once, a light coming up and a green shoot springing up, and translators have been choosing between them ever since.
Nuances
2athe rising of a star: the moment it first climbs above the horizon
Mat 2:2*Mat 2:9*
Mat 2:2
Whether ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ at Matthew 2:2 denotes the region the magi came from ("in the east") or the star's first appearance above the horizon ("at its rising").
majorityA technical astronomical expression: the magi saw the star at its heliacal rising. The articular singular here is deliberately set against the plural ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν of verse 1, which does denote the eastern lands.; BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολή; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (ICC); Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed.
minorityA geographic statement: the magi saw the star while they were still in the east, so the verse simply repeats the setting of verse 1. The singular is attested for the eastern quarter as well as for a rising.; BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολή (recording the geographic rendering as still possible here); LSJ, s.v. ἀνατολή
Mat 2:9
Whether ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ at Matthew 2:9 denotes the region the magi came from ("in the east") or the star's first appearance above the horizon ("at its rising").
majorityA technical astronomical expression: the star the magi had seen at its heliacal rising now goes ahead of them. The articular singular is set against the plural ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν of 2:1, which does denote the eastern lands.; BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολή; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (ICC); Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed.
minorityA geographic statement: the star was the one they had seen back in the east, so the phrase names their homeland rather than the star's rising.; BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολή (recording the geographic rendering as still possible here); LSJ, s.v. ἀνατολή
2ba rising used as a title for the promised deliverer: light breaking from heaven, with the older picture of a shoot springing from David's line standing behind it
Luk 1:78*
Luk 1:78
Whether ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους at Luke 1:78 is primarily a dawn image (the rising sun or daybreak from heaven) or a messianic title carried over from the Septuagint, where ἀνατολή renders צֶמַח, the Davidic shoot.
contestedA dawn image. The following verse speaks of shining on those seated in darkness and in the shadow of death, which suits a rising light, and the primary lexical sense of the noun is the rising of a heavenly body.; BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολή; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible 28)
contestedA messianic title. The Septuagint uses ἀνατολή for the Davidic shoot at Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, and the personal subject of ἐπισκέψεται suits a person rather than a daybreak.; Heinrich Schlier, "ἀνατέλλω, ἀνατολή," TDNT 1:351-353
Names a fixed direction and region, "the east," the compass point people travel from and the quarter a sign appears in.Mat 2:1Mat 8:11Mat 24:27
Settles into a place-name in visions of the last days: kings and an angel come up from the east, and one wall of the city has its gates on the east.Rev 7:2Rev 16:12Rev 21:13
Both
Both paint light dawning as the arrival of salvation on people who sat in darkness.Mat 4:16Luk 1:78
Each is used of a heavenly light rising as a sign that points to the Messiah, the morning star arising and the star seen at its rising.2Pe 1:19Mat 2:2
Names the action itself: the sun climbing into the sky, often with the scorching heat that follows and withers what has no root.Mat 13:6Mrk 4:6Jas 1:11
Stretches to other things coming up or springing forth: a cloud rising in the sky, and figuratively a family line springing from the tribe of Judah.Luk 12:54Heb 7:14
anatolē in the other biblical languages
מִזְרָחHebrew“east”the ordinary Hebrew word for east, built the same way from the sun's rising, and the word the Greek Old Testament most often renders with this one.
The Greek word names the rising itself, so it can point to a light coming up rather than to a direction. Luke calls the promised deliverer the rising light from on high, and the wise men speak of seeing a star at its rising.Luk 1:78Mat 2:2Mat 2:9
It marks the east as a far country people travel in from, without any interest in where the boundary runs. The wise men simply come from the east, and the gathered nations arrive from the east and the west.Mat 2:1Mat 8:11
In visions it is the quarter something advances out of, so the east becomes the starting point of an arriving figure or army. Lightning breaks from the east, an angel rises from where the sun comes up, and kings march up along that road.Mat 24:27Rev 7:2Rev 16:12
Both
Both name the compass direction east by pointing to where the sun comes up, and both can simply say which side of a structure or a camp faces that way.Rev 21:13Num 2:3
Both stand alongside the other quarters of the compass to sweep in everything or everyone, so that naming the east is a way of leaving nobody out.Luk 13:291Ch 9:24
The Hebrew word is the working term of land surveying, fixing where one tribe's territory stops and the next begins.Jos 16:5Jos 19:12Jos 13:27
It fixes the orientation of sacred space and the duties tied to it: which side of the courtyard faces the sunrise, who camps in front of the tent on that side, and which gatekeeper draws the eastern post.Exo 27:13Num 3:381Ch 26:14
It forms a standing formula for the land across the Jordan toward the sunrise, a settled way of naming the territory Israel held on the far bank.Deu 4:41Deu 4:47Jos 1:15
קֶדֶםHebrew“front: old”the other Hebrew word for east, which pictures the direction a person faces rather than the sunrise, and which also covers what lies in front and what lies far back in time.
still names the rising itself, the moment the sun or a star comes up, so it can be qualified as "the rising of the sun": an angel climbs into view from where the sun comes up, and the road is dried for kings from that quarter. Translators divide over the star the visitors saw, reading it either "in the east" or "at its rising."Rev 7:2Rev 16:12Mat 2:2
can be used of a person rather than a place: Zechariah's song calls the coming deliverer the rising light from heaven who visits a people sitting in darkness, a use no direction word by itself would suggest.Luk 1:78
Both
both name the east, the side of the world where the sun comes up, and the Greek word is the ordinary way Greek says what the Hebrew word says spatially: a garden is planted eastward in Eden, and visitors arrive from the east looking for a newborn king.Gen 2:8Mat 2:1
both mark the eastern side of a structure or the eastern line of a boundary, so each does ordinary surveyor's and builder's work: the courtyard has its east side, and the city has three gates on the east.Exo 27:13Ezk 45:7Rev 21:13
both pair the east with the opposite quarter to take in the whole earth at once: a promise spreads out east, west, north and south, and guests come from east and west to sit at the feast.Gen 28:14Mat 8:11Luk 13:29
both point to a distant east that armies and rulers sweep in from, so the direction can carry a threat: raiders from the east strip the harvest, and the great river is dried to clear a road for kings from the east.Jdg 6:3Rev 16:12
carries a second, wholly different meaning in the same word: the remote past, the days of old. Worshippers recall what God did in former times, and pray that their days be renewed as they once were.Psa 44:1Psa 77:5Isa 45:21Lam 5:21
reaches back before the world was made, and is used of God's own great age and of wisdom brought forth first of all. Even there it measures how far back something goes inside time rather than claiming it stands outside time.Pro 8:22Pro 8:23Mic 5:2Hab 1:12
can mean plainly "in front, ahead," the space a person is facing, with no compass point in view: Job goes forward and finds God is not there, and the psalmist is hemmed in behind and in front.Job 23:8Psa 139:5
hardens into a standing name for the eastern territory and the people who live there, a world with its own reputation for herds and for wisdom: Job is the greatest of them, and Solomon's wisdom is measured against theirs.Gen 25:61Ki 4:30Job 1:3
צֶמַחHebrew“branch”the Hebrew for a shoot or branch: in the promises of a coming king the Greek Old Testament renders it with this word, which is why a rising can also be a royal title.
Works as a plain compass direction, the east, locating where travellers come from or which side of a city a gate stands on. Nothing about growing plants is in view.Mat 2:1Rev 21:13Rev 16:12
Paired with the west, it stretches the picture across the whole horizon, so that people are gathered in from the farthest ends of the earth.Mat 8:11Luk 13:29Mrk 16:8
Names the moment a light first comes up, the rising of a star or of the sun, which is why English Bibles can render it "dayspring" or "sunrise". The image is dawn breaking overhead, not something pushing up out of the soil.Mat 2:2Mat 2:9Rev 7:2
Marks the quarter of the sky a sudden flash crosses, so that the coming of the Son of Man is measured from one edge of the visible world to the other.Mat 24:27
Both
Both words serve as a title for the promised king from David's line, which is why the Greek word carries messianic weight that its everyday meaning of "east" would never suggest on its own. Greek translators of the Old Testament used it for the Hebrew title, and Zechariah's wording stands behind Luke's song.Jer 23:5Zec 3:8Luk 1:78
Both picture rescue as something emerging into view after devastation: fresh growth for a land that has been stripped bare, and first light for people sitting in the dark.Isa 4:2Luk 1:78
Names literal green growth coming up out of the ground: what a watered field puts forth, what the earth makes spring up, and what is wiped out when a land is ruined.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11Ezk 16:7
Because it is growth from a root, it can threaten as easily as promise: a vine whose new shoots wither, or a crop that never comes to anything.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
As a title for the coming king it keeps the plant picture, and with it the sense of small, living beginnings: a shoot rising from a stump of David's line, a man who will grow up from his own place and build the temple.Zec 6:12Jer 33:15Zec 3:8
שַׁחַרHebrew“dawn”the Hebrew for daybreak, the closest counterpart to the dawn picture this word carries when it names a light coming up rather than a direction.
Names a quarter of the world rather than a time of day: a place on the map that travelers come from, and a side of a city wall. The Hebrew word never points a direction.Mat 2:1Mat 2:9Rev 21:13
Gets paired with the opposite horizon to sweep in the whole earth at once: lightning flashing from one side of the sky to the other, and guests arriving from east and west to sit at the feast.Mat 24:27Mat 8:11Luk 13:29
Can name a person: Zechariah's song calls the promised deliverer the rising light from heaven, so the word becomes a title for someone rather than a moment or a place.Luk 1:78
Both
Both are built on the sun coming up over the horizon: the Greek phrase says literally "the rising of the sun", and the Hebrew names the first light spreading across the mountains.Rev 7:2Rev 16:12Jol 2:2
Each becomes an image of light reaching people who have been in the dark, so each can carry hope instead of mere timekeeping: the rising light from heaven visits those sitting in darkness, and rescue is promised as light breaking out like daybreak and as an appearing as sure as daybreak.Luk 1:78Isa 58:8Hos 6:3
Older English versions render both with the same word, "dayspring", which is why the two can look interchangeable until the context shows one marking a direction and the other an hour.Luk 1:78Job 38:12
Fixes the hour a night ends, so it sets the deadline for whatever was done in the dark: Lot is hurried out as it comes up, the wrestling at the river lasts until it breaks, the abused woman falls at first light, and the wall builders work from it until the stars come out.Gen 19:15Gen 32:24Jdg 19:25Neh 4:21
Is personified as a figure with a body and a family: the eyelids of the dawn, the wings of the dawn, the son of the dawn.Job 3:9Psa 139:9Isa 14:12
Is something a person or God can act upon: the psalmist rouses it awake, and God commands it and teaches it where it belongs.Psa 57:8Psa 108:2Job 38:12
Can be withheld or reversed as a picture of judgment: God turns it into darkness, and those who consult the dead are told there is no daybreak for them.Amo 4:13Isa 8:20
It names the rising of the sun itself, not just the quarter of the sky where the sun comes up. Revelation twice says plainly "the rising of the sun", and the visitors in Matthew report seeing the star at its rising.Rev 7:2Mat 2:2Mat 2:9
Because it carries the picture of light coming up, it can be said of a person. Zechariah's song calls the promised rescuer the dawning light from on high who comes to visit a people sitting in the dark.Luk 1:78
It stands on its own as a place, a whole far region people travel from rather than a label stuck on something nearby. Visitors arrive from the east, guests stream in from the east to the great feast, and kings march from the east across a dried up Euphrates.Mat 2:1Luk 13:29Rev 16:12
Both
Both fix the east as a compass point and use it to place a gate or a border on the map. The Hebrew word marks the temple gate that faces east; the Greek word marks the side of the new Jerusalem where three of its gates stand.Ezk 10:19Rev 21:13
Both pair the east with its opposite to sweep in everything between. Hebrew sets the eastern sea against the western sea to cover the whole land; Greek sets east against west to cover the whole world.Zec 14:8Jol 2:20Mat 8:11Mrk 16:8
It also means "long ago" in time. Hebrew takes its bearings facing east, so what lies in front in space is also what came first in time, and one word covers both. David quotes a saying "of those of old", Isaiah tells the people to stop poring over the things of long ago, Ezekiel points back to what God said in days long past, and Malachi looks for worship as welcome as in the years long gone. The Greek word never reaches into time this way.1Sa 24:13Isa 43:18Ezk 38:17Mal 3:4
It works as a label fastened to something else, marking that thing as the eastern one: the eastern sea, the gate of the LORD's house that faces east. It does not name the east as a destination by itself.Ezk 47:18Ezk 11:1
It can sort people into earlier and later, paired with the word for those who come after. In Job, those who lived before and those who come later alike shudder at the same ruined man, though some readers take the pair as people to the west and people to the east instead.Job 18:20
What scholars say about anatolē
The lexica treat ἀνατολή as one noun with two related uses: the rising of a heavenly body, and by extension the eastern quarter, most often in the plural or in the fixed phrase ἀνατολὴ ἡλίου (BDAG s.v.; LSJ s.v.). Two passages carry the discussion. At Matthew 2:2 and 2:9 the articular singular ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ stands against the anarthrous plural ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν of 2:1, and Davies and Allison, with Brown, read it as a technical expression for the star's heliacal rising, though BDAG records the geographic rendering as still possible. At Luke 1:78 the question is whether ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους is primarily a dawn image or a messianic title carried over from the Septuagint, where ἀνατολή renders צֶמַח at Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12; Schlier in TDNT presses the messianic background while Fitzmyer keeps the light imagery primary, and many readers take Luke to be exploiting both at once. The occurrence in Mark belongs to the short additional ending, absent from the earliest witnesses.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἀνατολήlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἀνατολήlexicon
Heinrich Schlier, "ἀνατέλλω, ἀνατολή," TDNT 1:351-353theological-dictionary
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (ICC)commentary
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed.monograph
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible 28)commentary
I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC)commentary