a going out to meet someone who is arriving, then accompanying them on their way in
The word names a meeting, but a particular kind: people leave where they are and travel out to meet someone who is coming, then turn and bring that person the rest of the way in. In the New Testament it appears only three times, and only ever in the set phrase that means "to meet" (literally "for a meeting of"). Each time it carries the same picture of an arrival being welcomed and escorted.
In ordinary Greek the word could describe any encounter, friendly or hostile, and the Greek Old Testament uses the same phrase for armies marching against each other as well as for warm welcomes. By the time of the New Testament, though, all three of its uses are friendly. The clearest is in Acts, where believers from Rome walk out along the road to greet Paul and bring him into the city; the same pattern of going out and coming back in shapes the wedding scene in Matthew, where those who go out to meet the bridegroom enter the feast together with him.
The most discussed use is in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, where the living are caught up to meet the returning Lord. Because the word elsewhere pictures a welcome that ends by escorting the honored guest back in, readers have long debated where the meeting in the air leads next. That debate, though, turns on the surrounding language and not on this word, which by itself means only a meeting (see the cautions and the dispute below).
Whether the surrounding language casts the meeting as the ancient ceremony of welcoming an arriving ruler and escorting him into the city (so the saints would bring the Lord down to earth), or as something else, and where the meeting then leads.
- majorityThe context evokes the Hellenistic civic reception (the adventus), so the saints go out, meet the Lord, and escort him the rest of the way to earth. This survives mostly as the weaker claim that the imagery is evoked, after the strong claim that the word itself was a fixed technical term was abandoned.; Erik Peterson, "Die Einholung des Kyrios," Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 7 (1929/30): 682-702; Robert H. Gundry, Bulletin for Biblical Research 6 (1996): 39-41; Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians, PNTC (2002), 226-228; Jeffrey A. D. Weima, 1-2 Thessalonians, BECNT (2014)
- contestedThe reception background is acknowledged but the direction of travel is left undetermined; nothing in the word or the context decides whether the company continues to earth or returns to heaven.; F. F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Word Biblical Commentary 45 (1982), 102-103; Ernest Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, BNTC (1972), 199-200
- minorityThe passage draws on Jewish traditions of being taken up to be with God rather than on the Hellenistic reception, so the faithful are raised and stay with the Lord rather than escorting him down.; Joseph Plevnik, "1 Thessalonians 4:17," Biblica 80 (1999): 537-546; Michael R. Cosby, Bulletin for Biblical Research 4 (1994): 15-34