engizō

At its heart this is a simple word about the distance between two things growing small. Someone walks up to a city gate, a traveler falls in step beside two others on a road, a soldier steps forward to make an arrest. In every case the gap closes and the two are now near.

The New Testament keeps that plain picture but stretches it in two natural directions. A moment in time can come near the way a place does: a festival approaches on the calendar, an hour arrives, and most famously the rule of God draws so close that it is as good as here. And a person can come near to God, or God near to a person, the way two people close the space between them, which is the language of worship and prayer.

The same word carries all three because they are the same motion seen from different angles. Whether the thing approaching is a town, an appointed day, or God himself, the point is that what was once at a distance is now close enough to act on. That nearness is what gives the word its weight in the Gospels: when Jesus says the kingdom has come near, he is not measuring miles but announcing that it has arrived at the doorstep.