from that place: pointing back to a place already in view, most often as the spot someone or something moves away from
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is a plain pointing word. It refers back to a place the reader already has in mind and marks it as the point a movement starts from: someone leaves it, comes out of it, or travels away from it. In English it lands as "from there," or the older "thence."
It is above all a storytelling connector. In the Gospels and Acts it stitches one scene to the next: Jesus, or later the apostles, finishes something in one place and "from there" goes on to the next. The word itself carries no drama; it simply keeps the travel moving.
One use bends away from motion. In Revelation 22:2 it is paired with its opposite ("from here") in the set phrase "on this side and on that side," which together mean "on either side." There the word is not about leaving a place at all; it fixes one of two positions across from each other.
Nuances
1afrom there: the place someone departs from or a thing comes out of, as the starting point of movement away
Marks the place a movement starts from and leaves: "from there", the point of departure. It answers "from where?"Mat 4:21Mat 15:21
It is the narrator's hinge for moving Jesus from one scene to the next: having finished in one spot, he goes on from there to another.Mat 9:9Mrk 10:1
Both
Both point back to a single place already named in the story rather than introducing a new one, so the reader supplies the spot from the surrounding verses.Mrk 6:10Mat 4:21
Demonstrative, not interrogative: it points back to an already-known place as the point someone leaves from, rather than asking about a source. It states "from that place," it never questions.Mat 4:21Mat 9:9Mrk 6:1
Stays concrete and physical: it almost always marks bodily departure or passage from one location to the next, tracking a person moving across a map.Mat 11:1Mrk 10:1Luk 16:26
Both
Both are "from-where" adverbs that locate a point of origin in space: one asks where a person is from, the other states the place someone comes from.Jhn 9:29Mat 4:21
Interrogative: it asks after an origin that the speaker does not know and expects an answer, the opposite of pointing to a settled place.Mat 21:25Jhn 19:9Rev 7:13
Reaches past geography to source, means, or cause: it asks where wisdom, provision, or conflict come from, not just what spot a person left.Mat 13:54Jhn 6:5Jas 4:1
ὅθενthe relative "from which place," tying back to a named place in a clause; this word is the plain demonstrative "from that place."
ekeithen in the other biblical languages
שָׁםHebrew“there”Hebrew has no single word for "from there": it puts the prefix "from" on the word for "there," so this one Greek word answers to a short Hebrew phrase.
is a single word that already contains the "from": the sense "away from that place" is built into it, so nothing has to be added in front of it before a writer can move someone off the spot just named.Mat 4:21Jhn 4:43Act 13:4
always points away from a place and never at it, so it cannot say where something simply is or happens; every use marks a leaving, a sailing away, or a moving on.Mat 15:29Act 27:12Act 20:13
marks the place someone is told to leave, or cannot leave: it names the exit point in instructions to travelling disciples and in warnings about a debtor's cell and the gulf between the dead.Mrk 6:10Luk 9:4Mat 5:26Luk 16:26
can once describe a still scene rather than a journey, pairing with a matching word for "on this side" to say that something stands on either bank.Rev 22:2
Both
both stand in for a place already named, so an account can keep its bearings without repeating the name: Babel is spoken of as "there" and "from there" once it has been named, and Jesus goes on "from there" without the town being named again.Gen 11:9Mat 9:9
both are the ordinary way a story moves a person off one spot toward the next, marking the point of departure while the destination follows: Abraham and Isaac move on "from there", and Jesus goes out "from there" to his home town.Gen 12:8Gen 26:17Mrk 6:1Mrk 7:24
in both, the sense "from there" is the standard rendering when a departure is in view, so English Bibles translate the Greek word and the Hebrew word with its joined "from" the same way.Gen 26:22Mat 11:1
means plain "there" by itself, naming where something is or happens with no movement in view at all: where God placed the man, where the good gold lies, where Jacob slept.Gen 2:8Gen 2:12Gen 28:11
reaches the sense "from there" only when the little word for "from" is joined to the front of it, so what Greek says in one word takes two joined pieces in Hebrew.Gen 2:10Gen 11:8Gen 18:22
can also be aimed toward a place, "to there", by taking an added ending, so the same word covers both directions the Greek word never takes: fleeing to a town, or being brought back to a country.Gen 19:20Gen 24:6
works as the anchor of a "where" clause after a place has been mentioned, holding the spot inside the description: the land where the gold is, the place where his tent had stood.Gen 2:11Gen 13:3
What scholars say about ekeithen
Standard lexica treat ἐκεῖθεν as the adverb built on the demonstrative stem of ἐκεῖ ("there") with the ablatival suffix -θεν that marks source or origin, hence "from there." BDAG distinguishes the plain local use ("from that place") from the fixed correlative ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐκεῖθεν ("on this side and on that side," hence "on either side") in Revelation 22:2. In the Synoptic Gospels and Acts the word functions overwhelmingly as a narrative connective, chaining the movements of Jesus and the apostles from one locale to the next.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἐκεῖθενlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἐκεῖθενlexicon
BDF, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament, §104grammar