in front of, or in the presence of: it sets one person or thing facing another, reaching from a physical spot all the way to standing before God himself
The word marks where one person or thing stands in relation to another: in front of it, ahead of it, or in its presence. It began as a plain word for physical position, "in front of," and the New Testament still uses it that way, from a gift left at the altar to soldiers kneeling to mock a king. From that spatial core it stretches naturally to being in someone's presence, then to standing before a ruler or judge, and finally to ranking ahead of another.
Its weightiest use is "before God." Greek-speaking Jews had chosen this word to translate a common Hebrew expression built on the word for face (פָּנִים), "to the face of" someone, and a reverent Aramaic way of speaking about God (קֳדָם). Through that history it came to carry a whole world of meaning: to live, pray, confess, and be judged in God's presence. When the Gospels say a thing was "well-pleasing before" the Father, or Paul writes of standing "before God" at Christ's return, the word points to God's own attention and verdict, not a mere location.
One feature is easy to miss: in everyday Greek the word could also mean "formerly, in time past," but the New Testament never uses it that way. A close relative is ἐνώπιον, which leans on the idea of being "in the eye of" or "in the sight of" someone, while this word leans on facing, being in front of. In practice the two overlap heavily, and translators often render both simply as "before."
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the recurring "before God" expressions (for example "there was good pleasure before you" and "it is not the will before your Father") are ordinary Greek phrasing or fixed renderings carried over from the Hebrew "to the face of" and its reverent Aramaic counterpart.
- majorityThe vocabulary itself is everyday Greek; only the fixed phrase "before God" with an abstract subject reflects the underlying Hebrew and Aramaic idiom, a calque on the Semitic original.; M. J. Harris, Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament (Zondervan, 2012); F. Blass, A. Debrunner, R. W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament, sec. 214
- minorityThese prepositional expressions are thoroughgoing translation-Greek, shaped throughout by the Old Testament and its Aramaic reverence for God rather than by native Greek usage.; N. Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament (T&T Clark, 1965)
- minorityThe words are normal Koine even where the sentence pattern is Semitic; claims of heavy Semitic influence on the vocabulary are overstated.; M. Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning, rev. ed. (Zondervan, 1994); J. A. L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch (Scholars Press, 1983)