nomē

At its root this word names whatever is dealt out or apportioned, and its oldest, most concrete use is the grazing a shepherd portions out to his sheep. A pasture is not just any field but the place a flock is led to feed, the provision that keeps it alive.

In the only New Testament verse that uses the word this way, Jesus promises that whoever enters through him will go in and out and find pasture. The picture carries the full weight of the Old Testament shepherd promises, especially Ezekiel 34, where God himself vows to feed his scattered flock in good, rich grazing land. To find pasture is to find life, safety, and everything the sheep needs from a faithful shepherd.

So the word here is more than a farming term. It stands for the spiritual nourishment and secure life that come through Jesus, pictured as the good shepherd leading his own to where they are fed and kept.

The same idea of dealing something out has a dark side. Just as grazing animals advance across a field, eating their way forward, so a wound can advance through the body, consuming healthy tissue as it goes. Greek doctors used this very word as a technical term for that outward, destructive spread, and the disease name that survives today comes straight from it.

In the one New Testament verse that uses the word this way, Paul warns that the talk of two false teachers will keep spreading like gangrene. The point is not that their error is merely wrong but that it is actively contagious: it feeds on the church the way dead-tissue infection feeds on a limb, eating outward until it is cut away.

The two New Testament uses of this single word are near opposites. In one, what is dealt out is life-giving food for the flock; in the other, what is dealt out is the deadly advance of rot. The word itself simply names what is portioned out and where it spreads; the context decides whether that is grace or ruin.