StrongerBible

platus

πλατύς

GreekG4116street, wide

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 6:5Mat 7:13Mat 12:19Luk 10:10Luk 13:26Luk 14:21Act 5:15Rev 11:8Rev 21:21Rev 22:2
Word studyResearch-gradepla-TOOSadjective, most often used as a noun for a city street

What platus means

1

wide: stretching far across, broad rather than narrow

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is the plain word for something broad rather than narrow. Ordinary Greek used it of wide rivers, open plains, broad shoulders, and flat objects, and it carried no praise or blame of its own.

The bare adjective turns up once in the New Testament, in the two gates of Matthew 7. The wide gate opens onto a spacious road (εὐρύχωρος) that ends in ruin, while the narrow gate (στενός) opens onto a hard road that ends in life. That is a surprising way to use the word, because the Hebrew Scriptures make width a picture of rescue: the trapped person cries out from a tight place and God sets him in a broad place (מֶרְחָב), open and safe.

Nothing in the word itself decides which picture applies. What settles it is what is broad, who made it broad, and where it leads. Room that God opens up for a cornered person is mercy; a road a crowd takes because it asks nothing of them is not.

Mat 7:13
2

a broad street: a town's wide main way or open public square

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the everyday Greek word for a town's wide street, the open way that runs through the middle of a city rather than the alleys behind it, for which Greek has a different word (ῥύμη). It began as the adjective "wide" with the word for road (ὁδός) left unspoken, so the name itself means "the wide one". Latin borrowed it, which is why English has "plaza" and "piazza".

In the Gospels and Acts these streets are where public life happens, and that makes them the place where everything is seen:

  • show-offs pray at the street corners so that a crowd will notice them
  • the promised servant of God never raises his voice in the streets
  • messengers who have been turned away stand in the streets to say so
  • the sick are carried out into the streets so that Peter's shadow may fall on them
  • the poor and the disabled are brought in from the streets and lanes to fill a banquet hall

Revelation narrows the view to one street. The bodies of God's two witnesses lie unburied in the street of the great city, while in the new Jerusalem the single street is pure gold, clear as glass, with the tree of life growing in the middle of it and its leaves for the healing of the nations. The same open space that once displayed disgrace becomes the place where a city's glory is on show.

Nuances

2athe streets of a town: the wide public ways where crowds gather and everyone can be seen
Mat 6:5Mat 12:19Luk 10:10Luk 13:26Luk 14:21Act 5:15
2bthe main street of one particular city, spoken of as a single place
Rev 11:8Rev 21:21Rev 22:2

What scholars say about platus

LSJ traces πλατύς across broad rivers, plains, shoulders, and flat objects, with only marginal figurative use in classical Greek (a strong oath, unrestrained laughter, diffuse speech), while BDAG defines the substantivized feminine πλατεῖα (with ὁδός understood) as a relatively broad thoroughfare in an urban area, the standard Hellenistic civic term also attested epigraphically at Miletus, Pergamum, and Apamea. In the Septuagint πλατύς and πλάτος render רָחָב and רֹחַב for dimensional breadth, πλατεῖα renders רְחוֹב for the city square, and the otherwise rare πλατυσμός becomes something close to a technical term for deliverance, rendering מֶרְחָב at Psalm 118:5 (LXX 117:5), Psalm 18:19, and 2 Samuel 22:20; Muraoka's Septuagint lexicon glosses it as a spacious environment symbolizing freedom from distress, the counterpart of the מֵצַר / στενοχωρία pole. Matthew 7:13 is the only New Testament use of the bare adjective, paired synonymously with εὐρύχωρος and answered in v. 14 by στενή and τεθλιμμένη, whose root carries the θλῖψις of discipleship; the omission of ἡ πύλη by Sinaiticus (original hand), several Old Latin witnesses, Clement, Origen, and Cyprian is generally judged an accident of similar endings, and NA28 retains it with B, C, W and the majority on the strength of the parallelism in v. 14 (Metzger). Davies-Allison, Luz, Betz, and Nolland locate the imagery in the Jewish Two Ways tradition (Deut 30:15, 19; Jer 21:8; Sirach 15:11-20; 1QS 3:13-4:26) and in the Two Ways source behind Didache 1-6 and Barnabas 18-20, which van de Sandt and Flusser argue is pre-Christian Jewish catechesis; the roughly contemporary 4 Ezra 7:6-14 uses the same narrow-entrance imagery with breadth as the positive term, confirming that the adjective is evaluatively neutral and that Matthew's negative use is a deliberate rhetorical inversion (Luz) grounded in the absence of moral demand (Davies-Allison). In Revelation the articular singular ἡ πλατεῖα τῆς πόλεως (11:8; 21:21; 22:2) is read by Aune as a specific plaza and by Beale more symbolically of the ungodly world, both noting the intended contrast between the great city's street of shame and the New Jerusalem's street of gold; Koester concurs on the reversal.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • LSJ, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), 1414-1415, s.v. πλατύςlexicon
  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 2000), 823-824, s.vv. πλατεῖα, πλατύς, πλατύνωlexicon
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. πλατυσμόςlexicon
  • R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2010), 2:1205, s.v. πλατύςlexicon
  • HALOT, s.vv. רחב, רחוב, מרחבlexicon
  • W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC; T&T Clark, 1988), 1:696-702commentary
  • U. Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2007), 370-378commentary
  • H. D. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1995), 521-533commentary
  • J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 2005), 331-333commentary
  • B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (United Bible Societies, 2005), on Matthew 7:13-14reference
  • H. van de Sandt and D. Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (Fortress/Van Gorcum, 2002), chs. 2-4monograph
  • D. E. Aune, Revelation 6-16 (WBC 52B; Nelson, 1998), 618-620; Revelation 17-22 (WBC 52C), 1166-1167commentary
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1999), 591-595, 1091-1092commentary
  • C. R. Koester, Revelation (Anchor Yale Bible 38A; Yale, 2014), 505-507, 819-821commentary
  • A. H. McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Macmillan, 1915), on 7:13-14commentary
  • M. E. Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ICC; T&T Clark, 1994), 1:469-471commentary

All attested forms of πλατύς

accusative f p

πλατείας

Luk 10:10, Luk 14:21, Act 5:15

dative f p

πλατείαις

Mat 12:19, Luk 13:26

genitive f s

πλατείας

Rev 11:8, Rev 22:2

nominative f s

πλατεῖα

Mat 7:13, Rev 21:21

genitive f p

πλατειῶν

Mat 6:5