a made object put to use: most often a vessel or container, and by extension one's belongings or a person shaped for a purpose
At its core this word names a made object that someone puts to use. Most often that object is a container: a jar, a dish, the great sheet let down in Peter's vision, the vessel of sour wine held up to Jesus at the cross. In the plural it widens to a whole set of such objects: a household's goods, a strong man's property, the gear and tackle of a ship.
From there the word stretches into a memorable picture. If a vessel is something a maker forms and then uses for a purpose, a person can be spoken of the same way. Paul is called a chosen vessel, an instrument God picks up to carry his name. Drawing on the image of the potter, some vessels are made for honor and some for ordinary use, and Paul presses that picture to speak of people prepared for mercy or for wrath.
The same picture turns tender when it points at the body. Treasure carried in clay jars says the power belongs to God and not to the fragile people who carry it, and a wife is honored as the more delicate vessel. Across all these uses one idea holds steady: a thing, or a person, that a maker forms and then takes up to use.
Nuances
Whether the vessel in 1 Thessalonians 4:4 denotes a man's own body (self-mastery in holiness) or his wife (acquiring and living with a wife honorably).
- majorityThe vessel is one's own body; the instruction is to keep one's body under control in holiness and honor.; BDAG, s.v. σκεῦος; Gordon D. Fee, The First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians (NICNT)
- minorityThe vessel is one's own wife; the instruction concerns acquiring and living with a wife in holiness and honor.; Ernest Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (BNTC)