StrongerBible

stenos

στενός

GreekG4728“narrow, strait”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 7:13Mat 7:14Luk 13:24
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradesteh-NOSSadjective

What stenos means

narrow: tight enough that getting through is restricted and takes effort

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In ordinary Greek this was the plain, everyday word for narrow, and it named the kinds of tight places anyone would recognize:

  • a mountain pass where an army could be trapped
  • an alleyway barely wide enough for one person
  • a doorway a grown man had to stoop to get through

Greek speakers also used it for being squeezed by circumstances rather than by walls. Someone short of money was said to be in narrow straits, and a besieged town was in a narrow place. The Greek Old Testament pushed the same direction, using this word for a Hebrew word (צַר) that means both "narrow" and "in trouble." The translators were even willing to turn the Hebrew phrase "bread of adversity" into "narrow bread," because in Greek too narrow could mean afflicting. English does something similar when it calls a close call a "narrow escape" or hard times "straits."

All three New Testament uses are Jesus describing the entrance into life: a gate in Matthew, a house door in Luke. Matthew sets the narrow gate against a wide and roomy one (εὐρύχωρος), then pairs it with a second word, from the family of pressing and crushing (θλίβω), that elsewhere in that Gospel describes persecution. Luke keeps the narrow door and tells his hearers to strain every nerve to get in. In both, the tightness is the point: entry is restricted, and getting through costs something.

That does not turn the word itself into a technical term for suffering. It still just means "narrow." But narrowness in Greek reached naturally toward hardship, the way the related noun for being boxed in with no way out (στενοχωρία) reaches toward distress, and the first hearers would have felt that reach.

Mat 7:13Mat 7:14Luk 13:24

Disputed

Whether the two adjectives in Matthew 7:14, "narrow" of the gate and "pressed thin" of the road, make two distinct claims or one claim stated twice.

  • contestedThey are complementary. The gate is narrow because entry requires a sharply defined decision, while the road is pressed in because discipleship meets opposition and persecution, a sustained theme in Matthew.; D. A. Carson, "Matthew," in Expositor's Bible Commentary 8, ed. F. E. Gaebelein (Zondervan, 1984), ad Matt 7:13-14; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2007), 285-288; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Word, 1993), 177-180; Grant Osborne, Matthew, ZECNT (Zondervan, 2010), 265-270
  • contestedThey are a matched pair in the Semitic manner, both saying the same thing for emphasis: the way that leads to life is restrictive and hard going.; Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans, 1999), ad Matt 7:13-14; A. H. McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Macmillan, 1915), 94

What scholars say about stenos

στενός is ordinary Koine for "narrow," the opposite of εὐρύς/πλατύς, used from Aeschylus and Herodotus onward of passes, straits, defiles, sea-lanes, and alleys, with substantival τὰ στενά a standard term for a military narrows (Herodotus 7.223; Strabo 3.5.5). A figurative range is already classical: ἀπειληθέντες ἐς στεινόν, "driven into a corner" (Herodotus 9.34); εἰς στενὸν καταστήσεται, "reduced to straits" (Demosthenes, Or. 1.22); στενός of petty thought (Plato, Grg. 497c); and adverbial στενῶς διακεῖσθαι, "to be in difficulties," is attested in Ptolemaic papyri (PCair.Zen. 498; PTeb. 760). In the LXX στενός occurs some sixteen or seventeen times, rendering צַר, מְצָד, and מָצוֹר, and spans the literal (Numbers 22:26; 4 Kingdoms 6:1; Isaiah 49:19-20) and the figurative (2 Samuel 24:14 στενά μοι πάντοθεν; 1 Chronicles 21:13; Susanna 22 Theta; Isaiah 30:20 ἄρτος στενός for לחם צר), so the spatial and existential senses were already fused for a first-century Jewish Greek speaker. Bertram (TDNT 7:604-608) and Spicq document the existential coloring of the στεν- group, and Silva (NIDNTTE 4:353-359) notes that narrowness-as-distress is a near-universal metaphor (compare Latin angustia/angere, German eng/Angst). Etymologically στενός is isolated and probably pre-Greek (Frisk; Beekes); the older derivation from στένω or ἵστημι (Thayer) is untenable, and Barr and Carson (Exegetical Fallacies, 28-33) rightly caution against loading the adjective with the freight of στενάζω. All three NT occurrences are Q material on kingdom entry. Matthew 7:13-14 pairs στενή with τεθλιμμένη (perfect passive of θλίβω, the verb behind θλῖψις), the same conceptual pairing Paul later stereotypes as θλῖψις καὶ στενοχωρία (Romans 2:9; 8:35; 2 Corinthians 6:4), where Bertram argues στενοχωρία intensifies θλῖψις. Luke 13:24 substitutes θύρα for πύλη, assimilating the saying to the closed-door pericope of 13:25, and replaces the plain imperative with the agonistic ἀγωνίζεσθε. The pairing στενή/εὐρύχωρος is not the vocabulary of the Greco-Roman two-ways tradition (Hesiod, Op. 287-292; Prodicus in Xenophon, Mem. 2.1.21-34; Didache 1.1; Barnabas 18-20), which prefers χαλεπή/τραχεῖα/μακρά, but is shared with Testament of Abraham (Rec. A) 11-13 and Tabula Cebetis 15, and closely paralleled by Maximus of Tyre 39.3n (ὁδὸς στενὴ καὶ τραχεῖα) and Arrian, Anab. 6.29.5 (θυρὶς στενή); this looks like a first-century Jewish-Hellenistic development within an older wisdom framework. Commentators on Matthew (Davies-Allison, Luz, Nolland, Keener, Osborne, Gundry, Betz) and on Luke (Bovon, Fitzmyer, Marshall, Bock, Green, Wolter) agree the word is literally "narrow" yet functions to mark constricted, demanding access; Betz and Fitzmyer both reject Jeremias's identification of the gate or door with the eschatological gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. Live disagreements are subtler: whether στενή and τεθλιμμένη are complementary or parallel, whether the ὀλίγοι of 7:14c is numerical or hortatory (Davies-Allison and Luz read it as hortatory), and whether 7:14a reads τί as a Semitic exclamation (Metzger, Davies-Allison, Hagner, Betz) or ὅτι (NA28 text).

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. with revised supplement (Clarendon, 1996), s.v. στενός, στενωπόςlexicon
  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. στενός, p. 942lexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (UBS, 1988), § 79.100lexicon
  • Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. στενός, 634f.lexicon
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri (Hodder & Stoughton, 1914-1929), s.v. στενός, στενοχωρίαlexicon
  • Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2010), s.v. στενόςlexicon
  • Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Winter, 1960-1972), s.v. στενόςlexicon
  • Georg Bertram, "στενός, στενοχωρία, στενοχωρέω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 7 (Eerdmans, 1971), 604-608theological-dictionary
  • Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed. (Zondervan, 2014), 4:353-359, s.v. στενός κτλ.theological-dictionary
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, trans. J. D. Ernest (Hendrickson, 1994), 3:293-295, s.v. στενοχωρέω/στενοχωρίαtheological-dictionary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (T&T Clark, 1988), 694-701commentary
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, trans. J. E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2007), 369-376commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2007), 285-288commentary
  • Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Word, 1993), 177-180commentary
  • John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 2005), 330-334commentary
  • Grant Osborne, Matthew, ZECNT (Zondervan, 2010), 265-270commentary
  • Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 1994), 126-128commentary
  • Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1995), 521-533commentary
  • François Bovon, Luke 2, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2013), 307-316commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, Anchor Bible 28A (Doubleday, 1985), 1020-1027commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1978), 563-572commentary
  • Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, BECNT 3B (Baker, 1996), 1233-1240commentary
  • Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Eerdmans, 1997), 528-536commentary
  • Michael Wolter, The Gospel According to Luke, vol. 2, trans. W. Coppins and C. Heilig (Baylor University Press, 2017), 191-197commentary
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford University Press, 1961)monograph
  • D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Baker, 1996), 28-33monograph
  • Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (UBS, 1994), 19monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of στενός

genitive f s

στενῆς

Mat 7:13, Luk 13:24

nominative f s

στενὴ

Mat 7:14