the neck: the outward part of the body joining head to shoulders, named in the New Testament as the place a millstone is hung, an embrace lands, a yoke is laid, or a life is put on the line
Every use of this word in the New Testament is the ordinary neck, the visible part of the body between head and shoulders. Greek keeps it distinct from the inner throat (λάρυγξ), the passage for breath and speech. This word is the outside of the neck: what a rope, a necklace, or a pair of arms goes around.
What makes it worth a second look is that a neck in these seven verses is never just anatomy. Something is always being put on it:
- a millstone hung around it, in a warning about how serious it is to trip up a young believer
- a father's arms thrown around it, in the moment a lost son is welcomed home
- a yoke laid across it, in an argument over how much law to require of new believers
- a neck offered up for a friend, in a thank you to Prisca and Aquila
Two of those are set phrases rather than descriptions. "Falling on someone's neck" is simply how the Greek Old Testament says that one person embraced another, so Luke is not reporting an unusual gesture but reaching for a familiar warm expression. "Putting your own neck under" is how a Greek speaker said that someone risked being executed, an idiom English still shares when it talks about risking your neck.
So the word carries no theology of its own. It is a plain body part that takes its weight from whatever is placed on it: a stone, an embrace, a yoke, or a threat.