By far the most common use of this word in the New Testament. The same root that means "to guard" points here to the place where the guarding happens, so the word slides naturally from the act of watching over someone to the building where they are kept. It is the ordinary word for a jail or holding cell: where John the Baptist was shut up, where Peter and the apostles were locked, where Paul and Silas sang at midnight.
The place is not always a literal jail. In two visionary passages the word stretches to name a place of confinement in the unseen world: the "spirits in prison" Christ went and preached to, and the pit from which Satan is finally released. Revelation also turns it into a grim picture of a ruined city as a haunt or cage where unclean creatures are penned. In every case the core idea holds: a place that holds something fast under watch.
1ba place of confinement in the unseen world, or figuratively a haunt or cage for what is shut up there
1Pe 3:19*Rev 18:2 (3×)*Rev 20:7
2
a watch of the night: one of the set stretches into which the night was divided
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Ancient people split the night into a few fixed shifts, named for the soldiers who stood guard during each one. This word can name such a stretch of time, a watch. Speaking of "the fourth watch" or "the second or third watch" is roughly like our saying "the small hours" or naming a graveyard shift.
The link to the prison sense is the shared root idea of guarding: a watch is the span during which someone keeps guard, just as a prison is the place where the guarding is done. The Gospels use it only for telling time, marking how late in the night an event fell.
Mat 14:25Mat 24:43Mrk 6:48Luk 12:38
3
the act of keeping watch: standing guard over something
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is the root meaning of the word, the activity of guarding itself, before it shifted to name either the place or the time of guarding. It is rare in the New Testament. It appears where the shepherds near Bethlehem were out in the fields keeping guard over their flock by night, watching to protect the sheep.
the Greek word can also mean a watch of the night or the act of guarding, ranges that prison does not touchMat 14:25Luk 2:8
Both
both name the place where a person is held under guardAct 12:5
Only prison
prison in English suggests a formal penal institution with cells and sentences, a narrower and more modern picture than the simple guarded holding place the Greek names
the Greek word far more often means a prison, a sense the English watch never carriesAct 16:23
Both
both can name one of the night's guard shifts as a way of telling timeMat 14:25
Only watch
watch in English first suggests a timepiece or the act of looking out, while here it means a fixed stretch of the night
“ward”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“hold”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“cage”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How phulakē differs from similar Greek words
δεσμωτήριονa more specific word for the prison building itself, the jailhouse, where this word can mean guarding in general, a watch of the night, or the place
τήρησιςcustody or being held in keeping, naming the state of detention rather than the building
δεσμόςa bond or chain, and so imprisonment pictured as being bound, rather than the place that holds a prisoner
Marks off a "watch" as a division of the night, a fixed stretch of time during which sentries kept guard. Matthew 14:25 speaks of the "fourth watch" and Luke 12:38 of the "second" and "third watch," a temporal sense the Hebrew word does not carry.Mat 14:25Luk 12:38Mat 24:43
Both
Both name a place where a person is held in confinement. John the Baptist is put in prison in Matthew 14:3, and Joseph is put in custody in Genesis 40:3.Mat 14:3Act 12:4Gen 40:3Gen 42:17
Both cover the activity of keeping watch or standing guard. Shepherds are keeping watch over their flock by night in Luke 2:8, and the people set a guard against attack in Nehemiah 4:9.Luk 2:8Neh 4:9Neh 7:3
Widens to the abstract act of guarding something entrusted, not a building or a span of time. Proverbs 4:23 urges the reader to keep the heart with all vigilance, and Job 7:12 pictures a "watch" set over a person.Pro 4:23Job 7:12
Names an organized guard station and the standing office of watchmen on duty, arranged by division. First Chronicles 26:16 and Nehemiah 12:24 assign gatekeepers and singers to their posts "watch by watch," an institutional sense the Greek word does not take in the New Testament.1Ch 26:16Neh 12:24Neh 12:25
כֶּלֶאHebrew“prison”the Hebrew word for confinement or a prison as a place of restraint, without the watch-of-the-night sense
also names a watch of the night, one of the fixed periods into which the night was divided for keeping guard, so the word can mark a stretch of time rather than a place. The Hebrew confinement word never carries this sense.Mat 14:25Luk 12:38Mrk 6:48
can name a pen or holding place for creatures rather than human prisoners, used of a haunt of unclean spirits and a cage of foul birds.Rev 18:2
Both
both name a prison where a person is locked up and held by the authorities, and the Greek word is the ordinary New Testament term for the same kind of confinement the Hebrew word names in the Old Testament.Mat 14:31Ki 22:27
both hold notable captives at a ruler's command, from an imprisoned prophet to a deposed king, kept shut away until a change of fortune sets them free.Act 12:42Ki 17:4
pictures imprisonment as a lasting condition, so a captive king wears his prison garments throughout his detention and changes them only on the day he is finally released.2Ki 25:29Jer 52:33
Only the Greek word names a place: the lockup or prison building where a person is shut in and held.Mat 14:3Act 12:5Act 16:23Heb 11:36
It can stand for the whole experience of being jailed, counted alongside beatings and hunger as a hardship a believer endures.Luk 21:122Co 6:52Co 11:23
It also covers the work of standing guard and the sentries themselves, not only the hours they cover.Luk 2:8Act 12:10
It stretches beyond human jails to the holding place where spirits and Satan are kept confined.1Pe 3:19Rev 18:2Rev 20:7
Both
Both words cut the night into fixed stretches that can be counted off, so an hour is named by which watch it falls in.Jdg 7:19Mat 14:25Luk 12:38
In both, a named watch marks the moment when something breaks in on people who are asleep or off their guard.Exo 14:241Sa 11:11Mat 24:43
When the Greek word carries this sense of a night watch, it is doing the same job the Hebrew word does in the Old Testament, which is why English Bibles render both as "watch".Exo 14:24Mrk 6:48
The Hebrew word belongs to the language of lying awake before God: the night watches are the hours of remembering, praying, and pouring out grief.Psa 63:6Psa 119:148Lam 2:19
It becomes a yardstick for time itself, measuring how brief a thousand years look from God's side.Psa 90:4
It also names a stretch of the night, one of the shifts into which the hours of darkness were divided for sentry duty, so the same word can mark a time rather than a place.Mat 14:25Mat 24:43Luk 12:38
It can name the guard post itself, the manned checkpoint someone has to get past, rather than the cell where a prisoner sits.Act 12:10
It stretches to confinement that is not a human jail at all, the holding place of spirits and unclean creatures and of Satan himself.1Pe 3:19Rev 18:2Rev 20:7
It works as a plural summary of repeated hardship, one item in a list of sufferings, without pointing to any particular building.2Co 6:52Co 11:23Heb 11:36
Both
Both name a place where a person is kept under armed watch, and the Greek word is the natural counterpart translators reach for when the Hebrew word carries that sense.Jer 32:2Act 12:5
In both, the holding is open ended custody rather than a served sentence: someone is put there and kept until a ruler decides what to do next.Jer 37:21Act 12:4
Both name a place whose whole character is the guarding done over it, so English has to pick between "guard" and "prison" where the original word holds the two together.Jer 38:28Mat 5:25
It also names the mark an archer shoots at, the thing set up to be hit, which is a completely separate use that the Greek word never carries.1Sa 20:20Job 16:12Lam 3:12
Where it means custody it is almost always one particular walled courtyard in Jerusalem, the guarded enclosure beside the royal palace where Jeremiah was held, not prisons in general.Jer 32:8Jer 33:1Jer 38:13
Because it is that one known place, it doubles as a fixed landmark in descriptions of the city wall, a point surveyors and builders could locate.Neh 3:25Neh 12:39
It also names a stretch of time, one of the set shifts the night was divided into, so a writer can use it to say how late an event fell. The Hebrew word never marks time.Mat 14:25Mrk 6:48Luk 12:38Mat 24:43
It can also name the activity of guarding itself, as with the shepherds who were out in the fields keeping watch over their flock at night. The Hebrew word only ever names a place or a workman, never the act of watching.Luk 2:8
It stretches past earthly jails to name a place of confinement in the unseen world, holding spirits or Satan himself, and in one vision a ruined city pictured as a cage for unclean creatures. Every confinement the Hebrew word names is an ordinary human holding place.1Pe 3:19Rev 20:7Rev 18:2
It is the everyday word for the lockup a court sends someone to, whether a debtor held until he pays the last penny or a man handed over by a judge. The Hebrew word never appears in a legal setting of that kind.Mat 5:25Mat 18:30Luk 12:58
Both
Both name a place that holds a person fast, shut in and unable to walk out.Isa 24:22Isa 42:7Mat 14:3Act 16:23
Both stand in scenes where the way out has to come from outside: the Hebrew word in a plea and a promise that God will bring the shut-in out, the Greek word in accounts of a door opened for prisoners who could not open it themselves.Psa 142:7Isa 42:7Act 5:19Act 12:10
English Bibles print "prison" for both, so the two look like one word to an English reader even though the Hebrew names the place from being shut and the Greek names it from being guarded.Isa 42:7Mat 25:36
The same Hebrew spelling covers a second, unrelated thing: a skilled metalworker, listed among the craftsmen carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon and usually rendered "smiths" or "metal workers." The Greek word never names a person or a trade.2Ki 24:142Ki 24:16Jer 24:1Jer 29:2
It names the place by what is done to the door rather than by the guard who stands at it, since it is built on the Hebrew verb meaning "to shut." Isaiah 24:22 puts that verb and this noun side by side, so the line runs almost like "shut into a shutting place," a play the Greek word cannot make because it is named from guarding instead.Isa 24:22
In its confinement sense it belongs entirely to poetry and prophecy, picturing helpless captivity or a promised release, never reporting that a particular person was locked up on a particular day. The Greek word does most of its work inside plain narrative.Psa 142:7Isa 42:7Isa 24:22
in the New Testament most often means a prison, the literal jail where John, Peter, Paul, and the persecuted church are locked upMat 14:3Act 12:4Act 16:23
also names a watch of the night, one of the fixed stretches into which the dark hours were divided for keeping guardLuk 2:8Mat 14:25Luk 12:38
Both
both grow from the idea of keeping guard and can both name a watch or the duty of watching, whether the appointed watch of the night or the appointed charge a person is set to keepLuk 2:82Ki 11:5
names an assigned duty or obligation that a person is charged to keep, above all the priests' and Levites' charge over the tabernacle and its serviceNum 3:7Num 18:3Lev 8:35
is what one keeps in the sense of obeying, the charge of the LORD standing beside his commandments and statutesGen 26:5Deu 11:11Ki 2:3
It measures time as well as naming a place. It is the word for one of the watches the night was divided into, the block of hours a set of guards was on duty, so a writer can say an event happened in the second, third, or fourth watch.Mat 14:25Mrk 6:48Luk 12:38Mat 24:43
It can name the work of guarding itself, or the post where guards stand, rather than a building that holds people. Shepherds sitting up over their flock at night are keeping this, and Peter walks past two of these on his way out.Luk 2:8Act 12:10
It covers confinement of every kind across the Roman world: a debtor locked up until he pays, a beaten prisoner shoved into an inner cell, and imprisonment listed as one repeated hardship among many in a life of hard travel.Mat 5:25Act 16:242Co 11:23Heb 11:36
It reaches past human jails to name a holding place in the unseen world, where spirits are kept, where a released captive comes out from, and where unclean creatures roost in a ruined city.1Pe 3:19Rev 20:7Rev 18:2
Both
Both are rendered "prison" in English Bibles, and both name a guarded place of confinement that a ruler or an official puts someone into.Gen 39:20Mat 14:3
In both, the place comes with a keeper who answers for the inmates and controls how closely they are held.Gen 39:22Act 16:23
Both hold people the story treats as innocent, so being locked up is where God's servant waits and is looked after, not where a wrongdoer gets what he deserves.Gen 39:21Act 5:19
It never stands alone. It always sits next to the word for "house" to name one specific building, the lockup in Egypt where the king's prisoners were kept, so it works more like part of a name than like a general word for jail.Gen 39:20Gen 40:3
It belongs to a single episode. Every occurrence sits in the account of Joseph in Egypt and points at the same building, with the same warden in charge and the same fellow inmates inside.Gen 39:21Gen 39:22Gen 39:23Gen 40:5
What scholars say about phulakē
Standard lexica (BDAG, LSJ, the EDNT entry by H. Balz) treat phylake as a single polysemous noun built on the verb phylasso, "to guard," with three connected ranges: the act of guarding (the abstract sense, retained in Luke 2:8's cognate-accusative phrase phylassontes phylakas), the period of guarding (a watch of the night, of which the New Testament reflects the Roman four-watch division at Matt 14:25 and Mark 6:48 over against the older three-watch scheme), and the place of guarding (prison), which dominates New Testament usage. The figurative confinements at 1 Pet 3:19,Rev 18:2, and Rev 20:7 extend the place sense; Rev 18:2 is read variously as "prison" or "haunt/lair." STEPBible's TBESG splits the entry into "prison" and "watch," but this is a sense split within one word, not two homonyms.