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Matthew7:13–14

The Narrow Gate

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Matthew 7:13–14 — The Narrow Gate. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

13

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

Eiselthate dia tēs stenēs pylēs hoti plateia hē pylē kai eurychōros hē hodos hē apagousa eis tēn apōleian kai polloi eisin hoi eiserchomenoi di’ autēs

Word by word25 · parsed
ΕἰσέλθατεEiselthateEnterG1525
√ εἰσέρχομαι — to enter (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Imperative Active2nd Person Plural
εἰσέρχομαι: to enter, literally or figuratively Aorist imperative active, second person plural. The whole Sermon on the Mount turns here from description to command, and the aspect is decisive rather than habitual. Pulpit: “Show immediate energy and determination,” contrasting Luke's ἀγωνίζεσθε (continuous striving) with Matthew's “enter at once.” JFB reads the same grammar pastorally: this “expresses the difficulty of the first right step in religion, involving, as it does, a triumph over all our natural inclinations.”
διὰdiathroughG1223
√ διά — through (in very wide applications, local, causal, or occasional)Preposition
Preposition of passage, governing the genitive: movement through, not merely toward.
τῆςtēstheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Feminine Singular
Article, genitive feminine singular, agreeing with πύλης: a definite gate is in view, one already known to the hearers.
στενῆςstenēsnarrowG4728
√ στενός — narrow (from obstacles standing close about)AdjectiveGenitive Feminine Singular
στενός: narrow, from obstacles standing close about A genuinely rare adjective: the Verifier records it in only three verses of the New Testament, and two of them are this pair (7:13, 7:14); the third is Luke 13:24. That scarcity is why the Luke thread below can honestly be tiered verbal. Barnes fixes the sense against a common misreading: “strait” is “pent up, narrow, difficult to be entered,” not “straight.”
πύληςpylēsgateG4439
√ πύλη — a gate, iNounGenitive Feminine Singular
πύλη: a gate The city or palace gate, not a house door (which would be θύρα, as at John 10:7). Ellicott suspects a scene in view: “The figure was possibly suggested by some town actually in sight,” with “the narrow pathway leading to the yet narrower gate.” Cambridge prefers a mansion “having a large portal at which many enter, and a narrow entrance known to few.” Both are conjecture, and both say so.
ὅτιhotiForG3754
√ ὅτι — demonstrative, that (sometimes redundant)Conjunction
Conjunction ὅτι, causal: the command is grounded, not merely followed, by what comes next.
πλατεῖαplateiawide [is]G4116
√ πλατύς — spread out "flat" ("plot"), iAdjectiveNominative Feminine Singular
πλατύς: spread out, broad Nominative feminine singular predicate adjective, with the copula unexpressed; the interlinear supplies “wide [is].” Standing first in its clause, it carries the emphasis: the breadth is the point, and the breadth is precisely the danger. Note also what hangs on the next occurrence of πύλη: if ἡ πύλη is not original here (see word 8), then πλατεῖα and εὐρύχωρος both fall on ἡ ὁδός, and the verse piles two adjectives of width on one road instead of distributing them over a gate and a road.
ἡhētheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
πύληpylēgateG4439
√ πύλη — a gate, iNounNominative Feminine Singular
πύλη: a gate This occurrence is the unit's live textual question. Pulpit reports it fully: the Revised Version margin notes that “some ancient authorities omit is the gate,” and Westcott and Hort omit ἡ πύλη here on the authority of א, the Old Latin, and many Greek and Latin Fathers, holding that ἡ πύλη is probably genuine in v. 14 but not in v. 13. If they are right, v. 13 contrasts a narrow gate with a broad and spacious road, and there are not two gates at all. Our note simply records the dispute; the BSB prints the longer text and we follow the BSB.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
εὐρύχωροςeurychōrosbroad [is]G2149
√ εὐρύχωρος — spaciousAdjectiveNominative Feminine Singular
εὐρύχωρος: spacious Room to walk, room to carry things, room for company. Benson glosses it “spacious,” Pulpit notes the Latin spatiosa and that the stress falls on “there being plenty of space to walk in.” Gill, reading with the Jewish road measures, presses the same picture in cubits: the wider the road, the more public and the more crowded. Henry draws the moral consequence: “there are many paths in it; there is choice of sinful ways.”
ἡhētheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
ὁδὸςhodoswayG3598
√ ὁδός — a roadNounNominative Feminine Singular
ὁδός: a road Not a private track but a highway, and in Scripture the standing metaphor for a whole manner of life. Poole states the idiom flatly: “There is nothing more ordinary in holy writ, than to call a common course of men’s actions a way.” The noun is the hinge that lets the two-destinies form of Deuteronomy 30 and Jeremiah 21 stand behind this saying without being quoted.
ἡhēthatG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
ἀπάγουσαapagousaleadsG520
√ ἀπάγω — to take off (in various senses)VerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Feminine Singular
ἀπάγω: to take off, lead away Present active participle, feminine singular, agreeing with ὁδός: the road itself is doing the leading, and doing it continuously. The compound is not neutral travel; ἀπάγω is what officers do to a prisoner, and the Verifier lists Matthew 27:2, Mark 14:53, Luke 22:66 and Luke 23:26 as sharing this lexeme. The broad road does not merely end badly, it conducts its travellers, and they are not in charge of the journey.
εἰςeistoG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
τὴνtēnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
ἀπώλειανapōleiandestructionG684
√ ἀπώλεια — ruin or loss (physical, spiritual or eternal)NounAccusative Feminine Singular
ἀπώλεια: ruin or loss, physical, spiritual or eternal The unit's heaviest noun, and Ellicott refuses to let a lexicon settle more than a lexicon can: “So far as they go, the word implies, not annihilation, but waste,” and then, past a pair of references, “perdition, i.e., the loss of all that makes existence precious.” He argues the point from the cognate verb (Matthew 22:7; John 11:50; Matthew 15:24) and from this very context: since “life” here is more than mere existence, destruction should be more than mere non-existence. Pulpit hears behind the word John 17:12, “that ‘perishing’ in which ‘the sons of perishing’ perish.”
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
πολλοίpolloimanyG4183
√ πολύς — (singular) much (in any respect) or (plural) manyAdjectiveNominative Masculine Plural
πολύς: much, or in the plural many Nominative masculine plural, and the first half of the arithmetic that governs the whole saying. It is descriptive, not a decree: Christ reports what the roads are carrying, and JFB notes that to the supposed harshness of it “He never once adverts.”
εἰσινeisinG1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
οἱhoiG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Plural
εἰσερχόμενοιeiserchomenoienterG1525
√ εἰσέρχομαι — to enter (literally or figuratively)VerbPresent Participle Middle or PassiveNominative Masculine Plural
εἰσέρχομαι: to enter Present participle middle or passive, nominative masculine plural, articular, forming with εἰσιν a periphrasis: “many are the ones entering.” The aspect is exactly opposite to the aorist imperative of word 0. One entering is commanded and decisive; the other is continuous, ongoing, a traffic flow already in progress. Henry's observation that on this road men “fall into it easily and without effort” (so Barnes) is grammatically visible right here.
δι’di’throughG1223
√ διά — through (in very wide applications, local, causal, or occasional)Preposition
αὐτῆςautēsitG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Feminine 3rd Person Singular
Genitive feminine singular pronoun after διά, agreeing with ἡ πύλη (or, on the shorter text, with ἡ ὁδός): the antecedent shifts with the textual decision noted at word 8.
14

But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

hoti stenē hē pylē kai tethlimmenē hē hodos hē apagousa eis tēn zōēn kai oligoi eisin hoi heuriskontes autēn

Word by word19 · parsed
ὅτιhotiButG3754
√ ὅτι — demonstrative, that (sometimes redundant)Conjunction
ὅτι: demonstrative, that, sometimes redundant Conjunction, and the syntactical knot of the verse. Pulpit lays out both options honestly: either this ὅτι is parallel to the ὅτι of v. 13 and supplies a second reason for decisive entering, or, better in his judgment, “it gives the reason for the statement in ver. 13b”, namely that “many pass along the wrong way because the right way requires at the very outset so much determination and afterwards so much self denial.” Cambridge agrees it is “to be taken after ‘enter ye’ as in preceding verse.” BSB's “But” is a smoothing, not a translation of ὅτι.
στενὴstenēsmall [is]G4728
√ στενός — narrow (from obstacles standing close about)AdjectiveNominative Feminine Singular
στενός: narrow, from obstacles standing close about The same rare adjective as 7:13, now nominative and predicative. Its recurrence here, on the Verifier's count of only three verses in the New Testament, is what makes the pair a deliberate doublet rather than two separate sayings.
ἡhētheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
πύληpylēgateG4439
√ πύλη — a gate, iNounNominative Feminine Singular
πύλη: a gate Westcott and Hort, as reported by Pulpit, hold ἡ πύλη “probably genuine in ver. 14” while omitting it in v. 13; so even on the shortest critical text there is one gate here, and it is the narrow one. That is worth noting: the disputed gate is the wide one, never this one.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
τεθλιμμένηtethlimmenēnarrowG2346
√ θλίβω — to crowd (literally or figuratively)VerbPerfect Participle Middle or PassiveNominative Feminine Singular
θλίβω: to crowd, literally or figuratively Perfect participle middle or passive, and the single most compressed word in the unit. The perfect states a completed action with abiding result: the road stands squeezed, and stays so. The same root gives θλῖψις, the New Testament word for tribulation, which is why Poole can gloss it “afflicted” and Henry can say “we must go through much tribulation” without stretching the text. Pulpit keeps the physical picture primary: the way itself “seems compressed” by “rocks, etc., on either side.” Gill adds the Septuagint's use of the cognate for the “narrow place” where the angel met Balaam, Numbers 22:26, with no turning to right or left.
ἡhētheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
ὁδὸςhodoswayG3598
√ ὁδός — a roadNounNominative Feminine Singular
ὁδός: a road The identical noun as 7:13; only its adjectives differ. The two destinies are not two kinds of thing but two roads, which is what permits the whole two-ways form to work.
ἡhēthatG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
ἀπάγουσαapagousaleadsG520
√ ἀπάγω — to take off (in various senses)VerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Feminine Singular
ἀπάγω: to take off, lead away The same present participle as 7:13, deliberately repeated. Both roads lead away, and both lead their travellers rather than being led by them. The symmetry is exact, and it forbids reading the narrow way as a path one masters.
εἰςeistoG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
τὴνtēnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
ζωήνzōēnlifeG2222
√ ζωή — life (literally or figuratively)NounAccusative Feminine Singular
ζωή: life, literally or figuratively Set opposite ἀπώλεια of v. 13, and unqualified. Ellicott notes this is the first time the word appears in our Lord's recorded teaching as the sum of the kingdom's blessedness, developing later into “eternal” life and finally into the knowledge of God and Christ (John 17:2-3). Pulpit, quoting Westcott, defines it as “the fulfilment of the highest idea of being: perfect truth in perfect action.” Henry reaches for both ends of it at once: “to present comfort in the favour of God, which is the life of the soul; to eternal bliss.”
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ὀλίγοιoligoionly a fewG3641
√ ὀλίγος — puny (in extent, degree, number, duration or value)AdjectiveNominative Masculine Plural
ὀλίγος: puny in extent, degree, number, duration or value Nominative masculine plural, answering πολλοί of v. 13 word for word. The word is not only “few” in count but slight in weight, which is the sting: the company on the narrow road is small and unimpressive. Geneva draws the practical rule from exactly this: “The example of life must not be taken from the multitude.” Ellicott names the shape of it across the Gospels: He comes to save the world, and those He chooses out of it are “but as a ‘little flock.’”
εἰσὶνeisinG1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
Present indicative of εἰμί, forming with the participle the same periphrasis as 7:13: a standing state of affairs, not a headcount taken once.
οἱhoiG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Plural
εὑρίσκοντεςheuriskontesfindG2147
√ εὑρίσκω — to find (literally or figuratively)VerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Plural
εὑρίσκω: to find, literally or figuratively Present active participle, articular and plural. The change of verb from “enter” (v. 13) to “find” (v. 14) is the verse's quiet argument: the wide gate needs no looking for, and Barnes says so directly, men “fall into it easily and without effort, and go without thought,” while this one must be searched out. Pulpit anchors the search in the Sermon's own earlier promise at 7:7, “Seek, and ye shall find,” and Cambridge notes the whole section is linked to what precedes “by the thought of prayer.” Finding is therefore not a boast; it is an answered request.
αὐτήνautēnitG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Feminine 3rd Person Singular
Accusative feminine singular pronoun, object of εὑρίσκοντες. Its antecedent is grammatically ambiguous between ἡ πύλη and ἡ ὁδός; Pulpit takes it broadly, “i.e. the gate and all it leads to.”

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. One aorist, and the whole Sermon turns — 7:13a

⚙ Everything from Matthew 5:3 forward has been description; Εἰσέλθατε makes it a command, and the parse makes the command punctiliar: aorist imperative active, second person plural. The Pulpit Commentary reads the aspect as decision rather than duration, glossing it “Show immediate energy and determination” and contrasting Luke 13:24, where the verb is ἀγωνίζεσθε, continuous striving, against Matthew's, in his own words, “enter at once.” JFB hears in the same verb the cost of a first step, “involving, as it does, a triumph over all our natural inclinations.” The Pulpit Commentary also observes that the gate in Luke seems to open on the final abiding place while Matthew's opens on the road, which is why the two sayings, though sharing the rare word στενός, are not simply the same sentence twice. Cambridge ties the command back to what immediately precedes it: “These verses are linked to the preceding by the thought of prayer, for it is by prayer chiefly that the narrow entrance must be gained.” That is Cambridge's judgment, not the text's assertion, but it is the reading that makes v. 14's verb (“find”) cohere with 7:7 (“Seek, and ye shall find”).

ii. Wide, spacious, and already full — 7:13b

⚙ The broad road is described by two different words doing two different jobs. πλατεῖα (G4116) says the gate is wide; εὐρύχωρος (G2149) says the road has room. Benson translates the second literally as “spacious,” and the Pulpit Commentary notes the Latin versions render it spatiosa and that the word “lays stress on there being plenty of space to walk in.” Gill makes the image concrete from the Jewish road canons, where a private way is four cubits, a city-to-city way eight, a public way sixteen: breadth in this world means public traffic. Barnes turns the picture into the contrast the verse wants: on the narrow path a man may be seen “traveling in solitude and singularity,” while the other is “the great highway in which people go.” The grammar seconds the commentators. The wide gate is entered by a present articular participle, οἱ εἰσερχόμενοι, a flow already underway, against the single aorist demanded of the hearer. And the road is not scenery: ἀπάγουσα (G520) is an active participle, so the way leads its travellers away. On the destination Ellicott refuses to overreach, insisting that the lexicon gives “not annihilation, but waste,” which he spells out as “the loss of all that makes existence precious,” and admitting the larger question “can hardly be settled by mere reference to lexicons.” The Pulpit Commentary, more briefly, hears John 17:12 behind ἀπώλεια: “that ‘perishing’ in which ‘the sons of perishing’ perish.” One further honesty: the Revised Version margin, reported by the Pulpit Commentary, records that “some ancient authorities omit is the gate” in v. 13, and Westcott and Hort do omit it, on א, the Old Latin and many Fathers. The BSB prints it. The contrast survives either way.

iii. Pressed, and found — 7:14

⚙ The heaviest word in the unit is not an adjective. τεθλιμμένη (G2346, θλίβω, “to crowd”) is a perfect participle middle or passive: the road has been pressed and stands pressed. Ellicott glosses it “hemmed in between walls or rocks, like the pathway in a mountain gorge.” Cambridge gives the same two words, “pressed, confined.” Poole notes the Greek “is, afflicted.” Gill hears behind it the Septuagint of Numbers 22:26, “the strait place” where the angel met Balaam, “in which there was no turning to the right hand or the left.” Against that pressure the verse sets one unqualified noun, ζωήν, and the Pulpit Commentary will not let it be inflated: “Observe, Christ does not say, ‘life eternal.’” Ellicott marks it as the first time the word carries the whole blessedness of the kingdom in our Lord's recorded teaching. Then the arithmetic closes: ὀλίγοι answering πολλοί, and the verb changing from “enter” to εὑρίσκοντες, “finding.” JFB states the cost without softening it: the first step “involves a revolution in all our purposes and plans for life.” Geneva draws the one rule the verse plainly yields: “The example of life must not be taken from the multitude.” Henry turns it on the reader rather than on the crowd, asking whether we can hear of the narrow way “without being in pain for ourselves.” Gill, honest about the textual state here too, notes that the Syriac, Arabic and Vulgate read it as an exclamation, “how strait is the gate!”; the Pulpit Commentary judges the harder ὅτι probably right.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested, and the line printed under it is ours and not a verse of Scripture. Read the two verses by their verbs and a pattern appears that the adjectives alone do not give. Three of the four main verbs leave the traveller acted upon or receiving rather than achieving, and the point is not grammatical voice alone: ἀπάγουσα and εὑρίσκοντες are active forms. The road leads away (ἀπάγουσα, active, twice, with the road as subject and the traveller as object of its leading). The narrow way has been pressed (τεθλιμμένη, perfect, middle or passive: someone else compressed it, and it stays compressed). And the few do not achieve, march or endure: they find (εὑρίσκοντες), which is the answering half of the promise four verses earlier, “Seek, and ye shall find” (7:7), as the Pulpit Commentary notes and Cambridge presses when it links this whole section to prayer. Only one verb is put in the hearer's hands, and it is the imperative: enter. So the saying is exacting without being a scheme of self-rescue. Benson quotes Erasmus that the gate can be passed by “naked men, who are stripped of all worldly lusts,” and that is right about the cost; what the grammar adds is that the stripping is largely done to the traveller by a road already narrowed for him. Two cautions against our own reading. First, the numbers here are descriptive, not a revealed quota: Christ reports what the roads carry and, as JFB observes, “To the supposed injustice or harshness of this He never once adverts.” Second, the text says nothing about who is on which road but the hearer, and Henry is right that the only usable application is self-examination, not a census of the neighbours. If the ⚙ reading above is wrong anywhere, it is likeliest wrong in leaning on the passive of τεθλιμμένη, which could be a merely physical description of a gorge (so Ellicott, so the Pulpit Commentary) with no agent implied at all.

The road does the leading, the gate does the narrowing, and the traveller does one thing: enter.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The rare word στενός: Matthew's command and Luke's striving verbal / quotation: confirmed

⚙ στενός (G4728) is genuinely rare: the Verifier finds it in three verses of the New Testament, two of them this very pair, the third Luke 13:24. That makes the Matthew and Luke sayings a real verbal link rather than a thematic echo. But the two are not identical, and the commentators say so. The Pulpit Commentary: in Luke the verb is ἀγωνίζεσθε, “strive,” while here it is an aorist, “enter at once”; in Luke the door seems to open on “the final abiding-place,” here the gate opens on “the (perhaps long) road.” JFB likewise calls Luke's “the still stronger expression,” and Barnes cites Luke 13:24 for the point that “‘diligence’ is needed to enter life.” Honest caveat on order: the Pulpit Commentary suggests our v. 14 reads so much like a direct answer to the question of Luke 13:23 that Matthew may here be arranging out of chronological sequence. That is a conjecture about arrangement, not about the wording, and it does not touch the lexical link.

Luke 13:24 · Luke 13:23

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G4728 στενός (rare, in 3 vv, two of which are Matthew 7:13-14), with G1525 εἰσέρχομαι (in 184 vv) and G4183 πολύς (in 322 vv). Greek to Greek; the rarity of στενός carries the tier, and no claim of quotation of one Gospel by the other is made. Luke 13:23 is carried in the refs only because the Pulpit Commentary reads Matthew 7:14 as answering the question asked there; no lexeme basis is computed for that verse.

ἀπάγω: the verb for a road, and the verb for an arrest structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ The participle ἀπάγουσα (G520) that describes both roads is not a neutral word for travel. The Verifier lists the lexeme in fifteen verses, and its Gospel usage clusters around custody: Jesus is bound and led away to Pilate (Matthew 27:2), led away to the high priest (Mark 14:53), led away to the council (Luke 22:66), led away to be crucified (Luke 23:26); Peter is led away to execution (Acts 12:19). Paul uses it of pagan compulsion, “carried away unto these dumb idols” (1 Corinthians 12:2). We do not claim Matthew is citing any of these, and the direction of the resonance is ours, not the commentators'. What the shared lexeme does establish is the flavour of the word: the roads conduct their travellers the way officers conduct a prisoner.

Matthew 27:2 · Mark 14:53 · Luke 23:26 · 1 Corinthians 12:2

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G520 ἀπάγω (in 15 vv) across all refs. Greek to Greek, a real lexeme link, but the frequency is moderate and there is no quotation; tiered structural rather than verbal, and the custody connotation is our inference from the usage pattern.

πύλη: which gates hold, and which do not structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ πύλη (G4439) is a city or fortress gate, not a house door (θύρα), and the Verifier finds it in only nine verses. Two of them bear directly here. At Matthew 16:18 the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church, which is the same architecture read from the other side: gates that shut people in rather than let people through. At Hebrews 13:12 Jesus suffered “outside the gate,” taking up the position of the excluded. Acts 12:10 supplies the third note, an iron gate opening of its own accord to a prisoner walking out. The shared word is a fact; the arrangement of the three is our reading, and none of the brief's commentators makes it.

Matthew 16:18 · Hebrews 13:12 · Acts 12:10

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G4439 πύλη (in 9 vv) with each ref. Greek to Greek and lexically real, but no quotation and no shared syntax; the thematic grouping of the three is machine synthesis and is marked as such.

The two ways, set before a people structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ The form is older than the Sermon. Deuteronomy 30:15 and 30:19 set life and death, blessing and curse, before Israel and command a choice; Jeremiah 21:8 says in almost the same shape, “I set before you the way of life and the way of death.” Poole states the structure of Matthew's saying in exactly those terms: “There are but two ultimate ends of all men, eternal destruction and eternal life,” and notes that in Scripture a way is the ordinary figure for “a common course of men’s actions.” Henry: “There are but two ways right and wrong, good and evil; the way to heaven and the way to hell; in the one or other of these all are walking: there is no middle place hereafter, no middle way now.” What Matthew adds to the older form is the arithmetic, many against few, which Deuteronomy and Jeremiah do not supply.

Deuteronomy 30:15 · Deuteronomy 30:19 · Jeremiah 21:8

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so no shared Strong's number is possible and no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is the shared two-ways form (two roads, two destinations, life against ruin, set before hearers as a choice), attested by Poole and Henry on this passage; Matthew does not quote either text.

The strait place where Balaam could not turn typological

✦ The link is Gill's, not ours. Commenting on τεθλιμμένη, he writes that the narrow way is like the “strait place”, “as the Septuagint in Numbers 22:26 render it; in which the angel that met Balaam stood; and in which there was no turning to the right hand or the left; and such is the way to eternal happiness.” ⚙ The figural force is that a way pressed on both sides removes the option of deviation, which is precisely what the perfect participle describes: a road already and permanently compressed. We record this as a figural reading with a named holder rather than as a demonstrated verbal link, since we have not verified the Septuagint wording of Numbers 22:26 against the brief, which supplies no Septuagint data.

Numbers 22:26

basis: Cross-Testament, so no shared Strong's number applies. Basis is Gill's explicit figural reading of the narrow way through the Septuagint rendering of the "strait place" of Numbers 22:26; the Septuagint wording is Gill's claim and is not verified in this brief. A named, pre-modern reading, not novel to us.

ἀπώλεια and the sons of perishing flagged: verify source

⚙ The Pulpit Commentary glosses ἀπώλειαν here as “that ‘perishing’ in which ‘the sons of perishing’ perish (John 17:12),” drawing the noun of this verse together with the Johannine phrase for Judas. Ellicott, working from the cognate verb rather than from John, reaches a restrained conclusion in the same direction: the word means “waste, perdition, i.e., the loss of all that makes existence precious,” not demonstrably annihilation. We record the John 17:12 connection as the Pulpit Commentary's cross-reference and not as a Verifier result: the brief's candidate list does not contain John 17:12, so no shared-lexeme basis has been computed for it here, and the tier is set accordingly low.

John 17:12

basis: Not a Verifier-computed link; the brief's candidate list does not include John 17:12. The only basis is the Pulpit Commentary's own cross-reference of ἀπώλεια to the Johannine phrase. Flagged so a reader can check the Greek of John 17:12 independently before relying on it.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The gate that is a person ancient/widely-held

✦ Gill states it without hedging: “By the ‘strait gate’ is meant Christ himself; who elsewhere calls himself ‘the door’, John 10:7.” ✦ Ellicott reaches the same identification more carefully, calling the surface meaning obedience and holiness and then adding that “A deeper significance is, however, suggested even by our Lord’s own teaching”: Christ is Himself the way (John 14:6), or, with a slight variation of the imagery, the gate “by which His sheep enter into the fold” (John 10:7). Ellicott sets an immediate guard on it: this “does not mean that we can find, in union with Him, a substitute for holiness, but indicates simply how we are to attain to it.” ⚙ The Greek keeps the two images distinct: Matthew has πύλη, a city gate; John 10:7 has θύρα, a door. So the identification is theological rather than lexical, and Ellicott's caution is the right frame for it: the gate is narrow either way, and naming it Christ does not widen it.

John 10:7 · John 14:6

Led away on the road He named novel

⚙ Christ describes both roads with one word, ἀπάγουσα (G520), and the Verifier confirms that same lexeme standing at the arrest and the execution: bound and led away to Pilate (Matthew 27:2), led away to the high priest (Mark 14:53), led away to be crucified (Luke 23:26). The Sermon says the broad road leads men away to ἀπώλεια; the Passion narratives use the verb of Christ being led away instead. We do not find this reading in any of the commentators in this brief, and we do not claim Matthew intends it. It is a lexical resonance we are offering to be tested, and a reader who judges it merely coincidental has the frequency data (fifteen verses) to argue with.

Matthew 27:2 · Mark 14:53 · Luke 23:26

Outside the gate, so the gate could be entered novel

⚙ The unit's command is to enter through a gate. Hebrews 13:12 says that Jesus, “to sanctify the people by His own blood,” suffered outside the gate, and the Verifier records the shared lexeme G4439 πύλη (in 9 vv). ✦ Gill already reads Matthew's gate soteriologically, saying that through Christ “there will be hereafter an abundant entrance into the kingdom and glory of God, through his blood and righteousness,” and that the gate is strait because confessing Him is “attended with many afflictions, temptations, reproaches, and persecutions.” ⚙ Setting Hebrews beside Matthew gives that a shape: the narrowness the disciple feels at the gate is the outside of what Christ bore beyond it. The pairing of the two verses is ours; Hebrews makes the outside-the-gate claim on its own terms and says nothing of Matthew 7.

Hebrews 13:12

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text. Two verses, Greek, from the Berean Standard Bible with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbers; all parse data, glosses and lexeme frequencies above come from that apparatus. The unit has one live textual question and one minor one. (1) The first ἡ πύλη at 7:13 (word 8) is disputed. The Revised Version margin, as reported by the Pulpit Commentary, notes that “some ancient authorities omit is the gate,” and Westcott and Hort omit it on א, the Old Latin and many Greek and Latin Fathers, holding that ἡ πύλη is probably genuine in v. 14 but not in v. 13; on that text v. 13 contrasts one narrow gate with a broad and spacious road, and there are not two gates. The BSB prints the longer text and our literal, divergences and notes follow the BSB. We have not weighed the manuscript evidence ourselves. (2) At 7:14 the opening ὅτι is read by some witnesses as τί, giving “How narrow is the gate”; Gill reports that reading in the Syriac, Arabic and Vulgate Latin “and so some copies,” and the Pulpit Commentary judges the harder ὅτι probably right. BSB's “But” represents ὅτι but obscures its causal force, which is why it is listed as a divergence rather than an error.

Sources. Ten public-domain commentators are present in the brief (Ellicott, Benson, Henry, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit); eight are quoted verbatim in the voices, and Benson and Henry are cited by name in the commentary and notes rather than blockquoted. Poole's entry at 7:13 is only a cross-reference to his note on 7:14, which is why his single quotation sits on the second verse. Several of these writers are arguing period questions that the text does not settle: Ellicott's discussion of ἀπώλεια belongs to a Victorian debate over annihilation, and his closing suggestion of “any wider hope” beyond this life goes well past anything in Matthew 7. Gill's Talmudic road measures (Bava Bathra 100) and his Menachot citation are later rabbinic material used illustratively. Ellicott's parallel from the Tablet of Cebes is a real ancient text but the relation, if any, to this saying is unknown, and we make no claim about dependence in either direction.

What is uncertain in our own layer. The custody connotation we draw from ἀπάγω is an inference from usage distribution, not a claim by any commentator here, and it is marked novel where it appears. The passive agency we read in the perfect participle τεθλιμμένη may be over-read: Ellicott and the Pulpit Commentary both take it as physical description of a gorge, which requires no agent. The John 17:12 link is flagged because it comes only from the Pulpit Commentary and was not produced by the Verifier. No Septuagint data was supplied in this brief, so Gill's appeal to the Septuagint of Numbers 22:26 is reported as his claim and left unverified.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)