To close (literally or figuratively)
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Kleio means to close, shut, lock, or withhold access. The New Testament uses it for a private door closed during prayer, religious leaders shutting the kingdom in people's faces, the wedding door closed after the bridegroom arrives, the sky shut during Elijah's day, doors locked by fearful disciples, and Christ's sovereign act of opening and shutting.
Reader summary
Full entry for κλείω (G2808) · Open the biblical lexicon
Kleio means to close, shut, lock, or withhold access. The New Testament uses it for a private door closed during prayer, religious leaders shutting the kingdom in people's faces, the wedding door closed after the bridegroom arrives, the sky shut during Elijah's day, doors locked by fearful disciples, and Christ's sovereign act of opening and shutting.
The BSB source-word alignment has 16 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include locked (3), shut (3), was shut (2), can shut (1), shut [it] (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 6:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (6), Matthew (3), Acts (2), John (2).
Kleio means to close, shut, lock, or withhold access. The New Testament uses it for a private door closed during prayer, religious leaders shutting the kingdom in people's faces, the wedding door closed after the bridegroom arrives, the sky shut during Elijah's day, doors locked by fearful disciples, and Christ's sovereign act of opening and shutting. The physical action is simple, but each passage supplies its moral and theological force.
A closed door can protect secret prayer, mark final exclusion, express fear, or signify authority. Kleio itself does not tell readers whether the closing is faithful, fearful, unjust, or judicial. Teachers should identify who closes what, why it is closed, and whether the passage presents that boundary as obedience, obstruction, consequence, or Christ's rightful rule.
Kleio names real acts of closing, but Scripture evaluates them differently: secret prayer is protected, hypocritical obstruction is condemned, readiness reaches a final boundary, fear locks a room, and Christ exercises unmatched authority.
But when you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Jesus commands a closed door as part of prayer directed to the unseen Father rather than religious performance before observers.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.
Jesus condemns leaders whose hypocrisy obstructs others rather than guiding them toward God's reign.
But while they were on their way to buy it, the bridegroom arrived. Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet, and the door was shut.
In the ten virgins parable, the shut door marks the consequence of unreadiness when the bridegroom arrives.
But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land.
Jesus recalls the shut sky and famine in Elijah's day while exposing unbelief and God's mercy beyond expected social boundaries.
It was the first day of the week, and that very evening, while the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them. “Peace be with you!” He said to them.
The disciples' locked doors reveal real fear, yet the risen Jesus comes among them with peace, wounds, and mission.
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open.
The holy and true Christ holds decisive authority over access; no creature can reverse what He opens or shuts.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Means to shut or close physically; figuratively, to restrict access or prevent entry spiritually.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseI shut, shut up
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
How this verb appears across 16 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 16 lexical occurrence verses.
κλείω is a primary verb - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
A shut door is not automatically holy or harmful. In Matthew 6 it removes an audience so prayer can be offered to the Father; in Matthew 23 leaders shut people out through hypocrisy. The wedding door in Matthew 25 warns that the bridegroom's arrival brings a boundary that late preparation cannot negotiate. In John 20, fear closes the disciples in, but the risen Christ comes with peace and sends them into witness.
Revelation 3 finally locates decisive authority in Jesus, the holy and true One whose opening and shutting cannot be overturned. Faithful teaching must therefore resist using kleio as a slogan either for unrestricted access or rigid exclusion. The passage identifies the rightful boundary, the responsible person, and the Lord who holds final authority.
John.20.19
Kleio describes closing, shutting, or restricting access and can take literal or figurative objects: doors, the sky, the kingdom, compassion, or an opportunity. The agent, object, and discourse determine whether the action protects, obstructs, judges, or expresses authority. The perfect participles in John 20 emphasize doors already in a locked state when Jesus appears.
Scripture regularly presents God as sovereign over rain, access, judgment, and deliverance, while human gatekeepers remain accountable for how they use entrusted authority. Jesus gathers those strands in Himself. He condemns leaders who obstruct, arrives as the bridegroom before whom readiness matters, enters a fearfully locked gathering with resurrection peace, and holds the key whose opening and shutting no one can reverse.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain