Bride
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The Greek noun nýmphē can name a bride or young wife and can also mean daughter-in-law. John the Baptist uses wedding language to describe his joy as the bridegroom’s friend when Christ receives the attention that rightly belongs to him.
Reader summary
Full entry for νύμφη (G3565) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun nýmphē can name a bride or young wife and can also mean daughter-in-law. John the Baptist uses wedding language to describe his joy as the bridegroom’s friend when Christ receives the attention that rightly belongs to him.
The BSB source-word alignment has 8 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include bride (3), daughter-in-law (2), a bride (1), a daughter-in-law (1), of a bride (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 10:35. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (4), Luke (2), John (1), Matthew (1).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
The Greek noun nýmphē can name a bride or young wife and can also mean daughter-in-law. John the Baptist uses wedding language to describe his joy as the bridegroom’s friend when Christ receives the attention that rightly belongs to him. Jesus uses the family sense when warning that allegiance to him can divide a daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law. Revelation contrasts the silenced wedding joy of judged Babylon with the holy city coming from God as a bride prepared for her husband, and it identifies the bride as the wife of the Lamb who joins the Spirit in saying, “Come.
” The bridal image is corporate and covenantal. It celebrates Christ’s faithful relationship with his redeemed people; it does not reduce women to marriage, make earthly husbands into saviors, authorize ownership, or erase the dignity of unmarried believers.
Nýmphē names a literal bride or daughter-in-law and supplies Revelation’s corporate picture of the holy city and redeemed people prepared for, belonging to, and inviting others toward the Lamb.
The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom stands and listens for him, and is overjoyed to hear the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
John uses the bride, bridegroom, and friend relationship to explain his joy that Christ is received and his own ministry is not the center.
For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
The noun means daughter-in-law within Jesus’ warning that allegiance to him can bring painful division into ordinary family relationships.
The light of a lamp will never shine in you again, and the voices of a bride and bridegroom will never call out in you again. For your merchants were the great ones of the earth, because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery.”
The permanent silence of bride and bridegroom voices portrays ordinary communal joy removed from Babylon under final judgment.
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
The holy city descends from God prepared as a bride, joining place, people, divine preparation, beauty, and covenant hope in one vision.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let the one who hears say, “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come, and the one who desires the water of life drink freely.
The Spirit and the bride together say “Come,” and the invitation extends freely to every thirsty person who desires life’s water.
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. bride
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
8 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
Read versea bride, daughter-in-law
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 this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 3 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
νύμφη is from an obsolete root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Nýmphē keeps ordinary household language and covenant imagery connected without confusing them. A daughter-in-law belongs to a real family relationship that may experience division over Christ. A bride and bridegroom supply recognizable wedding joy. John the Baptist uses that joy to celebrate Christ rather than compete with him. Revelation then enlarges the image: Babylon loses the sounds of ordinary wedding celebration, while the new Jerusalem is prepared by God as the Lamb’s bride and joins the Spirit’s invitation to the thirsty.
The bride is not one elite believer, one earthly wife, or women alone. It is a corporate image for the redeemed people and holy city in covenant relation to Christ. Teaching should preserve the image’s beauty and allegiance while refusing to turn it into male privilege, marital pressure, or a promise that earthly marriage will be free from suffering and accountability.
Rev.21.2
Nýmphē carries two ordinary kinship senses, bride or young wife and daughter-in-law. Revelation then uses the bride sense symbolically for the holy city and the Lamb’s people; literary context, not gender stereotypes, controls the referent.
Old Testament prophets personify Zion and Jerusalem through daughter, wife, and bridal imagery when speaking of covenant unfaithfulness, judgment, restoration, and joy. Revelation brings that pattern to new-creation fulfillment in the Lamb’s bride while preserving the image as corporate covenant poetry rather than a literal gender assignment for each believer.