Greek word · G2375

θυρεός

thyreos

long shield

A large, oblong, door-shaped shield, as opposed to the small round aspis. In Roman-era Greek it is the usual word for the legionary scutum: curved, about 4 feet tall and 2½ feet wide, made of glued layers of wood and covered with hide or felt.

Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

θυρεός, -οῦ, ὁ

(θύρα), [in LXX for מָגֵן, צִנָּה ;]

1. in Hom., a door-stone.

2. In late Gk. (Polyb., Plut.), the scutum, a large oblong shield: θ. τ. πίστεως, Ephesians 6:16 (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 5:20, where ὁσιότης is likened to the ἀσπίς, the clypeus or small round shield of the light-armed soldier).†

(AS)

From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Ephesians 6:16

Range of meaning

A large, oblong, door-shaped shield, as opposed to the small round aspis. In Roman-era Greek it is the usual word for the legionary scutum: curved, about 4 feet tall and 2½ feet wide, made of glued layers of wood and covered with hide or felt.

Against the English

English "shield" calls up no particular size. Many readers picture a small round shield held in one hand. Paul's word means the large shield that covered nearly the whole body.

Used elsewhere in the period

Polybius (Histories 6.23.2–5) describes the Roman infantry thureos as about 2½ by 4 feet, made of two layers of wood glued together, covered with canvas and then calfskin, with an iron rim and boss. In the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) thureos translates Hebrew ṣinnāh, the large shield, as in Ps 35:2 (LXX 34:2, "take hold of shield and thureos") and Ps 5:12 (LXX 5:13, God surrounds the righteous "as with a thureos of favor"). Paul's armor list draws on Isaiah's picture of God armed for battle (Isa 59:17: breastplate of righteousness, helmet of salvation). The deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon has a close parallel (Wis 5:19: holiness as an unconquerable shield, there aspis).

Where it appears

Ephesians · 1

  1. Ephesians 6:16 θυρεὸν shield

    In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

    Here: The word comes from thura, "door." It was the large, curved, rectangular shield of the heavy infantryman (the Roman scutum), big enough to cover most of the body. It was not a small round buckler.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.