Greek word · G2646

κατάλυμα

katalyma

guest room/inn

From kataluō, 'to unloose', as in untying your pack animals and stopping for the night. So it means any place where you put up: a lodging, a guest room, sleeping quarters, sometimes a stopping-place on a journey. It is a general word for where you stay.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

κατά-λυμα, -τος, τό

(καταλύω), [in LXX: Exodus 4:24 (מָלוֹן), 1 Samuel 9:22 (לִשְׁכָּה), etc. ;]

1. = cl. καταγώγιον (cf. πανδοχεῖον), an inn, lodgingplace: Luke 2:7 (so Ex, l.with, and MGr.).

2. a guest-room (1Sam,l.with): Mark 14:14, Luke 22:11.†

(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 Luke 2:7

Range of meaning

From kataluō, 'to unloose', as in untying your pack animals and stopping for the night. So it means any place where you put up: a lodging, a guest room, sleeping quarters, sometimes a stopping-place on a journey. It is a general word for where you stay. It does not specifically mean a business that rents beds.

Against the English

'Inn' (KJV, BSB, WEB, ESV, NASB) suggests a commercial hotel with an innkeeper. 'Guest room' (NIV 2011, YLT 'guest-chamber') and 'lodging' (NLT) are closer to the word's range.

How it drifted

Latin Bibles rendered it 'diversorium' (a lodging place), and medieval and early modern Europe pictured it as their own roadside inns. Tyndale and the KJV fixed 'inn' in English. Nativity plays then added an innkeeper, who appears nowhere in the text.

Used elsewhere in the period

Luke chooses a different word, pandocheion, for the commercial inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:34-35), which has an innkeeper (pandocheus). He uses katalyma again in 22:11 (parallel Mark 14:14) for the guest room of a private house: 'Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover?' In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) it is used for a lodging-place on a journey (Exod 4:24), for the hall where Samuel's guests ate (1 Sam 9:22), and in general for a dwelling or stopping-place (e.g. Jer 14:8). So the word can cover a travellers' stopping place, but its core is 'the place where one stays'.

Similar words

Where it appears

Mark · 1

  1. Mark 14:14 κατάλυμά guest room

    and whichever house he enters, say to the owner, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is My guest room, where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?’

Luke · 2

  1. Luke 2:7 καταλύματι.¶ inn.

    And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

    Here: A place where you 'unloose' (unpack and stop for the night). In Luke's only other use it means the guest room of a private house, the room where the Last Supper was held (22:11). The most likely sense here is the guest or lodging space they were using, not a commercial inn with a keeper.

  2. Luke 22:11 κατάλυμα guest room

    and say to the owner of that house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?’

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