Understanding the Meaning of Apokulio in Greek

ἀποκυλίω is used for the action of rolling something away. In the New Testament it appears in the resurrection narratives, focusing on the stone at the entrance of the tomb.

Root and Related Words

ἀποκυλίω is built from ἀπό (apo), “away from,” and κυλίω (kylioo), “to wallow.”

Occurrences

“Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the door, and sat on it.” (Matthew 28:2)

Here the verb marks a decisive, external act performed at the tomb: the angel “came and rolled away the stone from the door.” The scene is described with force and immediacy—“a great earthquake” accompanies the angel’s descent—and the rolling away of the stone is presented as part of that sudden disruption of the sealed entrance. The narrative then lingers on the result: the angel “sat on it,” which presumes the stone has been moved out of the way and has become a kind of seat. The action therefore functions as a visible alteration of the tomb’s threshold: what served as a barrier at “the door” has been displaced and is now beneath the angel.

“They were saying among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?”” (Mark 16:3)

In Mark, the verb appears as the subject of the women’s concern, expressed as a question asked “among themselves.” The stone’s position—“from the door of the tomb”—frames the problem: access is blocked, and the needed action is to move the stone away from that doorway. The wording “for us” highlights practical helplessness; the question is not whether the stone can be opened in some abstract sense but who will perform the necessary rolling so that they can enter. The verb thus carries the weight of anticipated effort and obstacle before any movement is actually described.

“for it was very big. Looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back.” (Mark 16:4)

This occurrence follows directly from the question in Mark 16:3 and answers it by describing what they “saw.” The note “for it was very big” underlines why the earlier question was reasonable: the stone is portrayed as large enough to require attention and to make the needed rolling away seem difficult. The women “Looking up” suggests their gaze rises toward the tomb entrance, and what they observe is not the act itself but the changed state of the stone: it “was rolled back.” The verb here contributes a completed result—an obstacle that had been expected is already displaced—turning anxiety into discovery through a simple visual confirmation.

“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.” (Luke 24:2)

Luke presents the verb in a similarly result-focused way: they “found” the stone in a new position. The sentence emphasizes discovery rather than spectacle—no agent is named and no accompanying event is described in this verse—yet the core detail is unmistakable: the stone is “rolled away from the tomb.” The verb expresses a change in spatial arrangement relative to the tomb itself. The entrance is no longer blocked by the stone in its former place; what stood between the visitors and the interior has been moved away, and that altered threshold is the first stated observation.

Sense and Usage

Across these passages, ἀποκυλίω consistently attaches to a single, concrete barrier: “the stone.” The recurring phrases “from the door” (Matthew 28:2; Mark 16:3) and “from the tomb” (Luke 24:2) keep the verb anchored to a boundary point—an entrance that can be obstructed or cleared. The verb’s force is directional: the stone is not merely moved, but moved away, creating openness where there had been closure.

The narratives use the same basic action in two complementary ways. Matthew 28:2 describes the action as an event within the story, tied to a clear agent (“an angel of the Lord”) and set amid dramatic signs (“a great earthquake”). Mark 16:3–4 and Luke 24:2, by contrast, highlight the women’s perspective on the stone: first as a looming difficulty (“Who will roll away the stone…?”), then as an unexpected resolution (“they saw that the stone was rolled back”; “They found the stone rolled away”). In these latter cases the verb functions almost like a hinge between expectation and discovery: it names the obstacle as they anticipate it, and it names the obstacle’s removal as they encounter it already accomplished.

The scenes also show how the action affects what follows without needing to spell it out. A stone “from the door of the tomb” implies restricted access; a stone rolled away implies access is no longer restricted at that point. Matthew makes this especially vivid by adding the angel’s posture—“sat on it”—which turns the former barrier into an object under authority and at rest, reinforcing that the doorway is no longer guarded by weight or position. Mark and Luke, by narrating what the women see and find, let the changed placement of the stone speak as the first sign that something at the tomb is different.

Imagery

The repeated image is a heavy stone displaced from an entrance. In Matthew, that displacement is framed as part of a moment of upheaval—earthquake, descent, movement—and the stone becomes a surface on which the angel sits (Matthew 28:2). In Mark and Luke, the same image is quieter but equally concrete: the women’s upward look and their finding of the stone emphasize the doorway altered before they act (Mark 16:4; Luke 24:2). The verb binds these scenes together by focusing attention on the moment when what blocks the tomb is no longer in the way.

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).