Naos

Here’s an intriguing etymology. The Hebrew word na’ah is used only three times in the Old Testament (Psalm 93:5; Song of Songs 1:10; Isaiah 52:7), meaning “to be beautiful.” It appears to come from navah , “to sit, to dwell.” It has the sense of “sitting well” or “being suitable.” Something is lovely if it dwells fittingly in its setting – like the holiness that “sits well” in the house of Yahweh (Psalm 93:5) or the rows of ornaments that “sit well” on the cheek of the Bride (Song of Songs 1:10). Gesenius compares it to the German idiom jemandem gut sissen, which once meant “becoming” and is the origin of the German Sitte.

Now, here’s the interesting part: navah / na’ah , and perhaps their more common cousin na’veh (Psalm 33:1; 147:1; Proverbs 17:7; 19:10; etc.), Gesenius suggests, is linked to the Greek naos , “temple.” The similarity of the words does’t come out in English: The first letter is the same; the “v” (waw) of Hebrew is frequently used as an “o” and becomes an “o” when Hebrew is translated into another language; it is common for Hebrew words that end in “h” to become Greek words that end in “s” (especially obvious in the New Testament’s Greek rendition of names – Zechariah becomes Zecharias). The etymology also makes semantic sense: A temple is a dwelling place for a god, his resting place. It makes sense if we take na’ah in the sense of “suitability,” for a temple is presumably a place where it is suitable for a god to be.

This etymology might give some coloring to naos , but even without that, it is highly interesting that we have here an etymology of a common Greek word that traces back to Hebrew (or, more generally, Semitic). Also that it is a common religious term in Greek.