Knock

Knocking at doors is an action whose cultural significance in the biblical world differed from Western conventions. Easton notes that Orientals do not knock when entering another's house but call out from outside the door—knocking being associated with the gesture of requesting entry when a locked or bolted door is the barrier. In the New Testament, knocking functions as a powerful metaphor for prayer and divine access.

Jesus's Sermon on the Mount teaching—Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you (Matthew 7:7–8; Luke 11:9–10)—uses the knocking image for persistent, confident prayer. The parable of the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5–8) extends the image to urgent nocturnal petition. In Revelation 3:20, Christ himself stands at the door and knocks: If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me—an image of personal fellowship offered to the church at Laodicea. The domesticity of the image—knocking at a door, awaiting a response—captures both the intimacy and the respect for human response embedded in the biblical understanding of divine-human relationship.