What Does Luke 1:36 Mean in the King James?
And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Elisabeth’s old label sits beside a pregnancy already six months along, showing that a name can outlive the condition it once described.
THE MEANING
Elisabeth is already carrying a son, even as the word “barren” still follows her. The verse holds the old designation and her present reality together, without letting the label tell the whole story.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that a condition once named over someone remains the truest thing about them. Elisabeth’s pregnancy shows that “barren” no longer describes the whole of her present.
THE ROOT
καλουμένῃ
kaloumenē
GROWS FROM
καλέω
kaleō
to call, summon, or name
The Greek uses a present participle: “the one being called barren.” The label remains in people’s speech while the sentence also says Elisabeth has conceived; the word for naming does not make that name the whole of her reality.
ALSO GROWS
klēsis: calling, invitation
κλῆσις
This noun from the same word family shows how an act of calling can become a summons or vocation.
klētos: called, invited
κλητός
This related form describes someone who is called; beside Elisabeth’s story, it makes the distinction between a designation and the full truth of a person visible.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places the arrival of a child beside a history or condition that made birth seem closed.
For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come about after Hannah had conceived, that she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:THE THREAD
Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.Sarah’s promised son makes Elisabeth’s “also” part of a recurring scriptural pattern: a child arrives beside a body marked by age. The parallel opens her pregnancy as one instance of a story the text has already told.
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