What Does Luke 15:14 Mean in the King James?
And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
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
After he has spent everything and famine has arisen around him, “want” names the shortfall where personal depletion and surrounding scarcity meet.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when what has been spent is gone and scarcity rises around you; need becomes the felt fact of coming short. It holds personal depletion beside famine in the surrounding land, showing how the two pressures meet.
THE ROOT
ὑστερεῖσθαι
hystereisthai
GROWS FROM
ὑστερ-
hyster-
To be behind, come short, or be left lacking.
“want” in this verse is hystereisthai. The verb here is ὑστερεῖσθαι (hystereisthai, to be in need or come short), from a word family that also carries the sense of being later or behind. Need is pictured as a shortfall: what remains no longer meets what the moment requires.
ALSO GROWS
hýsteros: Later, afterward.
ὕστερος
Its sense of what comes later echoes the idea of falling behind that shapes the verse’s word for need.
hysterēma: A deficiency; what is lacking.
ὑστέρημα
This noun makes the shortfall explicit, naming the gap between what is present and what is needed.
THE PATTERN
Need becomes real when available provision no longer matches the conditions a person faces.
And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.THE THREAD
And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.Luke uses the same Greek verb for “lacked” here and for “be in want” in Luke 15:14. The shared word asks whether the absence of provisions leaves someone coming short.
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