What Does Luke 18:3 Mean in the King James?
And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
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
The widow’s plea for “vengeance” and her naming of an “adversary” share the Greek justice-root: she is asking the judge to set a wrong right.
THE MEANING
When you are left without protection, your voice still enters the room as a claim for justice. Your adversary is named openly, and your need is not reduced to private pain: it is something a judge is asked to set right.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that being unprotected leaves you with no standing to ask for justice.
THE ROOT
ἐκδίκησόν
ekdikēson
GROWS FROM
δίκη
dikē
Right, justice; what is due.
The Greek ties the widow’s request for vindication to the word used for her opponent: both carry the root δίκη, justice. English separates “avenge” from “adversary,” while the Greek reveals the dispute as a claim for what is right.
ALSO GROWS
antidikos: An opponent in a legal dispute; an adversary.
ἀντίδικος
The widow does not name a vague hardship; she names the one standing against her in a dispute that calls for justice.
ekdikeō: To do justice, avenge, or vindicate.
ἐκδικέω
This is the verb behind her plea: justice means answering the wrong done to her.
dikaiosynē: Justice, righteousness, alignment.
δικαιοσύνη
The same word-family connects the case she brings with the restoring of what is right and aligned.
THE PATTERN
The cry of the exposed is a claim for justice that confronts the one withholding what is due.
He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?The same justice-root returns in “avenge,” echoing the widow’s plea in the question of whether God will bring justice to those crying day and night. Her single voice before a judge becomes part of an ongoing cry heard by God.
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