What Does Luke 2:48 Mean in the King James?
And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
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
Mary’s “sorrowing” is a pain-word, the same Greek root that names continual anguish in Romans 9:2.
THE MEANING
When someone you love is absent, searching can carry pain as real as anguish in the body. The verse holds astonishment and grief together: what is extraordinary does not make the wound of absence unreal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that astonishment should cancel grief falls away: they are amazed to find him, and Mary still names the anguish of having searched.
THE ROOT
ὀδυνώμενοι
odynōmenoi
GROWS FROM
ὀδυν-
pain, anguish; the Greek word family for feeling or suffering pain
The Greek word translated “sorrowing” is a form of ὀδυνάω (odynaō), meaning to feel pain or anguish. Its word-family can name deep, continuing sorrow, so Mary’s search carries more than worry: the absence is an ache.
ALSO GROWS
odynē: pain, anguish, sorrow
ὀδύνη
Romans 9:2 uses this noun for “continual sorrow,” showing that this root can name grief as an ongoing inner pain.
odynaō: to feel pain, suffer anguish
ὀδυνάω
Luke 16:25 uses this verb family for being “tormented,” showing how strongly the root can express distress pressing into a person.
THE PATTERN
Love registers a beloved one’s absence as a wound and turns toward the one who is lost.
And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?Jesus wept.THE THREAD
That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.Luke’s “sorrowing” and Romans’ “sorrow” come from the Greek root ὀδυν- (odyn-, pain or anguish). Romans opens Mary’s word further: her search is not mild concern but pain carried in the heart.
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