What Does Luke 21:23 Mean in the King James?
But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.
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
This verse refuses to let collective crisis stay abstract: it locates its weight in pregnancy and nursing.
THE MEANING
This verse names distress as something borne in the body: pregnancy and nursing bring particular exposure when danger presses on a whole people. The force is communal, yet its cost is not evenly carried.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that public crisis is borne equally; some bodies face it while carrying or sustaining another life.
THE ROOT
ἀνάγκη
anankē
GROWS FROM
ἀναγκ-
anank-
Necessity, constraint, compulsion.
The English “distress” can sound like pain alone, but ἀνάγκη (anankē) also carries the sense of constraint: pressure closing in on what can be done. Here that pressure is not abstract; it bears on pregnant and nursing bodies across the land.
ALSO GROWS
anankazō: To compel or force.
ἀναγκάζω
The related verb shows distress as pressure that compels, not only an inward feeling of alarm.
anankaios: Necessary or indispensable.
ἀναγκαῖος
This branch names what is required or imposed, illuminating how distress can narrow the choices available.
THE PATTERN
Collective upheaval becomes legible through the bodily cost borne by those carrying or sustaining life.
And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!THE THREAD
I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be.Luke’s ἀνάγκη (anankē) and the “distress” in this verse name pressure that constrains what can be done. Luke locates its cost in pregnancy and nursing; 1 Corinthians calls that pressure present.
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