What Does Mark 13:17 Mean in the King James?
But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
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 verse names catastrophe at its most bodily: it reaches both the body carrying a life and the body feeding one.
THE MEANING
When upheaval bears down, pregnancy and nursing make movement, shelter, and survival harder to secure; the verse names that bodily exposure directly. A life carried in the womb and a child dependent on milk are both placed within the crisis.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that danger reaches every person on equal terms: pregnancy and nursing make escape and endurance differently constrained.
THE ROOT
ἐν γαστρὶ ἐχούσαις
en gastri echousais
GROWS FROM
γαστήρ (gastēr), stem γαστρ-
Belly; womb.
“with child” in this verse is en gastri echousais. The phrase is literally “having in the womb”: pregnancy appears as embodied carrying. In a verse about crisis, that wording keeps the life within the woman present in the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
gastēr: Belly, womb.
γαστήρ
The physical noun anchors the phrase in the body that carries a child.
en gastri echein: To have in the womb; to be pregnant.
ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχειν
This is the phrase’s literal structure: pregnancy is pictured as carrying life within.
θηλαζούσαις
thēlazousais
GROWS FROM
θηλ-
thēl-
Breast, nipple; the source of the verb meaning to suckle.
“give suck” in this verse is thēlazousais. The Greek verb names nursing at the breast. Beside pregnancy’s “having in the womb,” it makes the warning span carrying a life and sustaining one after birth.
ALSO GROWS
thēlē: Breast, nipple.
θηλή
This noun names the body part that gives the verb its physical image.
thēlazō: To suckle, nurse at the breast.
θηλάζω
The verb names the child’s bodily dependence on nursing.
THE PATTERN
Collective upheaval becomes concrete in the bodies carrying and sustaining dependent life.
And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child.For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.THE THREAD
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.Luke repeats the Greek phrases for having a child in the womb and nursing at the breast, then names the great distress surrounding them. The shared wording carries Mark’s bodily warning into a second account of the crisis.
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