What Does Psalm 48:6 Mean in the King James?
Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail.
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 Hebrew names fear as trembling: it is already shaking in the body before the labor-like pain arrives.
THE MEANING
Fear can seize a person so fully that the body trembles and aches. The image of a woman in travail gives that anguish its full bodily force. The verse lets the fear remain terrible rather than turning it into a comforting metaphor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that fear is only an inward thought: it can grip the body and make anguish visible.
THE ROOT
רְעָדָה
rəʿādāh
GROWS FROM
רעד
To tremble, shake, or quake.
The word rendered “fear” names trembling: the line begins with a body already shaking before the pangs arrive. English can make fear sound like an invisible state; this Hebrew word names its visible movement.
ALSO GROWS
rāʿad: The verbal form for trembling or shaking.
רָעַד
It shows that the verse’s “fear” belongs to physical movement, not only to an inward feeling.
rəʿādāh: The noun form used for the trembling itself.
רְעָדָה
The verse presents fear as a bodily condition that has already taken hold.
חִיל
ḥîl
GROWS FROM
חול
To writhe, twist, or whirl; in this word family, to travail.
The word for pain is linked to a root of twisting and writhing, and this verse makes the labor image explicit. Anguish is not merely named; it moves through and takes over the body.
ALSO GROWS
ḥûl: A verb for twisting or writhing, including in labor.
חוּל
It reveals the bodily motion inside the verse’s word for pain.
məḥōl: A circle or whirling movement, expressed as dance.
מְחוֹל
It shares the root’s sense of motion; here that motion is anguish, not celebration.
אֲחָזָתַם
ʾaḥāzatam
GROWS FROM
אחז
To seize, grasp, or take hold.
“Took hold” in this verse is ʾaḥāzatam. The verb pictures fear closing its grip around a person. Alongside the word for trembling, it makes the verse’s terror feel like a force acting on the body, not simply a thought passing through it.
ALSO GROWS
ʾaḥuzzāh: A holding or possession.
אֲחֻזָּה
It carries the root’s sense of something being firmly held.
ʾāḥūz: Something seized or held.
אָחוּז
It echoes the verse’s picture of fear taking hold of people.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses labor pangs to make overwhelming anguish bodily, gripping, and visible.
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.We have heard the fame thereof: our hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail.A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.THE THREAD
We have heard the fame thereof: our hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail.Both verses use חִיל (ḥîl), meaning a labor pang or anguish. Jeremiah also describes distress taking hold of the body, opening Psalm 48:6’s image of fear as a physical grip.
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