What Does Revelation 12:2 Mean in the King James?
And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
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
Her cry rises from the same labor that is bringing the hidden life into view.
THE MEANING
You can carry what is not yet visible while its arrival already presses on you. The verse holds the cry and the torment alongside the life being brought forth, without making the pain seem mild or decorative.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that pain means the process has failed: here pain belongs to active labor and delivery. The verse does not call that pain easy or insignificant.
THE ROOT
ὠδίνουσα
ōdinousa
GROWS FROM
ὠδίνω
ōdinō
To be in labor; to experience birth pangs.
“travailing” in this verse is ōdinousa. The labor verb makes this more specific than general distress: the suffering belongs to a birth already underway. A compound of the same verb in Romans describes creation laboring together, extending this image beyond one body.
ALSO GROWS
ōdinousa: Being in labor; experiencing birth pangs.
ὠδίνουσα
This is the form used here, placing the woman’s cry inside the labor of bringing forth.
synōdinei: Labors together; suffers birth pangs together.
συνωδίνει
Romans 8:22 uses this compound for creation, giving the same labor root a shared, world-sized reach.
βασανιζομένη
basanizomenē
GROWS FROM
βασανίζω
basanizō
To torment, torture, or subject to testing.
The word translated “pained” names torment, not just discomfort. The related noun for a touchstone used to test metal also names torture or torment, bringing the force of testing and pressure into the word family.
ALSO GROWS
basanos: Touchstone; torment or torture.
βάσανος
The touchstone meaning adds the image of testing under pressure, while the verse uses the word family for real torment.
basanismos: Torment; torture.
βασανισμός
This related noun keeps the severity visible: the verse names anguish that accompanies the labor.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures groaning in labor as pressure within the movement toward birth.
Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.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
My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,The same labor word appears here as “travail in birth,” joined to the forming of Christ within you. The shared root carries the image from a child at the point of delivery to a life taking shape within.
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