What Does Matthew 24:8 Mean?

But all these are the beginning of labor pains.

Matthew 24:8 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

All these are the beginning of sorrows.

THE KEY

The word translated “sorrows” carries the image of birth pangs: painful upheaval is named as labor beginning.

THE MEANING

The upheavals in this verse are pictured as the first contractions of labor. The pain is real, and the image places it at the start of a process still unfolding.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Pain does not mean the process has already reached its end.

THE ROOT

ὠδίνων

ōdinōn

GROWS FROM

ὠδίν

ōdin

Birth pangs; the pains of labor.

“labor pains” in this verse is ōdinōn. Under “sorrows” is the image of childbirth. The verse holds pain and beginning together: these are pangs at the onset of labor, not a declaration that the process is complete.

ALSO GROWS

ōdinō: To be in labor; to travail.

ὠδίνω

Galatians 4:19 uses this verb for travail in birth, making the shared labor image explicit.

synōdinō: To travail together; to share birth pangs.

συνωδίνω

Romans 8:22 uses this related verb for creation’s shared labor, extending the image beyond a single person.

THE PATTERN

Birth-pang language presents painful distress as labor at the threshold of what is being brought forth.

Now why do you cry out aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished? For pangs have seized you, like a woman in labor.

Micah 4:9 · SDVPangs of distress are pictured as the labor of a woman nearing delivery.

For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.

Romans 8:22 · SDVThe labor image widens to creation itself, groaning and travailing together.

My little children, for whom I am in birth-pangs again, until the Anointed One be shaped in you.

Galatians 4:19 · SDVThe same birth-pang language describes an unfolding process that has not yet reached its formed state.

THE THREAD

For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.

Romans 8:22 · SDV

Romans uses ⁨συνωδίνει⁩ (synōdinei), “travails together,” from the same birth-pang root, ⁨ὠδίν⁩ (ōdin). It widens Matthew’s image: labor is shared across creation, and the pains belong to a process still unfolding.

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