the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Groaning
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The verb στενάζω occurs three times in Romans 8 (vv. 22, 23, 26) and twice in 2 Corinthians 5 (vv. 2, 4), denoting the distress caused apparently not be much by physical suffering and material decay as by the conflict in the present order between matter and spirit. The whole creation is conceived as involved in this painful struggle-it ‘groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now’ (Romans 8:22).
St. Paul’s figure may have been suggested by the Jewish tradition of the ‘birth-pangs of the Messiah’: חָבְלֵי הַמָשִׁיחַ (F. Weber, Altsyn. Theol., Leipzig, 1880, p. 350f.; cf. Matthew 24:7-8 : ‘Nation shall rise up against nation, and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. These things are the beginning of travail’), although the Apostle’s thought is more psychological. For the sympathy of Nature with man’s fall and restoration see Weber, pp. 222f., 380f., 398.
The larger life of the Spirit presses painfully against the limitations of the present material world. Not creation’s physical sufferings under the bondage of corruption, but her ‘earnest expectation’ of deliverance from it, creates the sense of almost intolerable strain; the ‘firstfruits of the Spirit’ for the moment intensify the burden of the flesh; the deepest groanings of the saint arise from his sense of exile, from his ‘longing to be clothed upon with his habitation from heaven’ (2 Corinthians 5:2). The soul in its holiest moods groans in its impotence. Its highest yearnings, though known to the Searcher of hearts, have no language but a painful cry.
‘The groanings which cannot be uttered’ with which ‘the Spirit’ maketh intercession for us (Romans 8:26) seem to be those of the saint’s spiritual nature. In St. Paul, man’s higher faculties take highly personified forms-the indwelling Divine is the Spirit of Christ (cf. Philo’s Logos, identified with the archangel, etc., or the Logoi, identified with Jewish angels and Greek daimons. See J. Drummond, Philo Judœus, 1888, ii. 235f., for a discussion of ‘the suppliant Logos,’ τὸν ἱκέτην λόγον). The ‘Spirit’ of Romans 8 is distinguished from God; the ‘heart’ of man and the ‘mind of the Spirit’ seem synonymous, and the ‘unutterable groanings’ suit better a limited human soul than a heavenly power.
But the stirrings of the Spirit which make the soul conscious of earth’s ‘broken arcs’ give the promise of heaven’s ‘perfect round’-of ‘the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward’ (cf. St. Augustine’s Confessions, bk. xiii.; also Browning’s Abt Vogler).
H. Bulcock.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Groaning'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/groaning.html. 1906-1918.
