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Bible Dictionaries
Sighing
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or SIGHING.—The expression of trouble by means of involuntary respiration. This expression is used in connexion with our Lord twice, both times in St. Mark’s Gospel. It is expressed in Mark 7:34 by the word στενάζω—in the LXX Septuagint the equivalent of אנח—and in Mark 8:12 by the compound ἀναστενάζω. In both instances the words appear in this Gospel alone, and only in these passages. The expression is evidently meant to convey the fact of the Lord’s sympathy with men. In the first, the healing of the deaf and dumb man, our Lord felt the burden of the disease which He was about to cure. And here the expression is associated with prayer on His part: ‘And, looking up to heaven, he sighed.’ In the second, where a stronger expression is used through the compound, the Pharisees are asking for a sign, and He ‘sighed in his spirit,’ evidently thinking of the speedy appearance of the sign for which they asked, and mourning over the terrible nature which it would bear. On the ‘groaning’ of John 11:33; John 11:38 see Anger in vol. i. p. 62b.
W. H. Rankine.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Sighing'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/sighing.html. 1906-1918.
