Pain

Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words

A — 1: Πόνος (Strong'S #4192 — Noun Masculine — ponos — pon'-os )

is translated "pain" in  Revelation 16:10;  21:4; "pains" in  Revelation 16:11 . See Labor.

A — 2: Ὠδίν (Strong'S #5604 — Noun Feminine — odin — o-deen' )

"a birth pang, travail pain," is rendered "travail," metaphorically, in  Matthew 24:8;  Mark 13:8 , RV (AV, "sorrows"); by way of comparison, in  1—Thessalonians 5:3; translated "pains (of death),"  Acts 2:24 (RV, "pangs"). See Sorrow , Travail. Cp. odino, "to travail in birth."

B — 1: Βασανίζω (Strong'S #928 — Verb — basanizo — bas-an-id'-zo )

primarily signifies "to rub on the touchstone, to put to the test" (from basanos, "a touchstone," a dark stone used in testing metals); hence, "to examine by torture," and, in general, "to distress;" in  Revelation 12:2 , "in pain," RV (AV, "pained"), in connection with parturition. See Torment. (In the Sept.,   1—Samuel 5:3 .).

 Romans 8:22Travail.

King James Dictionary

PAIN, n. L. paena Gr. penalty, and pain, labor.

1. An uneasy sensation in animal bodies, of any degree from slight uneasiness to extreme distress or torture, proceeding from pressure, tension or spasm, separation of parts by violence, or any derangement of functions. Thus violent pressure or stretching of a limb gives pain inflammation produces pain wounds, bruises and incisions give pain. 2. Labor work toil laborious effort. In this sense, the plural only is used as, to take pains to be at the pains.

High without taking pains to rise.

The same with pains we gain, but lose with ease.

3. Labor toilsome effort task in the singular. Not now used. 4. Uneasiness of mind disquietude anxiety solicitude for the future grief, sorrow for the past. We suffer pain when we fear or expect evil we feel pain at the loss of friends or property. 5. The throws or distress of travail or childbirth.

She bowed herself and travailed, for her pains came upon her.  1 Samuel 4

6. Penalty punishment suffered or denounced suffering or evil inflicted as a punishment for a crime, or annexed to the commission of a crime.

None shall presume to fly under pain of death.

Interpose, on pain of my displeasure.

PAIN,

1. To make uneasy or to disquiet to cause uneasy sensations in the body, of any degree of intensity to make simply uneasy, or to distress, to torment. The pressure of fetters may pain a limb the rack pains the body. 2. To afflict to render uneasy in mind to disquiet to distress. We are pained at the death of a friend grief pains the heart we are often pained with fear or solicitude.

I am pained at my very heart.  Jeremiah 4

3. Reciprocally, to pain one's self, to labor to make toilsome efforts. Little used.

Webster's Dictionary

(1): ( n.) Uneasiness of mind; mental distress; disquietude; anxiety; grief; solicitude; anguish.

(2): ( n.) To render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve; as a child's faults pain his parents.

(3): ( n.) Specifically, the throes or travail of childbirth.

(4): ( n.) To inflict suffering upon as a penalty; to punish.

(5): ( n.) See Pains, labor, effort.

(6): ( n.) Punishment suffered or denounced; suffering or evil inflicted as a punishment for crime, or connected with the commission of a crime; penalty.

(7): ( n.) Any uneasy sensation in animal bodies, from slight uneasiness to extreme distress or torture, proceeding from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; bodily distress; bodily suffering; an ache; a smart.

(8): ( n.) To put to bodily uneasiness or anguish; to afflict with uneasy sensations of any degree of intensity; to torment; to torture; as, his dinner or his wound pained him; his stomach pained him.

Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology

See Suffering

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

pān ( חוּל , ḥūl , חיל , ḥı̄l , חבל , ḥēbhel , חלה , ḥālāh , חלחלה , ḥalḥālāh , כּאב , kā' - ēbh , כּאב , ke'ēbh , מצר , mēcar , מכאב , makh'ōbh , עמל , ‛āmāl , ציר , cı̄r  ; βασανίζω , basanı́zo , πόνος , pónos , ὠδίν , ōdı́n ): These words signifying various forms of bodily or mental suffering are generally translated "pain"; 28 out of the 34 passages in which the word is used are in the poetical or prophetical books and refer to conditions of mental disquiet or dismay due to the punishment of personal or national sin. There is only one instance where the word is used as a historic record of personal physical pain: the case of the wife of Phinehas (  1 Samuel 4:19 ), but the same word cı̄r is used figuratively in   Isaiah 13:8;  Isaiah 21:3;  Daniel 10:16 , and translated "pangs" or "sorrows." In other passages where we have the same comparison of consternation in the presence of God's judgments to the pangs of childbirth, the word used is ḥēbhel , as in  Isaiah 66:7;  Jeremiah 13:21;  Jeremiah 22:23;  Jeremiah 49:24 . In some of these and similar passages several synonyms are used in the one verse to intensify the impression, and are translated "pain," "pangs," and "sorrows," as in  Isaiah 13:8 .

The word most commonly used by the prophets is some form of ḥūl or ḥı̄l , sometimes with the addition "as of a woman in travail," as in   Psalm 48:6;  Isaiah 26:18;  Jeremiah 6:24;  Jeremiah 22:23;  Micah 4:10 . This pain is referred to the heart ( Psalm 55:4 ) or to the head ( Jeremiah 30:23; compare  Jeremiah 30:5 ,  Jeremiah 30:6 ). In  Ezekiel 30:4 , it is the penal affliction of Ethiopia, and in  Ezekiel 30:16 , the King James Version "Sin (Tanis) shall have great pain" (the Revised Version (British and American) "anguish"); in  Isaiah 23:5 Egypt is sorely pained at the news of the fall of Tyre. Before the invading host of locusts the people are much pained (  Joel 2:6 the King James Version). Pain in the sense of toil and trouble in   Jeremiah 12:13 is the translation of ḥālāh a word more frequently rendered grieving or sickness, as in  1 Kings 14:1;  Proverbs 23:35;  Song of Solomon 2:5;  Jeremiah 5:3 . The reduplicated form ḥalḥālāh is especially used of a twisting pain usually referred to the loins ( Isaiah 21:3;  Ezekiel 30:4 ,  Ezekiel 30:9;  Nahum 2:10 ).

Pain in the original meaning of the word (as it has come down to us through the Old French from the Latin poena ) as a penalty inflicted for personal sin is expressed by the words kā'ēbh or ke'ābh in   Job 14:22;  Job 15:20 , and in the questioning complaint of the prophet ( Jeremiah 15:18 ). As a judgment on personal sin pain is also expressed by makh'obh in  Job 33:19;  Jeremiah 51:8 , but this word is used in the sense of afflictions in  Isaiah 53:3 in the expression "man of sorrows." The Psalmist (  Psalm 25:18 ) praying for deliverance from the afflictions which weighed heavily on him in turn uses the word ‛āmāl , and this word which primarily means "toil" or "labor," as in  Ecclesiastes 1:3 , or "travail" as in  Isaiah 53:11 , is translated "painful" in  Psalm 73:16 , as expressing Asaph's disquiet due to his misunderstanding of the ways of Providence. The "pains of hell" ( Psalm 116:3 the King James Version), which got hold of the Psalmist in his sickness, is the rendering of the word mēcar  ; the same word is translated "distress" in  Psalm 118:5 . Most of these words have a primary physical meaning of twisting, rubbing or constricting.

In the New Testament, ōdin is translated "pain" (of death, the Revised Version (British and American) "pang") in   Acts 2:24 . This word is used to express any severe pain, such as that of travail, or (as in Aeschylus, Choephori , 211) the pain of intense apprehension. The verb from this, ōdunṓmai , is used by the Rich Man in the parable to describe his torment (the Revised Version (British and American) "anguish") ( Luke 16:24 ). The related verb sunōdı́nō is used in  Romans 8:22 and is translated "travailing in pain together." In much the same sense, the word is used by Euripides (Helena, 727).

In  Revelation 12:2 the woman clothed with the sun ( basanizoménē ) was in pain to be delivered; the verb ( basanizō ) which means "to torture" is used both in  Matthew 8:6 in the account of the grievously tormented centurion's servant, and in the description of the laboring of the apostles' boat on the stormy Sea of Galilee (  Matthew 14:24 ). The former of these seems to have been a case of spinal meningitis. This verb occurs in Thucydides vii. 86 (viii. 92), where it means "being put to torture." In the two passages in Revelation where pain is mentioned the word is ponos , the pain which affected those on whom the fifth vial was poured ( Revelation 16:10 ), and in the description of the City of God where there is no more pain ( Revelation 21:4 ). The primary meaning of this word seems to be "toil," as in Iliad xxi. 525, but it is used by Hippocrates to express disease ( Aphorisma iv. 44).

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(MYSTICAL), a certain indescribable agony which has been believed by mystics to be necessary to prepare them for a state of rapture. "This mysterious pain," says Mr. Vaughan (Hours with the Mystics), "is no new thing in the history of mysticism. It is one of the trials of mystical initiation. It is the death essential to the superhuman height. With St. Theresa the physical nature contributes it much more largely than usual; and in her map of the mystic's progress it is located at a more advanced period of the journey. St. Francis of Assisi lay sick for two years under preparatory miseries. Catharine of Siena bore five years of privation, and was tormented by devils besides. For five years, and yet again for more than three times five, Magdalena de Pazzi endured such aridity that she believed herself forsaken of God. Balthazzar Alvarez suffered for sixteen years before he earned his extraordinary illumination. Theresa, there can be little doubt, regarded her fainting-spells, hysteria, cramps, and nervous, seizures as divine visitations. In their action and reaction body and soul were continually injuring each other. The excitement of hallucination would produce an attack of her disorder, and the disease again foster the hallucination. Servitude, whether of mind or of body, introduces maladies unknown to freedom." "These sufferings," adds the same writer, "are attributed by the mystics to the surpassing nature of the truths manifested to our finite faculties (as the sun-glare pains the eye); to the anguish involved in the surrender of every ordinary support or enjoyment, when the soul, suspended (as Theresa describes it) between heaven and earth, can derive solace from neither; to the intensity of the aspirations awakened, rendering those limitations of our condition here, which detain us from God, an intolerable oppression; and to despair, by which the soul is tried, being left to believe herself forsaken by the God she loves." (See Mysticism).