This article is part of a series on the changing meaning of English words and its impact on the King James Only debate. To see the introduction to this series, click The King James Version and the changing use of words.
As with all languages, English words change in their meaning and usage. Over time, words that meant one thing come to mean something else entirely. Sometimes the difference is quite subtle, in others it is profound, but many words we use today had different definitions in the past. These changes can skew our understanding of an old text, and we often don’t even realize we are reading it wrong. Familiar words that have changed in meaning can confuse us because we think we know what they mean when we do not, at least not in the context of the old book we are reading. Many such words occur in the KJV. For an example of this, let’s consider the word “miserable.”
We are of all men most miserable
Today, someone who is miserable is someone who feels really bad, someone who is severely unhappy or in pain. To say you are “miserable” is to say something about how you feel in and about your circumstances. “Miserable” refers to a personal sense of extreme pain, discomfort, or unhappiness. Thus, “miserable” is not an objective description of your state but rather a subjective description of how you feel about your circumstance. If you are happy and contented, you are not miserable, even if you are externally poor, oppressed, or physically ill. If you can endure such things with genuine gladness or inner peace, they do not make you miserable. Likewise, someone may have many things going quite well for them and yet find themselves inexplicably miserable even in their success and comfort. Miserable is a state of mind. At least, that’s how we use it today. Yet, that doesn’t do justice to what Paul is trying to say to the church in Corinth when he writes:
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable,” (1 Corinthians 15:19).
Paul’s point is not that, without the future hope of resurrection and eternal life in Christ, we will feel really bad. He is not talking about our subjective sense of our circumstances or condition. His point is that, objectively, Christianity without eternal life in the age to come is an awful bargain. Christians are persecuted and reviled here and now. They might be quite cheery about it. They may not be “miserable,” in the modern sense, but if there is no future life in Christ, if their hope is only here and now, they are really in quite a pitiable state. Objectively, they were the lowliest and most pathetic of people, and the world ought to feel sorry for them. And this is just what “miserable” meant. It was not a word to describe how you feel about your own circumstances, but rather how others should feel about your circumstances. To say that you were “miserable” meant that you should be pitied. Even if you were quite happy and content, you were in a sorry state and others should feel bad for you. This is why modern translators typically render the phrase:
“…we are of all men most to be pitied,” (NASB, see also ESV, CSB, NIV, NKJV).
This was Paul’s point. Regardless of whether one feels miserable, without a future hope of a life to come in Christ’s kingdom, if all we get is what Christians face in this life now, we are a pretty wretched group of people and everyone ought to feel bad for us and avoid our mistakes. Today, “miserable” doesn’t communicate that idea anymore, It isn’t the way we use it. Because of this, the KJV is less clear and precise in this passage than it used to be in 17th-century England. That’s why modern translators have opted to word it differently, to preserve the truth of the text by expressing it in terms that still mean what Paul was saying.
