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.
Words in any language change over time. Some drop out of use entirely. Others come into use which were unknown in previous generations. Even more challenging, however, are words that remain in common use but change in their meaning. Many words and phrases that meant one thing in the past now mean something completely different to present-day readers. These changes can have a significant impact on how we understand older English writings. Archaic or obscure words at least stand out to us. We know that we don’t know them and that we need to look them up. Familiar words that have changed in meaning can more easily confuse us because we think we know what they mean when, in reality, we do not. Many such words occur in the KJV. For example, consider the word “watching.”
In watchings often
To “watch” means to observe or look at intently. If someone is “watching” TV or “watching” a movie, they are looking at the screen and paying attention to what is happening. Euphemistically, it can also mean to guard or to care for. If someone asks you to “watch” their kids, they obviously mean more than to simply observe their movements. You are to care for them and keep them safe until the parent returns. Still, at its core, this is rooted in the meaning of attentive observation. That is what the word means. It is hard, then, to discern what Paul means when, listing his various struggles, he writes:
“In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,” (2 Corinthians 11:27, KJV).
Weariness, pain, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, and…watchings? Why watchings? What was he watching, and why would that be counted among his struggles? Did he have to watch something bad? He doesn’t say so. Did he have to “watch” someone or something the way we “watch” one another’s kids? Is he talking about guarding or caring for something? Again, there is no indication of this. Whatever it is, Paul expects other believers to be going through it too, and it is clearly bad. He warns his readers to prove themselves ministers of God in various trials and afflictions, such as:
“In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings,” (2 Corinthians 6:5, KJV).
Again, these “watchings” are listed right alongside imprisonments, tumults, and “stripes,” or the wounds from being beaten with a whip! Clearly, Paul and his original readers knew what was so rough about watching, but it is not altogether apparent to us today. The problem stems from an old use of the term “watching.” Stemming from the idea of a night “watchman,” or one who stays awake through the night to watch for threats while everyone else sleeps, the term “watchings” came to be a term for nights where one is unable to sleep. Much earlier, the 14th-century “Wycliffe Bible” rendered this word as “wakings,” which bore a similar meaning. Today, translators use the terms:
“in sleeplessness” (NASB, see also NKJV, MEV),
“in sleepless nights,” (ESV, see also NIV, CSB)
The particular hardship that the KJV translators call “watchings” is the exhaustion of nights without sleep, which were apparently a frequent consequence of persecution. This would have been plain and clear to readers in 1611, but today it leaves us with a puzzle that is not easy to answer if we restrict ourselves to the KJV alone.
