These words were often joined together. Thus στενοχωρία, occurring only four times in the N. T., is on three of these associated with θλῖψις (
They indeed express very nearly the same thing, but not under the same image. Θλῖψις (joined with βάσανος at
The proper meaning of στενοχωρία is narrowness of room, confined space, ‘angustiae,’ and then the painfulness of which this is the occasion: ἀπορία στενή and στενοχωρία occurring together,
When, according to the ancient law of England, those who wilfully refused to plead had heavy weights placed on their breasts, and were so pressed and crushed to death, this was literally θλῖψις. When Bajazet, vanquished by Tamerlane, was carried about by him in an iron cage, if indeed the story be true, this was στενοχωρία: or, as we do not know that any suffering there ensued from actual narrowness of room, we may more fitly adduce the oubliettes in which Louis XI. shut up his victims; or the ‘little-ease’1 by which, according to Lingard, the Roman Catholics in Queen Elizabeth’s reign were tortured; ‘it was of so small dimensions and so constructed, that the prisoners could neither stand, walk, sit, nor lie in it at full length.’ For some considerations on the awful sense in which θλῖψις and στενοχωρία shall both, according to St. Paul’s words (
1 The word ‘little-ease’ is not in our Dictionaries, but grew in our early English to a commonplace to express any place or condition of extreme discomfort.
[The following Strong's numbers apply to this section:G2347,G4730.]
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