Bible Dictionary
ADVERSITY
Adversity refers to distress, affliction, misfortune, or harmful circumstances. Biblical examples include poverty, oppression, war, sorrow, and persecution.
Definition
Adversity is distress, affliction, misfortune, or harmful circumstance. The term covers the broad range of troubles caused by enemies, poverty, sorrow, and other forms of evil or difficulty.
Biblical Usage
In the Revised Version it is chiefly an Old Testament term. A New Testament occurrence meaning “ill-treated” is rendered more literally in the Revised Version.
Historical Background
The word represents several Hebrew terms conveying falling, straits, distress, affliction, badness, evil, or harm.
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>ad-vur'-si-ti: In the Revised Version (British and American) exclusively an Old Testament term, expressing the various forms of distress and evil conveyed by four Hebrew words: tsela`, "a halting" or "fall"; tsarah, "straits" "distress," "affliction"; tsar, "straitness," "affliction"; ra`, "bad," "evil," "harmful." These words cover the whole range of misfortunes caused by enemies, poverty, sorrow and trouble. "Adversity," which occurs once in the King James Version in New Testament (Heb 13:3: kakouchoumenos, "ill-treated") is displaced in the Revised Version (British and American) by the literal rendering which illustrates or interprets a common phase of adversity.</p><p>Dwight M. Pratt</p>