Bible Dictionary
ANGUISH
Anguish is extreme distress or suffering of body, mind, or spirit. Scripture uses the term for physical pain, grief, oppression, anxiety, and the deep distress associated with sin and affliction.
Definition
Anguish is extreme distress or suffering of body, mind, or spirit, including excruciating pain, grief, remorse, despair, confusion, and anxiety. Its underlying biblical imagery is pressure, narrowness, or being compressed into a confined place.
Biblical Usage
Scripture uses anguish for the pains of childbirth, distress resulting from sin and wickedness, the oppression of slavery and Assyria, and the anxiety of Christian love over the sins of fellow disciples.
Historical Background
The Hebrew and Greek terms behind “anguish” include ideas of being straitened, pressed, twisted with pain, afflicted, and held together by distress.
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>an'-gwish: Extreme distress of body, mind or spirit; excruciating pain or suffering of soul, e.g. excessive grief, remorse, despair. Chiefly expressed in Old Testament, by four derivatives of tsuq, "straitened," "pressed," and tsar, and two derivatives signifying "straitness," "narrowness," hence distress; also shabhats, "giddiness," "confusion of mind"; hul "to twist" with pain, "writhe." So in the New Testament, thlipsis, "a pressing together," hence affliction, tribulation, stenochoria, "narrowness of place," hence extreme affliction; sunoche, "a holding together," hence distress. The fundamental idea in these various terms is pressure--being straitened, compressed into a narrow place, or pain through physical or mental torture. Used of the physical agony of child-birth (Jer 4:31; 6:24; 49:24; 50:43; Joh 16:21); of distress of soul as the result of sin and wickedness (Job 15:24; Pr 1:27; Ro 2:9); of anguish of spirit through the cruel bondage of slavery (Ex 6:9) and Assyrian oppression (Isa 8:22); of the anxiety and pain of Christian love because of the sins of fellow-disciples (2Co 2:4).</p><p>Dwight M. Pratt</p>