What Does Luke 18:5 Mean?

(5) **Lest by her continual coming she weary me.**—The latter verb is again one which takes its place in the vocabulary of unusual words common to St. Luke and St. Paul. It meets us in 1Corinthians 9:27, and is there rendered “I k*eep under* my body.” Literally, however, it expresses the act of the pugilist when he strikes a blow which leaves a livid bruise on his opponent’s face, and it would seem to have been transferred, in the natural transition of popular metaphor into the forms of colloquial language, from the arena to common life. So we talk of men “hitting hard” or “giving a knock-down blow” in controversy or debate. What is described here is the continuous shower of blows, each of which is short of a “knock-down,” while their accumulative effect is, in the nearest equivalent of modern English, that the man is so “punished” that he is glad to give over at any price.