Quick, quicken (Hastings' Dictionary)

Although the adverb ' quickly ' in the sense of speedily is of frequent occurrence in A V, neither ' quick ' nor ' quicken ' is ever found with that meanmg. In Is 11' and some passages in the Apocr. the raeanins; of 'quick' is acute or active. Thus Is 11 'And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord' Cin-i::!, RV ' His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord,' RVm as AV, see esp. Delitzsch, in lac); Wis 7^ 'Wisdom . . . taught me . . . for in lier is an understanding spirit . . . quick ' ((Sfi), Vulg. acutus, RV ' keen ') ; 8" ' I shall be found of a quick conceit in judg- ment' (i^lis (v Kfilaet, Vulg. acutus in judirio). With these passages cf. Knox, Hist. 377, ' Many wondred at the suence of Jolin Knox, for in all these quick reasonings hee opened not his mouth ' ; Melvill, Diary, "il, ' Efter ernest prayer, maters war gravlie and cleirlie proponit, overtures made be the wysest, douttes reasonit and discussit be the learnedest and maist quick.' We still retain this sense slightly modified in ' quick-witted,' of which an example may be quoted from Tindale, Pent. Prologe to Lv (p. 297), ' Allegoryes make 3 man qwick witted aiul prynte wysdoiue in him and maketh it to abyde, where bare wordes go but in at the one eare aud out at the other.' In Sir 31, the meaning is rather active than acute, ' In all thy works be quick ' (7ii'ou ifrpexv^)- Elsewhere the meaning is livinr;, mostly in direct opposition to dead, as Nu 1(5^" ' If . . . they go down quick into the pit,' compared with v.^ ' They . . . went down alive into the pit' (Heb. in both □••!:, AV follows Tindale, RV 'alive' in both) ; Ps 55" ' Let them go down quick into hell' (RV 'alive into the pit'); clearly in the phrase ' the quick and the dead,' Ac 10''-, 2 Ti 4', 1 P 45. Cf. Jn 7^ Wye, 'Flodis of quyke watir schulen Howe of his wombe'; Knox, M'orks, ni. 232, 'Thair upon foUowit sa cruell persecutioun, under the name of justice, that na small noumber wer burnit quick ' ; Barlowe, Dialogue, 58, ' It is enacted throughoute Suytzerland among the Oe- colampadyanes, and in dyvers other places, that whosoever is founde of the Anabaptystes faction, he shall be tlirowen quycke into the water, and there drowned ' ; Tindale, Expositions, 189, ' As there is no sin in Christ the stock, so can there be none in the quick members, that live and grow in him by faith ' ; Fuller, Holy State, 9, ' He that impoverisheth his children to enrich his widow, destroyes a quick hedge to make a dead one.' In He 4'^, though the same Gr. word (fii') is used as in the passages quoted above, the meaning is more than merelj' living, rather alive, almost lively, ' For the word of God is quick and power- ful' (Rhem. ' livel}' and forcible'). And tliis is nearest of all to the derivation of the word, its base being the Teut. kivika, ' lively,' connate with Lat. vivus. Cf. Milton, Areopag. (Hales' ed. p. 7), ' Against defaming it was decreed that none should be traduc'd \>y name . . . and this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the desperate wits of other Atheists, and the open way of defaming, as the event shew'd.' To quicken is to give life to, wliether physically or spiritually. In OT it is always the tr. of i;n (Piel of n;n to live), which also means to preserve life, but when tr'' ' quicken ' in AV always means to bless with spiritual life. In NT the Gr. is either iuoiroUoi or its compound avv^uioiroiim (Eph 2, Col 2", tr'' ' quickened together with '). In Jn 5^' the phj-sicaJ and spiritual meanings are placed side by side, ' For as the Father laiseth up tlis dead and quickeneth them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.' J. HASTINGS.