age: the point a person has reached in life, counted in years, and so the stretch of life that person has been given
Greek could measure a person by time, and this is the word that does it. It names the place someone has reached along the line of a life: how many years they have lived, and therefore what those years now allow or rule out. It grew out of an older word for people of the same age group, the ones who came up together, so it carries the feel of a stage of life shared with others rather than a bare number on a form.
Most often the word works by pointing at a threshold. The healed man's parents in John 9 push the questioning back onto their son because he "has age", a fixed Greek way of saying he is old enough to answer for himself in a public dispute. Hebrews says Sarah bore a child when she was past the age, meaning past the years in which childbearing was possible. Neither verse cares about the number itself; each cares about what the number permits. This is narrower than the ordinary word for old age (γῆρας), which names only the last stretch of life, and quite different from the word for an era or epoch (αἰών), which measures history rather than a person.
One step further out, the word can stand for the whole span of a life instead of a point along it. That is the sense at issue when Jesus asks who can add a single measure to his life by worrying. The measure he names is a cubit, a measure of length, but Greek writers were used to laying out a lifetime as though it were a distance, and the Old Testament does the same when it calls a life only a handbreadth long. Not everyone reads those two sayings that way, and the competing reading takes the word bodily instead.
Nuances
Whether the word in Matthew 6:27 names the span of a person's life or bodily height. The saying asks who can add one cubit to it by worrying. A cubit is a measure of length, which pulls toward height; but a cubit of height is a huge addition rather than the trifle the argument needs, and both classical Greek writers and the Greek Old Testament measure out a lifetime with words for length, as in the psalm that reduces a life to a handbreadth. The immediate context is anxiety about food, drink and clothing, that is, about staying alive.
- majorityThe word names the span of a person's life, so the saying is that worry cannot add even a little to one's allotted time. This is the reading of most recent commentators and of most modern English versions.; BDAG, s.v. ἡλικία; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (ICC, 1988), on Matthew 6:27; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Hermeneia, rev. ed. 2007), on Matthew 6:25-34
- minorityThe word names bodily height, so the saying is that worry cannot make a person taller. This keeps the ordinary force of the cubit as a measure of length and matches the sense the word plainly carries in Luke 19:3; it lies behind the older English rendering "stature".; LSJ, s.v. ἡλικία
Whether the word in Luke 12:25 names the span of a person's life or bodily height. The saying asks who can add a cubit to it by worrying, and a cubit is a measure of length. The decisive contextual datum is Luke 12:26, which describes the feat as not even the least of things: an added cubit of height would be a striking transformation, whereas a small increment of lifetime fits the argument from the lesser to the greater. Against that stands the fact that the noun unambiguously denotes bodily height at Luke 19:3, in the same Gospel.
- majorityThe word names the span of a person's life, so worry cannot lengthen one's allotted time. Most recent commentators and most modern versions read it this way.; BDAG, s.v. ἡλικία; I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (New International Greek Testament Commentary, 1978), on Luke 12:25
- minorityThe word names bodily height, so worry cannot make a person taller. This preserves the spatial force of the cubit and the sense the noun carries elsewhere in Luke, and it is the reading behind the older English "stature".; LSJ, s.v. ἡλικία