It makes sense when you look at how the numberic for loop looks in Lua.

In Lua you specify the “beginning” and “end” of the iteration, both included. It doesn’t work like in C, where you have an initialization and an invariant. What makes it short in C would make it longer in Lua, and viceversa.

You could argue “why not make loops like C”, then. But that can be extended to the limit: “why have a different language at all?”.