What Does Job 10:14 Mean?
If I miss the mark, you keep watch over me, and you do not clear me from my crookedness.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.THE KEY
A missed mark becomes unbearable when watchfulness never turns into clearing.
THE MEANING
You stand inside the fear that no miss escapes the divine gaze: even a failure feels held in unblinking attention. Being seen brings no relief here; your crookedness remains uncleared.
THE ROOT
חָטָאתִי
chatati
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata
To miss, fall short, or go wrong.
“miss the mark” in this verse is chatati. The opening condition is a missed mark, not just an abstract moral category. The verse traces that miss into sustained attention and the fear of remaining uncleared.
ALSO GROWS
chet: A sin or a missing.
חֵטְא
It keeps the idea of a miss inside the word translated sin.
chote: One who sins or misses.
חוֹטֵא
The same root can name both the miss and the one who misses.
וְשָׁמַרְתָּנִי
veshamartani
GROWS FROM
שמר
shamar
To keep, watch, or guard.
“keep watch over” in this verse is veshamartani. The verb beneath markest carries the sense of keeping watch, an active, sustained attention. In this line, that keeping feels like scrutiny: the miss stays in view.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: A keeper or watchman.
שֹׁמֵר
The watcher image makes the speaker’s sense of being observed concrete.
mishmeret: A watch, charge, or guard duty.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch extends the root’s sense of ongoing attention.
תְּנַקֵּנִי
tenaqqeni
GROWS FROM
נקה
naqah
To be clean, go free, or be cleared of blame.
“clear” in this verse is tenaqqeni. The verb translated acquit also carries the sense of being cleared. The line names a denied release: the speaker feels not only watched, but left uncleared.
ALSO GROWS
naqi: Clean, innocent, or clear of guilt.
נָקִי
It names the state of cleanness the verse says the speaker does not receive.
niqqayon: Cleanness or innocence.
נִקָּיוֹן
This noun makes the missing outcome plain: no cleared state is reached.
THE PATTERN
The divine gaze exposes what remains uncleared.
If you, LORD, mark crookednesses, O Lord, who can stand?For now you count my steps. Do you not keep watch over my falling short?And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
If you, LORD, mark crookednesses, O Lord, who can stand?The verb translated mark in both verses comes from שָׁמַר (shamar, to keep or watch), giving the fear the same root in each place. Psalm 130:3 also names עָוֹן (avon, crookedness) and turns the watched condition into a question: if crookedness stays in view, who can stand?
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