What Does Job 10:3 Mean?
Is it good for you that you press, that you cast off the toil of your hands, and shine upon the plan of the wicked?
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
Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?THE KEY
Job’s sharpest question is that the oppressor and the maker are the same: how can God despise the toil of his own hands while shining on wicked counsel?
THE MEANING
The verse holds an unsoftened question before God: how can the one whose hands made you oppress you, despise the toil of those hands, and shine upon wicked counsel? It leaves the contradiction exposed instead of explaining it away. Your suffering is voiced as a demand for moral coherence from the source of your making.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that power makes its actions good by definition: the verse asks God directly whether oppression can be good to the one who does it.
THE ROOT
תַעֲשֹׁק
taʿashoq
GROWS FROM
עשק
To oppress, exploit, or deprive someone of what is theirs.
“press” in this verse is taʿashoq. This root frames Job’s pain as injustice and deprivation. Its related noun names oppression itself, so his question asks whether God is aligned with what the language calls exploitation.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāshaq: To oppress or defraud
עָשַׁק
This verb shares the root of the word Job uses for what is being done to him.
ʿōsheq: Oppression or extortion
עֹשֶׁק
The related noun makes the act Job names a recognizable form of injustice.
ʿāshūq: Oppressed or defrauded
עָשׁוּק
This form names the person left bearing the effects of the act.
יְגִיעַ
yegiaʿ
GROWS FROM
יגע
To labor, toil, or grow weary.
The Hebrew word rendered “work” carries the sense of toil and exertion. Job makes that effort part of his charge: the hands’ own labor seems despised by the one whose hands did it.
ALSO GROWS
yāgaʿ: To labor or toil
יָגַע
This verb shows the exertion carried in the noun rendered “work.”
yāgēaʿ: Weary or exhausted
יָגֵעַ
This related form connects labor with the weariness it can leave behind.
עֲצַת
ʿatsat
GROWS FROM
יעץ
To advise, consult, or counsel.
“counsel” in this verse is ʿatsat. The word points to advice or a considered plan, not merely an accidental wrong. Set beside the image of shining upon it, Job asks whether divine attention appears to illuminate wicked plans while the maker’s own handiwork suffers.
ALSO GROWS
yāʿaṣ: To advise or counsel
יָעַץ
The verb shows the action behind the counsel named in Job’s question.
yōʿēṣ: Counselor or adviser
יוֹעֵץ
This related noun names the one who gives the advice, making counsel an intentional human act.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps the maker answerable to the work of the maker’s hands.
But now, LORD, you are our father. We are the clay, and you our potter, and all of us are the work of your hand.The LORD finishes what concerns me; your faithful love, O LORD, endures for the ages; do not let the works of your hands drop.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.THE THREAD
You shall not press your neighbor, nor tear from him; the wage of the hired hand shall not lodge with you all night until the morning.Leviticus uses the same root for “defraud” that Job uses for “oppress.” The shared word makes Job’s question a direct demand that power answer to justice.
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