What Does Job 12:23 Mean?
He multiplies the nations, and makes them perish; he spreads the nations wide, and leads them away.
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
He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.THE KEY
A nation’s growth is no guarantee of security: the root behind “destroyeth” also means to perish or be lost.
THE MEANING
You see nations increase and perish; the verse places both movements under one hand. Expansion does not make a people untouchable, and decline is not outside that hand.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that growth makes a people secure is undone here: increase can coexist with the power to perish.
THE ROOT
וַיְאַבְּדֵם
wayʾabbedēm
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish or be lost; in this causative form, to bring to perishing.
“makes them perish” in this verse is wayʾabbedēm. English “destroyeth” stresses an act done to the nations; אבד also names perishing and being lost. The root holds disappearance inside the reversal: the people who expand can be made to lose their place altogether.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: The basic verb for perishing or being lost.
אָבַד
The nation is brought into the root’s state of loss, a change more final than a fall in rank.
hāʾōvədîm: A form for people who are perishing or lost, used in Isaiah 27:13.
הָאֹבְדִים
The same seed can describe the people themselves as those perishing, making the loss personal, not merely a change in territorial size.
ʾăbaddōn: A noun naming destruction or ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This branch names the outcome toward which Job’s causative verb drives the nations.
THE PATTERN
The rise and fall of public power remain reversible under God’s hand.
The LORD strips, and makes rich; he lays low, and lifts high.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.THE THREAD
He carries away the heart of the heads of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a wilderness where there is no way.The next verse carries the reversal from a nation’s scale to its leaders’ inner direction: their heart is taken, and they wander where there is no way. The loss reaches beyond size; a people can also lose its way.
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