What Does Job 13:27 Mean?
You set my feet in the stocks, and you keep watch over all my paths. On the roots of my feet you carve.
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
Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet.THE KEY
The feet are not only stopped; the paths and footprints are kept under watch, so the confinement reaches every movement.
THE MEANING
Here the verse names what it is to be held in place while every route is watched and each footprint marked. The pressure is not only immobility; it is having no movement beyond the watcher’s notice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being watched necessarily feels like being cared for: attention can also be experienced as confinement.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׁמֹר
tishmor
GROWS FROM
שׁמר
sh-m-r
guard, keep, watch
“keep watch over” in this verse is tishmor. The word translated “lookest narrowly” comes from שׁמר (shamar), meaning “guard, keep, watch.” With the feet in stocks and the paths under watch, keeping takes on the feel of custody: the same attention that can preserve can also confine.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: keeper, watchman
שֹׁמֵר
The watchman branch makes the active, vigilant quality of the watching visible.
mishmeret: guard, charge, custody
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch brings out the sense of being held under watch, which sharpens the verse’s image of restraint.
THE PATTERN
When every step is watched and counted, attention can feel like restraint.
For now you count my steps. Do you not keep watch over my falling short?You winnow my path and my lying down, and you are accustomed to all my ways.For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he levels all his paths.THE THREAD
For now you count my steps. Do you not keep watch over my falling short?Job 14:16 repeats שׁמר (shamar, “guard, keep, watch”) beside counted steps. The watch reaches from Job’s paths to his sin, making the scrutiny feel less like a passing look and more like a life tracked in detail.
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