What Does Job 14:17 Mean?
My rebellion is sealed in a bundle, and you sew up 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
My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity.THE KEY
The verse turns rebellion into a sealed parcel, held intact and stitched shut by God.
THE MEANING
You encounter your rebellion as a record bound up and sewn closed by God. The verse gives voice to the fear that what you have done remains secured rather than released.
THE ROOT
חָתוּם
chatum
GROWS FROM
חתם
חתם (chatham): to seal or close with a seal, securing what is inside.
The root shows more than something remembered: what is sealed is closed and kept secure. Beside the bag and stitched seam, the image becomes a preserved charge, enclosed against escape.
ALSO GROWS
chatham: To seal or close with a seal.
חָתַם
The verb names the action that makes the transgression a secured thing.
chotam: A signet or seal.
חוֹתָם
The signet shows that sealing can mark and secure something as held in keeping.
פִּשְׁעִי
pish'i
GROWS FROM
פשע
פשע (pasha): rebellion, breaking away.
English transgression can sound like an abstract violation; פֶּשַׁע (pesha, rebellion or breaking away) carries the sense of rupture. The verse gives that rupture a concrete form: something bound up and sewn closed.
ALSO GROWS
pasha: To rebel or break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verb gives the action held inside the sealed parcel.
posh'im: Rebels.
פֹּשְׁעִים
This form names those who enact the breaking away expressed by the word in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Transgression can be pictured as a kept record, while other passages picture it as covered, blotted out, or taken away.
Is this not laid up with me, sealed up among my storehouses?I, even I, I AM, the one who wipes away your rebellion for my own sake, and I will not remember your missed marks.Wiping away the handwriting of decrees against us, which stood opposite us, and lifting it out of the midst, nailing it to the cross.THE THREAD
Is this not laid up with me, sealed up among my storehouses?The same Hebrew root חתום (chatham, to seal) appears here: what is sealed is laid up among God’s treasures. That sharpens Job’s image, because sealing can mean keeping a charge intact rather than releasing it.
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