What Does Job 15:10 Mean?
Among us are both the gray-haired and the aged, greater in days than your father.
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
With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father.THE KEY
The verse measures elderhood in surplus days, while leaving the authority those years claim open to question.
THE MEANING
You hear a claim grounded in elapsed time: the men among the speaker’s circle have more days than your father. Their years carry weight in the room, but the verse does not say that greater age guarantees sound judgment.
THE ROOT
כַּבִּיר
kabbir
GROWS FROM
כ־ב־ר
To be great, numerous, or abundant.
“greater in days” in this verse is kabbir. The Hebrew describes these men as abundant in days beyond your father; the KJV condenses that measure into “much elder.” Their age is presented as accumulated quantity, which lends the claim weight without proving its judgment.
ALSO GROWS
kĕvar: Already; long since.
כְּבָר
This related form carries the sense of time having elapsed, echoing the verse’s appeal to years accumulated.
kabbir: Great, mighty, abundant.
כַּבִּיר
Here that abundance is measured in days: the men’s stated distinction is how much life they have lived.
שָׂב
sav
GROWS FROM
שׂ־י־ב
To grow old or become gray.
“grayheaded” in this verse is sav. This word names age through a visible sign: the body carries time in its grayness. The root’s old-age language links the gray-haired person with the condition of age itself.
ALSO GROWS
seivah: Gray hair; old age.
שֵׂיבָה
It names the state of age that the gray-headed person embodies.
sav: An aged or gray-haired person.
שָׂב
The verse invokes the visible bearer of years as part of its appeal to authority.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can honor age while refusing to treat length of life as a guarantee of wise judgment.
Great men are not always wise, nor do the aged understand judgment.Better is a poor and wise child than an old and thick-headed king, who no longer knows how to be warned.Let no one look down on your youth, but become an imprint of the steady ones, in word, in how you walk, in love, in breath, in trust, in cleanness.THE THREAD
A gray head is a crown of splendor, when it is found on the way of alignment.The “hoary head” uses the same Hebrew word family as Job’s “grayheaded.” Proverbs honors that visible age, while tying its crown to a life found in alignment.
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