What Does Job 15:18 Mean?
Which the wise have told from their fathers, and have not hidden it.
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
Which wise men have told from their fathers, and have not hid it:THE KEY
Wisdom survives when it is not made to disappear: the verse joins open declaration to the refusal to conceal inherited teaching.
THE MEANING
Here, inherited wisdom is presented as an open chain: the wise speak what they receive from their fathers. The teaching stands before you now as both inherited and openly declared; its continuity is part of the authority it claims.
THE ROOT
כִחֲדוּ
kichadu
GROWS FROM
כחד
kachad
To conceal or keep secret; in causative usage, to make disappear or destroy.
“hidden” in this verse is kichadu. The word translated “hid” belongs to a root that can also describe something disappearing or being cut off. The wise men’s openness is more than candor: what they refuse to conceal is kept from vanishing out of the chain of transmission.
ALSO GROWS
nikhchad: Be cut off, destroyed, or vanish.
נִכְחַד
This branch links concealment with disappearance, making the refusal to hide the teaching a way of keeping it present.
hikhchid: Make disappear or destroy.
הִכְחִיד
The same root can describe causing something to vanish, sharpening the verse’s contrast between concealment and preservation.
יַגִּידוּ
yaggidu
GROWS FROM
נגד
nagad
To be in front or make conspicuous; hence, to declare or make known.
“told” in this verse is yaggidu. יַגִּידוּ (yaggidu, “they declare”) comes from a root whose range includes bringing something into view. Its branch נָגִיד (nāgîd, “leader”) is one who stands before others, so inherited wisdom is pictured as being put before the next generation rather than kept private.
ALSO GROWS
nāgîd: Leader or ruler; one who stands before others.
נָגִיד
The shared root connects declaring something to the act of standing before people.
neged: In front of, or opposite.
נֶגֶד
This spatial branch echoes the verse’s image of teaching being brought into view for others.
THE PATTERN
A teaching travels through time when one generation openly speaks what it received to the next.
Remember the days of the ages; sift the years of generation upon generation. Ask your father, and he will show you; your bearded ones, and they will say to you.We will not hide them from their children, recounting to the generation that follows the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonders that he has done.And these things you heard from me among many witnesses, place beside steady people who will be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.Psalm 19 uses מַגִּיד (maggid, “declares”), from נגד (nagad, “make known”), the same root as Job’s יַגִּידוּ (yaggidu, “they declare”). Job pictures wisdom passed openly from one generation to another; Psalm 19 extends that declaring into the heavens themselves.
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