What Does Job 15:3 Mean?
Should he reason with words that cannot stand, or with speeches that profit nothing?
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
Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?THE KEY
The question’s sting is that an argument can sound like reasoning while producing no profit at all.
THE MEANING
This question presses on the words reaching you now: reasoning can continue while giving no one anything useful. The verse measures speech by whether it benefits, not by whether it fills the air or sounds like an argument. It leaves open the difference between speaking and doing good.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A forceful or elaborate argument must be useful simply because it is an argument.
THE ROOT
יוֹעִיל
yôʿîl
GROWS FROM
יעל
y-ʿ-l
Be useful, benefit, or avail.
“profit nothing” in this verse is yôʿîl. The line asks whether these words actually yield benefit, not whether they sound persuasive. Its first half uses יִסְכּוֹן (yiskōn, be useful or profitable), a different root, so the parallel tests the speech twice with distinct words for usefulness.
ALSO GROWS
hôʿîl: Benefit; be of use.
הוֹעִיל
This verbal form makes usefulness an effect something can have, not a quality claimed for it.
tôʿelet: Benefit; usefulness.
תּוֹעֶלֶת
This related noun names the practical value that the verse asks speech to produce.
הוֹכֵחַ
hôḵēaḥ
GROWS FROM
יכח
y-kh-ḥ
Prove, decide, or argue; the root also carries the sense of reproof.
The word translated “reason” belongs to the language of making or testing a case. The question therefore reaches beyond whether someone is speaking: it asks whether the argument establishes anything that helps.
ALSO GROWS
hôḵîaḥ: Prove, show, or reprove.
הוֹכִיחַ
This verbal branch gives the argument its force as a case being presented or tested.
tôḵēḥāh: Reproof or correction.
תּוֹכֵחָה
This noun shows that argument can aim to correct, while the verse asks whether it accomplishes any good.
THE PATTERN
Speech shows its worth by the effect it has on those who hear it.
There is one who blurts like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is healing.All things are open to me, but not all things bring together. All things are open to me, but not all things build up.Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but whatever is good for building up where there is need, that it may give favor to those who hear.THE THREAD
Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the LORD, and who recount them, and lead my people to wander by their lies and by their wonders. Yet I did not send them, nor command them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all, says the LORD.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew verb יוֹעִיל (yôʿîl, benefit or be of use): these words “shall not profit this people at all.” The shared root makes Job’s test concrete: speech is measured by whether it gives its hearers any benefit.
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