What Does Job 15:8 Mean?
Have you heard within the intimate circle of God? And do you cut short wisdom for yourself?
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
Hast thou heard the secret of God? and dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself?THE KEY
The verse treats private control of wisdom as subtraction: the Hebrew word translated “restrain” means to diminish or take away.
THE MEANING
The question reaches you when certainty claims private access to God’s counsel. The verb translated “restrain” pictures diminishing or taking away, pressing on the contradiction between hearing wisdom and treating it as yours alone to ration.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Hearing something of God does not make you the owner or gatekeeper of wisdom.
THE ROOT
תִּגְרַע
tigrāʿ
GROWS FROM
גרע
To diminish, subtract, or take away.
“cut short” in this verse is tigrāʿ. The verb behind “restrain” carries the sense of making something less or withholding it. The question sharpens into a challenge: does keeping wisdom to yourself diminish what you claim to have heard?
ALSO GROWS
garaʿ: Diminish or take away.
גָּרַע
This basic verb form makes the subtraction within “restrain” visible.
nigraʿ: Be held back or left out.
נִגְרַע
This form shows the same root describing what is withheld or missing.
תִּשְׁמָע
tishmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, or heed.
The same root gives Hebrew words for both the hearer and what is heard. The question places hearing before any claim of ownership: counsel is received, not made by the one who hears it.
ALSO GROWS
shomeaʿ: One who hears or listens.
שֹׁמֵעַ
The hearer belongs to the same root family as the act of hearing in the verse.
shemuʿah: A report or news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
What is heard can become a report carried onward, rather than remaining a private possession.
חָכְמָה
ḥokhmāh
GROWS FROM
חכם
To be wise or skillful.
Wisdom shares its consonants with the word for a wise person and the verb “to be wise.” The root presents wisdom as a quality expressed in a person, not merely a store of information to claim as property.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākhām: A wise or skillful person.
חָכָם
The wise person and wisdom grow from the same consonantal family.
ḥākham: To be wise or act wisely.
חָכַם
The verb connects wisdom with the way a person sees and acts.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom is given and disclosed by God, so no person can claim it as private property.
For the LORD gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and discernment.But if any of you is left behind in wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all without doubling and without taunting, and it will be given him.But God unveiled them to us through his breath, for the breath searches all things, even the depths of God.THE THREAD
For the Lord GOD does nothing, unless he uncovers his secret to his servants the prophets.Both verses use סוֹד (sod) for confidential counsel. Job’s question challenges the claim to possess that counsel privately; Amos shows the same counsel being disclosed.
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