What Does Job 18:7 Mean?
The steps of his strength are narrowed, and his own counsel throws him down.
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
The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall cast him down.THE KEY
His own counsel is not merely inadequate; it becomes the force that throws him down.
THE MEANING
Your footing narrows, and the counsel that belongs to you becomes what throws you down. The collapse comes through the very plan you call your own.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that advice is trustworthy simply because it is your own; the verse shows self-owned counsel becoming the instrument of collapse.
THE ROOT
יֵצַר
yēṣar
GROWS FROM
צרר
tsarar
to bind, press in, or constrict
“narrowed” in this verse is yēṣar. The Hebrew makes the steps themselves the object of narrowing: movement remains, but room to move is squeezed away. צָרָה (tsarah, distress) grows from the same root, letting constriction and trouble share a word-family.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: narrow, tight
צַר
It gives the narrowing of the steps the feel of a confined path.
tsarah: distress, trouble
צָרָה
It links the image of being pressed in with the experience of trouble.
עֲצָתוֹ
ʿatsato
GROWS FROM
יעץ
yaʿats
to advise or deliberate
Counsel here is a formed plan that belongs to him. Because this is the noun that acts in the next clause, his own direction becomes the agent of his fall.
ALSO GROWS
ʿetsah: counsel, advice, plan
עֵצָה
It names the plan that belongs to him and participates in his downfall.
yoʿets: counselor, adviser
יוֹעֵץ
It shows the same root moving from the counsel itself to the one who gives it.
וְתַשְׁלִיכֵהוּ
vetashlikhehu
GROWS FROM
שלך
shalakh
to throw or cast
“throws him down” in this verse is vetashlikhehu. The verb makes the collapse concrete: he is thrown down, not simply slowed. This is שׁלך (shalakh, throw), whose final letter differs from שלח (shalach, send or release).
ALSO GROWS
shalakh: to throw, cast
שָׁלַךְ
It names the action that his own counsel performs against him.
hishlikh: to throw, cast away
הִשְׁלִיךְ
This related form keeps the image of a forceful casting rather than a gradual loss of footing.
THE PATTERN
A person’s own course can return as the force that carries them toward their fall.
He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the shrewd is hurried headlong.His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
When you walk, your steps are not narrowed; and if you run, you do not stumble.The same Hebrew pairing appears here: יֵצַר (yēṣar, narrows) with צַעֲדִים (tsaʿadim, steps). Job describes the steps as narrowing; Proverbs pictures steps with room to continue, making the pressure in Job’s line easier to hear.
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