What Does Job 22:6 Mean?
For you bind your brother as a pledge for nothing, and strip the naked of their garments.
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
For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “clothing” echoes the word for “betrayal,” making the injustice visible in the exposed body.
THE MEANING
This verse names the bodily cost hidden inside a claim: taking a pledge without cause can leave a brother exposed. When the vulnerable lose what covers them, a transaction becomes a breach between people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A pledge is only property, so the naked person’s exposure is someone else’s problem.
THE ROOT
בִּגְדֵי
bigdei
GROWS FROM
בגד
Garment; the same consonants also form a verb for acting treacherously or betraying.
“their garments” in this verse is bigdei. The word for clothing, beged, shares its consonants with bagad, “to betray.” The echo joins the loss of a covering with a breach of trust: the brother is left exposed by the very act named here.
ALSO GROWS
beged: Garment, clothing
בֶּגֶד
This is the covering taken from the naked person.
bagad: Act treacherously, betray
בָּגַד
The shared consonants make the taking sound like a betrayal, not merely a transfer of property.
חָבַלְתָּ
ḥāḇaltā
GROWS FROM
חבל
Take as a pledge or bind as security; related usage also carries the sense of injury or harm.
“bind your brother as a pledge” in this verse is ḥāḇaltā. The pledge binds a person’s property to a claim, and the next phrase shows that claim reaching the body itself. The verse exposes the harm that can hide inside the language of security.
ALSO GROWS
ḥeḇel: Cord, line, or measured portion
חֶבֶל
The related cord imagery brings out how a pledge can bind property to a creditor’s claim.
ḥāḇal: Injure or damage in related usage
חָבַל
This harm sense resonates with the bodily exposure described in the verse.
חִנָּם
ḥinnām
GROWS FROM
חנן
Show favor or give freely; the adverbial form can mean freely, without payment, or without cause.
“for nothing” in this verse is ḥinnām. “For nought” names a taking without cause. Its word family also includes favor freely given, sharpening the contrast between extending favor and extracting a pledge.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēn: Favor
חֵן
The related word for favor sets freely given kindness beside the baseless taking described here.
ḥānan: Show favor, be gracious
חָנַן
The root carries the possibility of giving freely, while this verse describes a claim made without cause.
THE PATTERN
A claim over another person’s property does not erase the bodily need for covering.
If you ever bind your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall turn back to him what you bound by the time the sun goes down.You shall surely turn back to him the pledge as the sun goes in, so that he may lie down in his own cloak and bless you; and it is your alignment before the LORD your God.If a brother or sister is naked, and left without the nourishment of the day, And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?THE THREAD
Then the Adversary answered the LORD, and said, Is Job in awe of God for nothing?Both verses use חִנָּם (ḥinnām), “for nought” or “without cause.” One asks whether Job’s reverence is without payment; here the word marks a supposedly baseless taking, tying motive and cause together across the book.
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