What Does Job 24:12 Mean?
The dying groan from the city, and the living soul of the pierced cries out; yet God does not set folly upon them.
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
Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.THE KEY
The wounded person cries with their whole living self, and the verse does not call that suffering folly.
THE MEANING
The groaning and the wounded person’s cry remain audible in the verse; pain is not hidden or made respectable. God does not lay folly to them, yet the verse gives no explanation of their suffering or its relief.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that suffering itself proves God has charged the sufferer with folly.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nefesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
The living self: a person, creature, or life.
“living soul” in this verse is nefesh. English “soul” can sound like an invisible part separated from the body, but nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ, the living self) names the person who is alive. The wounded person’s whole life cries out; the verse keeps the pain personal and embodied.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living being, person, or life.
נֶפֶשׁ
Here the cry belongs to a wounded living person, not to an abstract part of them.
naphash: To be refreshed or find rest.
נָפַשׁ
The same root also names refreshment, bringing the possibility of relief into view for the very life that groans.
תְּשַׁוֵּעַ
teshavea
GROWS FROM
ש־ו־ע
To cry out for help; to appeal.
“crieth out” in this verse is teshavea. This is an appeal, not merely a sound. The verse lets the wounded person’s plea stand while leaving its answer unresolved.
ALSO GROWS
shava: To cry out for help.
שָׁוַע
It shares the appeal carried by the wounded person’s cry here.
shav'ah: A cry or plea for help.
שַׁוְעָה
This noun makes clear that the cry carries a request for aid, even though this verse does not say what follows.
THE PATTERN
The groaning of the harmed is a real cry that scripture records without disguising its pain.
And in those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel groaned from the labor, and they cried out, and their outcry rose up to God from the labor.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
In my narrow place I call out to the LORD, and I cry out to my God. From his temple he hears and answers my voice, and my cry comes into his ears.The Hebrew verb translated “cried” here comes from the same root שוע (shava, cry out for help) as “crieth out” in Job. Psalm 18:6 says the cry is heard; Job 24:12 leaves its answer open.
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