What Does Job 25:6 Mean?
How much less a frail one, who is a maggot? And the son of man, who is a worm?
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
How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?THE KEY
The Hebrew names humanity as both mortal and ground-born, then sharpens that smallness with two distinct worm images that English gives the same name.
THE MEANING
The verse sets human life at creaturely scale: the mortal and the ground-born are pictured as a maggot and a worm. Beside the preceding image of the moon and stars, this is a stark measure of human frailty before God.
THE ROOT
אֱנוֹשׁ
ʾenosh
GROWS FROM
אנש
ʾ-n-sh
to be weak, sick, or frail
“a frail one” in this verse is ʾenosh. ʾEnosh names the human as mortal, and its root also speaks of sickness or weakness. The parallel names human life from inside its frailty.
ALSO GROWS
ʾanash: to be weak, sick, or incurably ill
אָנַשׁ
This verb shares the root’s language of vulnerability with the word for mortal human.
ʾenushah: a severe or incurable wound or sickness
אֱנוּשָׁה
The branch makes the root’s association with human frailty more visible.
בֶּן־אָדָם
ben-adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
ground or soil; earth-born
“son of man” in this verse is ben-adam. Ben-adam names humanity through the ground beneath it: the human is a child of soil. The verse’s first worm, רִמָּה (rimmah, maggot), and second, תּוֹלֵעָה (toleʿah, worm), sharpen the image; English gives both the same name.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
This branch makes the earth-born sense within ben-adam audible.
adam: a human being
אָדָם
The phrase son of adam identifies the person as belonging to the ground-born human family.
THE PATTERN
Scripture measures human life through its creaturely limits: mortality, dust, and decay.
Man, born of a woman, is short of days and full of trembling.All go to one place; all come from the dust, and all turn back to the dust.The first human is of the ground, made of dust; the second human is the Lord from the heavens.THE THREAD
But I am a worm and not a man; the scorn of humankind, despised by the people.Job’s second image, תּוֹלֵעָה (toleʿah, worm), and Psalm’s תּוֹלַעַת (tolaʿat, worm) are forms of the same Hebrew word. Psalm puts that shared image in a first-person cry beside “no man,” making Job’s stark measure of human smallness an immediate voice.
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