What Does Job 30:5 Mean?
They are driven out from the midst of men, and shouted after like a thief.
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
They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief;)THE KEY
The verse exposes how exile can manufacture the appearance of guilt: the expelled are pursued as though they were thieves.
THE MEANING
When someone is driven out of human company, the cry after them can make that person appear guilty before anything is proved. Rejection and accusation reinforce each other: the crowd treats the cast-out person as a threat.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being driven out and called after like a thief does not prove that the excluded person is guilty; the accusation can be part of the expulsion.
THE ROOT
גָּרְשׁוּ
gārĕšû
GROWS FROM
גרש
g-r-sh
to drive out, expel, or force away
“driven out” in this verse is gārĕšû. This root names both forced departure and a severed bond: a woman put away from her husband is called a גְּרוּשָׁה (gerushah). The verse’s expulsion is more than movement from one place; it is a rupture of belonging.
ALSO GROWS
gerushah: a divorced or put-away woman
גְּרוּשָׁה
The same root describes someone sent away from a relationship, revealing the relational force carried by being driven out.
vayegaresh: and he drove out
וַיְגָרֶשׁ
This is the same root used when the human is driven out of Eden in Genesis 3:24, linking social expulsion with being placed beyond a boundary.
יָרִיעוּ
yārîʿû
GROWS FROM
רוע
r-w-ʿ
to raise a shout or cry
“shouted” in this verse is yārîʿû. This root can name a shout of alarm or a shout of joy; the sound alone does not tell us what it means. Here, the comparison to a thief makes the crowd’s cry sound like an alarm that marks the expelled as suspect.
ALSO GROWS
teru'ah: a shout, alarm, or signal blast
תְּרוּעָה
This branch shows how a raised cry can gather attention and signal danger, like the pursuit described here.
hari'u: shout for joy
הָרִיעוּ
The same root can carry celebration, showing that the verse’s accusatory force comes from the crowd’s pursuit and comparison, not from the act of shouting alone.
THE PATTERN
Communal rejection can mark someone as alien or suspect and leave them standing outside the group.
I am one turned aside from my brothers, and a foreigner to my mother's sons.They answered and said to him, You were born wholly in shortcomings, and do you teach us? And they cast him out.So let us go out to him, outside the camp, bearing his insult.THE THREAD
So he drove out the man, and he pitched the cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and the flaming sword that turned every way would guard the way of the tree of life.Genesis uses the same root, גרש (garash, drive out), when the human is put outside Eden. In both verses, expulsion places someone beyond a boundary and changes where they can belong.
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