What Does Job 31:11 Mean?
For this is a plotted deed, and it is a crookedness to be judged by the judges.
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 this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges.THE KEY
The verse calls the offense a devised thing, placing what is hidden within reach of judgment.
THE MEANING
The verse names sexual betrayal as a devised offense and places it within the reach of judgment. What is hidden in intention still belongs to the shared moral world.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a hidden scheme escapes judgment simply because it remains hidden.
THE ROOT
זִמָּה
zimmah
GROWS FROM
זמם
To devise, plan, or plot.
“plotted deed” in this verse is zimmah. זִמָּה can name a shameful offense and a wicked design; its connection to זמם holds the act and its formation together. In the surrounding lines, desire and lying in wait are named before this offense is placed under judgment.
ALSO GROWS
zāmam: To devise, plan, or plot.
זָמַם
This verb gives the root action: forming a plan, the shade that illuminates זִמָּה as more than an unspecified wrong.
zomem: One who devises or plots.
זֹמֵם
This form names the one carrying out the root action, keeping the focus on an offense shaped in intention.
THE PATTERN
Concealed intent remains within the reach of moral judgment.
If you say, "Look, we did not know this," does not the one who weighs hearts separate it out? Does not the one who guards your living soul know it? Will he not return to each man according to his deed?But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to crave her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.In the day when God judges the covered things of humans, according to my good news, through Jesus the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Do not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter. Do not take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover their nakedness. They are her flesh. It is a plotted thing.The Hebrew word translated “wickedness” here is זִמָּה (zimmah), the same word rendered “heinous crime” in Job. The shared word connects both passages to the language of sexual wrongdoing and devised offense.
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