What Does Job 31:15 Mean?
Did not he who made me in the belly make him? Did not one set us firm in the womb?
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
Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?THE KEY
The same Maker formed both lives in the womb, so no human life begins beneath another.
THE MEANING
Your life and the life of the person before you share one origin: the same Maker formed both in the womb. The other person’s humanity is no lesser work; the same act of making holds you both.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that another person’s life is a lesser kind of making than your own.
THE ROOT
וַיְכֻנֶּנּוּ
vaykhonennu
GROWS FROM
כון
כּוּן (kun) means to be firm or established; in this form, to establish, prepare, or set in place.
“set firm” in this verse is vaykhonennu. “Fashion” carries the sense of establishing or setting in place. The verse says one Maker establishes “us,” holding both lives within the same act of forming.
ALSO GROWS
kun: To stand firm or be established.
כּוּן
This root connects fashioning with giving something a settled place.
makon: A fixed place or dwelling.
מָכוֹן
The same root can name a place where something is set, adding the sense of being given a place to belong.
nakhon: Something established, ready, or prepared.
נָכוֹן
This branch echoes the verse’s picture of life as deliberately established in the womb.
עֹשֵׂנִי
oseni
GROWS FROM
עשה
עָשָׂה (asah) means to do or make.
The forms עֹשֵׂנִי (oseni, makes me) and עָשָׂהוּ (asahu, made him) come from the same root עשה (asah, do or make). The people change, but the making is shared; the next clause gathers them into “us.”
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: An act, work, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This branch names the work that comes from making, linking the verse’s two lives to one act of creation.
oseh: A person who performs or makes something.
עֹשֶׂה
The verse’s shared Maker is named through the same root as the act of making itself.
THE PATTERN
Every human distinction begins inside a shared act of making by one source.
For you take hold of my kidneys; you weave me in my mother's womb.And God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously, each man against his brother, by piercing the covenant of our fathers?Job’s אֶחָד (echad, one) and Malachi’s אֶחָד (echad, one) link both passages through the same word for one. Malachi makes the shared origin a direct question about how one person treats another.
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