What Does Job 33:9 Mean?
I am pure without rebellion, I am clean, and there is no crookedness in me.
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
I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me.THE KEY
The word behind “transgression” means rebellion, so Job is claiming not just cleanness but no breakaway at all.
THE MEANING
You hear an absolute self-claim: clean, without rebellion, innocent, with no crookedness within. The verse lets the whole claim stand in its full force, with no category of fault admitted.
THE ROOT
פֶּשַׁע
peshaʿ
GROWS FROM
פשע
To rebel or break away; as a noun, rebellion or breach.
“rebellion” in this verse is peshaʿ. The word translated “transgression” belongs to a root whose verbal sense is to rebel. Job therefore denies more than an unspecified fault: he denies breaking away at all.
ALSO GROWS
pāshaʿ: To rebel, break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verb makes the root’s force explicit: the claim is that no rebellion is present.
pāshəʿû: They rebelled.
פָּשְׁעוּ
This form appears in Isaiah 1:2, where the same root names a break in allegiance.
טָהוֹר
tahor
GROWS FROM
טהר
To be clean or pure; to cleanse.
“pure” in this verse is tahor. The root family includes both being clean and purification, so the word carries more than a static label. Beside the denial of rebellion, it presents cleanness as the state the speaker claims to inhabit.
ALSO GROWS
ṭihēr: To cleanse or purify.
טִהֵר
The cleansing form shows that this root can name a process as well as a condition.
ṭohorāh: Purity or purification.
טָהֳרָה
This noun keeps the verse’s claim of cleanness within a wider family of purity and cleansing.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes self-declared innocence answerable to God’s judgment and truth.
A Psalm of David. Judge me, O LORD, for I walk in my wholeness, and I lean my full weight upon the LORD; so I do not slip.Who can say, I have cleansed my heart, I am clean of my falling short?If we say that we have no falling short, we lead ourselves off the path, and the truth is not in us.THE THREAD
Hear and respond, O heavens, and bend your ear, O earth, for the LORD has spoken. I have raised children and lifted them high, and they have broken away from me.The same root behind “transgression” appears here as “they have rebelled.” Its force is more specific than a general mistake: it names breaking away, the very thing Job’s claim denies.
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