What Does Job 34:13 Mean?
Who appoints him a charge over the earth? Who sets the whole world upon him?
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
Who hath given him a charge over the earth? or who hath disposed the whole world?THE KEY
The one whose charge is the whole earth is not himself appointed by anyone.
THE MEANING
This question speaks now by removing any higher authority as the source of God’s place over the earth. The world is not handed to God by another power; no one stands above him to set the whole in order. Its governance has no external appointing hand.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that God’s authority is delegated by a higher power that governs him.
THE ROOT
פָּקַד
paqad
GROWS FROM
פקד
paqad
To attend to, take account of, oversee, or appoint.
“appoints” in this verse is paqad. This root can describe both attending to someone and appointing oversight. Here, “charge” carries the sense of entrusted attention to the earth, while the question denies that anyone places God in that office.
ALSO GROWS
paqîd: An officer or overseer.
פָּקִיד
The overseer is one appointed to attend to a charge, making the root’s link between attention and authority visible.
pequddah: An appointment, charge, or oversight.
פְּקֻדָּה
This noun names the entrusted responsibility that the verse asks whether anyone gave God.
THE PATTERN
The earth’s order and God’s authority do not come from an authority above him.
A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.Who has marked out the Spirit of the LORD, or, as his counselor, makes him know?For from him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him let there be glory to the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
What is a frail one that you remember him, and the son of man that you visit him?The Hebrew פקד (paqad, “attend to or oversee”) root in Job’s “charge” also appears in “visitest” here. The same root joins God’s regard for one person with his oversight of the earth.
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