What Does Job 35:6 Mean?
If you miss the mark, what do you do against him? Or if your rebellions multiply, what do you do to 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
If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him?THE KEY
A multiplied rebellion cannot make God less whole; its force is measured in the human lives it reaches.
THE MEANING
Your missing and breaking away do not diminish God or supply something he lacks. Their effects are real, and the next verse locates their harm and benefit among people like you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s worth depends on my conduct, so my rebellion can diminish him or my righteousness can give him something he lacks.
THE ROOT
פְּשָׁעֶיךָ
pešaʿekha
GROWS FROM
פשע
p-š-ʿ
To rebel or break away; rebellion, a breach.
“rebellions” in this verse is pešaʿekha. The word translated “transgressions” carries the image of repeated breakaways. Even when they multiply, they do not injure God; the following verse shows their reach among people.
ALSO GROWS
pāšaʿ: To rebel or break away.
פָּשַׁע
It brings the force of the act into view: multiplication means repeated acts of breaking away.
pešaʿ: Rebellion; a breach.
פֶּשַׁע
It names the break itself, showing why the verse can speak of many transgressions without suggesting that they make God less whole.
תֶּחֱטָא
teḥĕṭāʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss or fall short.
“miss the mark” in this verse is teḥĕṭāʾ. The root opens “sin” as a miss, a failure that does not alter God’s fullness. The verse separates that fact from the consequences the miss can have among people.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, fail, or do wrong.
חָטָא
This verbal form makes “sinnest” an act of missing rather than a force that can diminish God.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A missing or offense; also an offering associated with it.
חַטָּאת
The related noun keeps the same root visible in both the act and the condition named by it.
THE PATTERN
God’s fullness does not rise or fall with human actions, while their consequences reach other people.
If I hungered, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and what fills it.Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, for he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.Your wickedness may harm a man like you, and your alignment may profit the son of man.THE THREAD
Your wickedness may harm a man like you, and your alignment may profit the son of man.Verse 6 says multiplied rebellion does nothing unto God; verse 8 names where human wrongdoing and righteousness have effect. The claim that God is not diminished does not make human choices consequence-free.
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