What Does Job 35:9 Mean?
Because of the multitude of the pressed, they cry out; they call for deliverance from the arm of the mighty.
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
By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.THE KEY
English repeats “cry,” but Hebrew first says oppression makes people cry out, then uses a different verb for their plea for help against the mighty arm.
THE MEANING
Repeated oppression drives people into audible distress, and the verse names the powerful arm as the force they cry out against. Their cries bear witness to what is being done to them now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the claim that the oppressed cry because they are weak or overreacting; it names repeated oppression and the mighty arm as the cause.
THE ROOT
עֲשׁוּקִים
ʿashuqim
GROWS FROM
עשק
To oppress, exploit, or extort through coercion.
“the pressed” in this verse is ʿashuqim. This root names coercive treatment, not merely a feeling of hardship. Here, the many acts of oppression are the force that produces the cry.
ALSO GROWS
ʿosheq: Oppression or extortion
עֹשֶׁק
This noun names the coercive pressure that the verse shows driving people to cry out.
ʿāshaq: To oppress, defraud, or extort
עָשַׁק
The verb makes the oppression an action done to people, not a condition arising from within them.
ʿashuq: An oppressed person
עָשׁוּק
This branch names the person on whom the force falls.
יַזְעִיקוּ
yazʿiqu
GROWS FROM
זעק
To cry aloud or call out urgently; in this form, to cause someone to cry out.
“they cry out” in this verse is yazʿiqu. The first cry is grammatically caused: oppression makes the afflicted cry out. The English wording hides this causative force, making the cry seem like a reaction without naming what produces it.
ALSO GROWS
zaʿaq: To cry out or call urgently
זָעַק
The base verb gives the cry its urgent, voiced quality.
zeʿaqah: A cry or outcry
זְעָקָה
This noun shows the same root naming the outcry itself, a public sound of distress.
יְשַׁוְּעוּ
yeshavveʿu
GROWS FROM
שוע
To cry for aid or appeal for help.
“they call for deliverance from the arm” in this verse is yeshavveʿu. The last cry uses a different root from the first: it is a plea for help. English uses “cry” for both verbs and hides the shift from a cry forced out by oppression to an appeal directed against the mighty arm.
ALSO GROWS
shavaʿ: To call for help
שָׁוַע
This verb names the appeal contained in the oppressed people’s cry.
shavʿah: A cry for help
שַׁוְעָה
This noun makes explicit that the cry is a plea, not only an expression of pain.
THE PATTERN
When people are pressed by unjust power, their cries reveal the force bearing on them.
Now therefore, look, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the pressing with which the Egyptians press upon them.For the ravaging of the poor, for the groaning of the needy, now I rise, says the LORD; I set him in deliverance from the one who puffs at him.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
For he does not despise, nor recoil from, the bowing low of the bent one; he does not hide his face from him, but when he cries out to him, he hears and responds.The last cry in Job and “cried” in this psalm are forms of the Hebrew root שוע (shavaʿ), meaning to cry for help. Job shows the plea rising under the mighty arm; the psalm gives that same kind of cry a hearer.
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