What Does Job 36:22 Mean?
Behold, God sets himself on high by his strength. Who points the way like 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
Behold, God exalteth by his power: who teacheth like him?THE KEY
The power that exalts is also the voice that teaches without rival.
THE MEANING
God’s power exalts, and God’s instruction is beyond comparison. The reader meets an authority whose power and teaching belong together now. The verse asks whose instruction could stand beside that source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that great power and trustworthy teaching must come from different sources: here, exaltation and instruction belong together.
THE ROOT
יַשְׂגִּב
yasgib
GROWS FROM
שׂגב
To be high, inaccessible, or secure; in a causative form, to set high.
“sets himself on high” in this verse is yasgib. The verb יַשְׂגִּב (yasgib, exalts or sets high) comes from שׂגב (sagab, to be high or secure). Its branch מִשְׂגָּב (misgav, high refuge) shows that height can also carry the sense of shelter.
ALSO GROWS
misgav: A high place of refuge
מִשְׂגָּב
This branch joins elevation with security, giving God’s exalting power a shade of protection.
nisgav: Exalted or high
נִשְׂגָּב
This form echoes the verse’s language of exaltation and reveals the height held inside the root.
מוֹרֶה
moreh
GROWS FROM
ירה
To direct or instruct; the root also carries the concrete sense of throwing or shooting.
“points the way” in this verse is moreh. מוֹרֶה (moreh, teacher or one who directs) comes from ירה (yarah, to direct or instruct, also to throw or shoot). תּוֹרָה (torah, instruction) grows from this root too, joining the teacher in Job to instruction as direction.
ALSO GROWS
yarah: To throw, shoot, or direct
יָרָה
The root’s concrete sense of directing illuminates how its teaching form means to instruct.
torah: Instruction
תּוֹרָה
This branch shows the shared root linking the teacher in Job with instruction that gives direction.
THE PATTERN
God’s authority is disclosed through instruction that directs the learner along a way.
Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer, the Set-Apart One of Israel. I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who guides you in the way you walk.It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught by God. Everyone therefore who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.THE THREAD
He sets the bowed ones walking in judgment, and teaches the bowed his way.The Hebrew word rendered “teach” in Psalm 25:9 comes from the same root as “teacheth” here. Psalm 25:9 shows what that instruction does: it guides the learner in a way.
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