What Does Job 37:17 Mean?
How your garments grow warm, when he stills the earth by the south wind?
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
How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?THE KEY
The warmth against your body is bound to a change happening across the earth.
THE MEANING
Your garments feel warm as the earth is brought into quiet from the south. You feel the result close to your skin while the process behind it remains a question.
THE ROOT
בְּהַשְׁקִט
behashqit
GROWS FROM
שקט
shaqat
To be quiet, rest, or settle without disturbance.
“stills” in this verse is behashqit. The Hebrew uses a causative form of שקט (shaqat, to quiet): the earth is being made still. The same root can describe the earth already at rest, holding the act of quieting and the state that follows together.
ALSO GROWS
sheqet: Quietness, rest
שֶׁקֶט
This noun carries the root’s settled state, showing that quiet is something the earth can enter.
vattishqot: And it is quiet
וַתִּשְׁקֹט
Isaiah uses this form for the whole earth at rest, echoing Job’s image of the earth being quieted.
THE PATTERN
Wind changes are felt as changes in the world’s waters and in human warmth.
And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark, and God caused a breath to cross over the earth, and the waters settled.He sends out his word and melts them; he causes his breath to blow, and the waters flow.And when you see the south wind breathing, you say, "There will be scorching," and it becomes.THE THREAD
The whole earth rests and is still, and they burst into song.Job uses שקט (shaqat, to quiet) as an action upon the earth; Isaiah uses the same root for the whole earth at rest. Together they show the earth moving from being quieted into inhabiting quiet.
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