What Does Job 5:11 Mean?
He sets the low ones on high, and those who mourn are lifted up to deliverance.
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
To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety.THE KEY
The “mourners” are literally the darkened ones, and the verse names their rising as deliverance.
THE MEANING
The verse gives your present low place no final authority: the lowly are set high, and those dimmed by grief are raised into deliverance. Here, being lifted also means being brought into safety.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that grief or low status means you are stuck beyond help is undone here: the lowly and darkened are the very ones raised into deliverance.
THE ROOT
קֹדְרִים
qoderim
GROWS FROM
קדר
q-d-r
To grow dark or become dusky.
The word rendered “mourn” is a form of “darken”: the grieving ones are described as those cast into dimness. The verse places them among those raised toward safety, so grief describes their present condition, not their final location.
ALSO GROWS
qādar: To grow dark or mourn.
קָדַר
This verb appears in Job 30:28, where the speaker says he goes mourning without the sun.
qāderû: They grew dark.
קָדְרוּ
In Joel 2:10, this form describes the sun and moon darkening, making the image of mourning as dimness concrete.
שָׂגְבוּ
sagvu
GROWS FROM
שגב
s-g-b
To be high or inaccessible; to place in a secure height.
“lifted up” in this verse is sagvu. The word for being exalted belongs to a root that can also describe a high refuge or stronghold. The mourners are not only raised in standing; they are lifted into a place of safety.
ALSO GROWS
misgav: A high place, refuge, or stronghold.
מִשְׂגָּב
This noun shows the protective height carried by the root behind “exalted.”
sagav: To be high, secure, or set on high.
שָׂגַב
This verb makes the verse’s movement upward part of the same word-family as protected height.
יֶשַׁע
yesha
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
To deliver or bring into safety.
“Safety” here is yesha, from the root of deliverance. The verse’s elevation is therefore more than a change in rank: it is being brought out of danger into safety.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver or rescue.
יָשַׁע
The verb expresses the action contained in the safety promised here: being brought out of danger.
yeshuah: Deliverance or rescue.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun shares the root and makes clear why Job’s “safety” carries the sense of deliverance.
THE PATTERN
The low and bowed down are lifted from diminished places into standing and safety.
He raises the bowed one from the dust, and lifts the one in want from the ash heap;He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.THE THREAD
Look, God is my deliverance. I will lean my full weight and not tremble, for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song, and he has become my deliverance.Job’s “safety” (yesha) and Isaiah’s “salvation” (yeshuah) come from the same root, י-ש-ע, meaning deliverance. That shared root reveals the lifted place in Job as deliverance itself.
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