What Does Job 6:25 Mean?
How forceful are straight words! But what does your reproof reprove?
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 forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove?THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one root for “arguing” and “reprove,” asking whether your correction can actually prove its charge.
THE MEANING
Straight words carry force because they hold to what is true, not because they are loud or harsh. The verse asks what a rebuke actually establishes about the person it targets. Correction can sound certain and still fail to prove its case.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A forceful rebuke is not automatically a true one; severity alone does not establish the charge.
THE ROOT
יוֹכִיחַ
yôkîaḥ
GROWS FROM
יכח
To prove, decide a case, correct, or rebuke.
“reprove” in this verse is yôkîaḥ. Job places two forms of יכח (y-kh-ch) together: what does your reproof prove? The shared root links correction with establishing a case, but a rebuke does not prove its own accusation just by being spoken.
ALSO GROWS
tôḵēḥāh: Rebuke or reproof.
תּוֹכֵחָה
This noun comes from the same root as the reproof in Job’s question.
nivvākheḥāh: Let us reason together or settle the matter together.
נִוָּכְחָה
Isaiah uses this form of the same root in an invitation to reason together, showing that יכח can describe a shared examination, not only an accusation.
יֹשֶׁר
yōsher
GROWS FROM
ישר
To be straight, level, or upright.
“straight” in this verse is yōsher. The Hebrew phrase means “words of straightness.” Their force comes from staying true to the line, giving the verse a clear measure for speech and correction alike.
ALSO GROWS
yāshār: Straight or upright.
יָשָׁר
This adjective makes explicit the root’s image of straightness behind “right words.”
mîshôr: A level place or plain.
מִישׁוֹר
This branch keeps the root’s concrete image of a level, unbent course.
THE PATTERN
Speech carries weight through truth, and correction earns trust by what it can actually establish.
All the words of my mouth are in alignment; nothing in them is crooked or twisted.Do not judge by what the eye sees, but judge the judgment of alignment.Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.THE THREAD
Come now, and let us lay it out together, says the LORD. Though your falling short be as scarlet, it shall be whitened as snow. Though it be red like crimson, it shall be as wool.“Reason together” translates נִוָּכְחָה (nivvākheḥāh), from the same root יכח as Job’s “arguing” and “reprove.” The shared root connects rebuke with bringing a matter into the open and examining what is true.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us