What Does Job 7:20 Mean?
I miss the mark. What shall I do to you, O watcher of humankind? Why have you set me as your target, so that I am a load to myself?
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
I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?THE KEY
Job’s confession of missing sits beside a sharper charge: the one he calls humanity’s keeper has made him the place where force lands.
THE MEANING
You can admit a real failure and still ask why pain makes you feel singled out. The one called the keeper of humanity is experienced here as making the speaker a target, until he feels like a burden to himself. Confession and protest stand together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that admitting your wrong removes your right to protest what is happening to you.
THE ROOT
מִפְגָּע
mifga
GROWS FROM
פגע
p-g-ʿ
to meet or encounter; in some forms, to strike or intercede
“target” in this verse is mifga. The noun for “mark” grows from a root that can describe meeting, striking, or interceding. Job feels placed where force meets him, while the same root can describe someone meeting others on their behalf, a hinge English hides.
ALSO GROWS
paga: meet, encounter, reach; sometimes strike or fall upon
פָּגַע
The target is the point where an encounter or force reaches someone.
hipgi'a: intercede, cause to meet, or make an appeal
הִפְגִּיעַ
The same root can describe meeting someone on behalf of another, as in Isaiah 53:12.
נֹצֵר
notzer
GROWS FROM
נצר
n-ts-r
to guard, keep, or watch over
“watcher” in this verse is notzer. This address names God as one actively watching and keeping humanity. That makes Job’s question cut sharply: the keeper is experienced as the one who sets him in the path of harm.
ALSO GROWS
natsar: guard, watch, keep, or preserve
נָצַר
The verb names the active keeping contained in Job’s address.
netzurei: preserved ones, those kept
נְצוּרֵי
The root can name both the keeper and those who are kept, making Job’s experience of being targeted especially stark.
חָטָאתִי
chatati
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
to miss, miss the mark, or fail to reach
“I miss the mark” in this verse is chatati. The confession can be heard as “I have missed,” naming a failure to reach what is true or required. That admission does not answer Job’s next question: it sits beside, rather than dissolves, his complaint that he has been made a target.
ALSO GROWS
chet: missing, failure, or wrongdoing
חֵטְא
This noun carries the same “missing” sense into the confession Job makes.
chatta't: missing or sin; in ritual use, an offering for the missing
חַטָּאת
The root links the condition of missing with the language of what addresses it.
THE PATTERN
Lament names affliction as something aimed at a person or pressing beyond that person’s strength.
I have been at rest, and he has crushed me. He has seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces. He has set me up as his target.He bends his bow and sets me as a target for the arrow.For we would not have you unaware, brothers, of the pressure that came to us in Asia, that we were weighed down beyond measure, beyond strength, so that we were without a way through, even to live.THE THREAD
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the plunder with the strong, because he poured out his living soul to death, and was counted with the rebels. He carried the falling short of many, and for the rebels he stepped in.Job’s word for “mark” (מִפְגָּע, mifga) and Isaiah’s “made intercession” share the root פגע (paga), which can carry the senses of encounter, strike, and intercede. Job feels placed where force meets him; Isaiah uses the same root for one who meets transgressors on their behalf.
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