What Does Job 7:21 Mean?
Why will you not lift my rebellion, and make my crookedness pass over? For now I lie down in the dust, and you seek me at dawn, and I am not.
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
And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.THE KEY
Job’s “pardon” asks for rebellion to be lifted and crookedness to pass away, spoken from the edge of dust.
THE MEANING
You can hear the question in the present: why does my rebellion remain, and why has my crookedness not passed? The plea is sharpened by the certainty of lying in dust and being absent when morning comes. Guilt, divine silence, and mortality stand together without an answer being supplied here.
THE ROOT
פִשְׁעִי
pishʿi
GROWS FROM
פשע
To rebel, break away; rebellion.
The word carries the sense of a breach or breaking away. Job asks for that rebellion to be lifted while the line also names crookedness that can pass away.
ALSO GROWS
pesha: Rebellion, breach, transgression.
פֶּשַׁע
This is the noun in Job’s “my transgression”; it frames the plea as a request concerning a breach, not just a vague feeling of guilt.
poshea: One who rebels; a rebel.
פּוֹשֵׁעַ
The related form names the one associated with the rebellion, keeping the root’s sense of breaking away visible.
תִּשָּׂא
tissa
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or bear.
“lift” in this verse is tissa. The word rendered “pardon” is built from the verb for lifting or carrying. Its image lets release be pictured as rebellion borne away, not simply renamed.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This verb gives Job’s plea its image of transgression being lifted or borne.
massa: A load or burden; also an oracle.
מַשָּׂא
The related noun makes the carrying image concrete: what is lifted can be a weight.
וְתַעֲבִיר
ve-taʿavir
GROWS FROM
עבר
To pass, cross, or cause to pass over.
“make pass over” in this verse is ve-taʿavir. “Take away” carries the sense of making something pass across or beyond. Beside the image of lifting rebellion, Job asks for crookedness to pass out of the way.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavar: To pass or cross over.
עָבַר
The basic verb shows removal as movement from one side to another.
ʿever: The other side; beyond.
עֵבֶר
This related form gives the root a sense of crossing into what lies beyond, echoing the plea for iniquity to pass away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures release as wrong being carried or moved away from the one who bears it.
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.As far as the east is from the west, so far he puts our rebellions from us.Who himself carried our shortcomings in his own body on the tree, that we, dead to shortcomings, might live to alignment; and by his bruises you were healed.THE THREAD
I, even I, I AM, the one who wipes away your rebellion for my own sake, and I will not remember your missed marks.“Transgressions” here is פֶּשַׁע (pesha), the same Hebrew word family as Job’s “my transgression,” carrying the sense of rebellion or breaking away. Job asks why it is not lifted; Isaiah speaks of that same rebellion being blotted out and not remembered.
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