What Does Job 9:5 Mean?
Who removes the mountains, and they do not perceive; who overturns them in the burning of his anger.
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
Which removeth the mountains, and they know not: which overturneth them in his anger.THE KEY
The mountain does not even know it is being moved before it is overturned in anger.
THE MEANING
What you experience as fixed is not beyond God’s reach: the mountains are moved without perceiving it, then overturned in anger. The verse leaves the violence of that upheaval fully in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what is massive and established is secure from disruption is undone: the mountains do not know they are being moved.
THE ROOT
הַמַּעְתִּיק
hammaʿtiq
GROWS FROM
עתק
ʿ-t-q
Move or shift from a place; in another verb form, transfer or copy.
“removeth” in this verse is hammaʿtiq. The mountain is displaced from its place, and the same root can describe words copied from one place to another. The shared seed carries the sense of something being transferred.
ALSO GROWS
yeʿtaq: A rock is removed from its place.
יֶעְתַּק
The same root describes a solid thing displaced from where it stands.
heʿtiqu: Words are copied or transferred into another place.
הֶעְתִּיקוּ
The root also applies to words carried from one location into another, extending the image of transfer beyond physical objects.
יָדָעוּ
yadeʿu
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
Know or perceive through encounter and recognition.
“they do not perceive” in this verse is yadeʿu. The mountains are moved without perceiving what is happening to them. The root can also describe knowing through intimate or attentive encounter, giving their unknowing a striking depth.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: Adam knew Eve, a word for intimate encounter.
יָדַע
This branch shows that ידע can name knowing through direct relationship, not only possession of information.
yadaʿti: God says, “I know their sorrows.”
יָדַעְתִּי
Here knowing reaches into another’s lived suffering; Job’s mountains are moved without perceiving their own upheaval.
הֲפָכָם
haphakham
GROWS FROM
הפך
h-p-k
Turn, turn over, or reverse.
“overturneth” in this verse is haphakham. הפך names the act of turning itself. Its branches range from overturning cities to turning a curse into blessing, while Job’s surrounding words make this turn a violent upheaval in anger.
ALSO GROWS
wayyahaphokh: God overthrows the cities.
וַיַּהֲפֹךְ
The same root gives Job’s overturning its force as a concrete act of upheaval.
wayyahaphokh: The LORD turns a curse into a blessing.
וַיַּהֲפֹךְ
The root holds the action of reversal; the surrounding words determine its outcome.
THE PATTERN
Mountains do not possess permanence: divine action can remove, carry, or lower them.
And surely the mountain falls and melts, and the rock is moved from its place.Therefore we do not fear, though the earth shifts, and though the mountains totter into the heart of the sea.Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.THE THREAD
And surely the mountain falls and melts, and the rock is moved from its place.Job uses the same root, עתק, for the rock that “is removed out of his place.” That shared word makes the mountain’s movement concrete: it is shifted from the place where it stands.
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