What Does Job 1:15 Mean in the King James?
And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The only survivor is left alone with the task of carrying the catastrophe into Job’s presence.
THE MEANING
This report reaches you in fragments: the Sabeans take the animals, the servants are killed, and one survivor remains to tell Job. Escape does not erase what happened; it leaves the one who got out alone with the telling. The news itself carries the violence into the hearer’s presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the thought that surviving means being untouched by disaster: here the survivor lives on as the witness to those who were killed and taken.
THE ROOT
וָאִמָּלְטָה
wāʾimmālṭāh
GROWS FROM
מלט
m-l-ṭ
To slip away or escape; in a causative form, to bring someone to safety.
“escaped” in this verse is wāʾimmālṭāh. This root can describe both slipping out and bringing someone else out, but here the witness escapes while the servants are struck down. The word names his survival without making it a rescue of everyone; he is left to carry the news.
ALSO GROWS
mālaṭ: Escape, slip free.
מָלַט
This verb form gives escape the sense of getting clear of danger, which is what the lone speaker reports he has done.
millēṭ: Deliver, cause to escape.
מִלֵּט
The causative form can mean bringing someone else out, sharpening the loss in this report: the survivor gets out, while the servants do not.
THE PATTERN
A witness who gets out carries an event across the distance between where it happens and the person who must hear it.
And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram.And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me, saying, The city is smitten.But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed, and went into another place.THE THREAD
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.The Hebrew word translated “escaped” in Job and Psalm 124:7 comes from the same root, מלט (m-l-ṭ), meaning to slip free or escape. The psalm pictures escape from a snare; Job’s verse shows the survivor carrying the report of those left behind.
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