What Does Job 10:5 Mean in the King James?
Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man’s days,
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 verse uses two different words for “man”, enosh, the mortal, and gever, the strong one, so neither human frailty nor human power can set the measure of God’s time.
THE MEANING
Your life unfolds in numbered days and passing years; the verse places that human measure beside the One you address. It asks whether the same clock holds both mortal weakness and human strength. The question lets the distance between those measures remain open.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that God’s time must run on the same short clock as yours.
THE ROOT
אֱנוֹשׁ
enosh
GROWS FROM
אנשׁ
ʾ-n-š
Be weak or incurably ill; as a noun, a mortal human.
The first “man” is enosh, a mortal whose word shares its root with language for weakness and incurable sickness. English hides that note of fragility inside the ordinary word “man.”
ALSO GROWS
anash: Be weak, sick, or incurably ill.
אָנַשׁ
This verb makes vulnerability part of the word-family behind the mortal human.
enosh: A mortal human.
אֱנוֹשׁ
This is the verse’s first measure of human life: days bounded by mortality.
גֶּבֶר
gever
GROWS FROM
גבר
g-b-r
Be strong or prevail.
The second “man” is gever, a human named with a word-family of strength and prevailing. Hebrew places the mortal enosh beside the strong gever: neither human condition measures God’s years.
ALSO GROWS
gavar: Be strong or prevail.
גָּבַר
The verb shows the force carried by the root behind gever.
gibbor: A mighty one or warrior.
גִּבּוֹר
This branch makes the root’s strength unmistakable, sharpening the contrast with enosh.
THE PATTERN
God’s time is not scaled to the short, mortal measure of human life.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.THE THREAD
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.Job asks whether God’s years are like a mortal’s days. Psalm 90 uses the same Hebrew word, yom (יוֹם, “day”), and sets a thousand years beside a day in God’s sight, making the difference in scale visible.
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