What Does Job 17:7 Mean in the King James?
Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.
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
Grief reaches the body: the eye dims, and every formed part seems to fade into shadow.
THE MEANING
Sorrow reaches your seeing and your whole embodied self; it does not stay an invisible feeling. Here, every part of you seems insubstantial, like a shadow.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that grief is only an inward feeling, separate from the body.
THE ROOT
יְצוּרַי
yetsurai
GROWS FROM
יצר
yatsar
To form or shape.
The word rendered “members” carries the sense of parts that have been formed. Job’s image is not just of individual limbs growing faint: the whole formed body seems shadow-like.
ALSO GROWS
yotzer: One who forms or shapes.
יֹצֵר
The same root pictures the body as something formed, now seeming to lose its substance.
yetzer: A formed impulse or disposition.
יֵצֶר
This branch extends the root from formed parts of the body to what takes shape within a person.
כַּעַס
ka'as
GROWS FROM
כעס
ka'as
To vex or provoke; vexation, anger.
The word behind “sorrow” can also name vexation and anger. English “sorrow” can sound like a quiet sadness; this root carries the sharper sense of distress that chafes and weighs on the eyes.
ALSO GROWS
ka'as: Agitation, vexation, or anger.
כַּעַס
This is the noun used for Job’s sorrow and links his grief to a state of being vexed.
hikh'is: To provoke or make angry.
הִכְעִיס
The verb shows the active edge in the same root: vexation is distress that stirs and presses upon a person.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives grief a bodily shape, showing anguish in weakened eyes and outward frailty.
Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies.For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.THE THREAD
Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies.Job’s “sorrow” and the Psalm’s “grief” translate the same Hebrew word, כַּעַס (ka’as), meaning vexation or grief. In both verses, that distress reaches the eye, making inner anguish visible in the body.
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