What Does Job 19:18 Mean in the King James?
Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.
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 Hebrew word for “despised” is the same root used for “refused”: the children treat Job as someone to cast aside.
THE MEANING
You can stand and still meet contempt; rising does not make the voices around you gentle. The rejection reaches you even through the mouths of children, making the loneliness stark.
THE ROOT
מָאֲסוּ
ma'asu
GROWS FROM
מאס
ma'as
to reject, refuse, or spurn; to treat as unacceptable
The same root describes the builders’ refusal of a stone in Psalm 118:22. English makes “despised” and “refused” sound different, but Hebrew joins them in the act of setting something aside.
ALSO GROWS
refused: rejected or treated as unsuitable
Psalm 118:22 uses this root for the stone rejected by its builders, showing that it names exclusion, not only an insult.
rejected: refused or cast aside
In 1 Samuel 15:23, the same root describes rejecting the word of the LORD, carrying the sense of a decisive refusal.
THE PATTERN
Contempt from those around a sufferer becomes part of the suffering itself.
But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,THE THREAD
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.Job’s “despised” and the builders’ “refused” are forms of the same Hebrew root, מָאַס (ma’as), meaning to reject or refuse. The psalm names the refused stone as the cornerstone, making Job’s word of exclusion resonate with an image of rejection that does not erase what was rejected.
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