What Does Job 21:12 Mean in the King James?
They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.
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 people Job calls wicked can celebrate too, so visible prosperity cannot serve as a verdict on their character.
THE MEANING
Music and gladness can fill lives that do not fit an easy moral scoreboard. This scene lets their joy be real without treating visible ease as proof of innocence or approval. It speaks now whenever suffering is mistaken for guilt or comfort for righteousness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Ease is not proof that someone is righteous, and suffering is not proof that someone is guilty.
THE ROOT
יִשְׂאוּ
yisʾu
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
nasa
Lift, carry, bear; here, they lift or take up the instruments.
The instruments are not simply picked up: yisʾu carries the bodily sense of lifting them into the scene. The same seed can lift a voice or describe bearing crookedness, so the English “take” hides a verb that spans rising sound and what a person carries.
ALSO GROWS
nasa qol: Raise the voice.
נָשָׂא קוֹל
The same verb that carries the instruments can lift a voice into sound; celebration here is physically raised.
bear crookedness: Carry crookedness; this idiom can describe forgiving wrongdoing.
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The seed that carries instruments here can also describe bearing wrongdoing, linking a concrete act of carrying with a moral burden.
THE PATTERN
Joy is often made audible through song, instruments, and the raised voice.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.THE THREAD
Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.Job’s וְיִשְׂמְחוּ (veyismechu, “and they rejoice”) and Psalm 32:11’s שִׂמְחוּ (simchu, “be glad”) share שָׂמַח (samach, “rejoice, be glad”). The shared root holds the gladness together, while each verse locates it differently.
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