What Does Job 22:5 Mean in the King James?
Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite?
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
“Great” and “without end” turn a charge of wrongdoing into a total portrait, making its scale feel like evidence.
THE MEANING
A voice meets you with the charge that your wrongdoing is great and your crookedness has no end. The verse exposes how an accusation can speak as though naming guilt at maximum scale were itself proof. Its question is forceful, but force alone does not establish the charge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that a severe, confident charge is proof of limitless guilt.
THE ROOT
רַבָּה
rabbāh
GROWS FROM
רבה
Be much, increase, become many.
The word carries the sense of abundance and increase, not only a high degree. Beside “without end,” it makes the accusation swell from great wrongdoing into a claim of boundlessness.
ALSO GROWS
hirbāh: Increase, multiply, make abundant.
הִרְבָּה
This verbal form makes the root’s sense of increase explicit, showing how “great” belongs to a family of growing quantity.
marbeh: Increasing, multiplying; one who increases.
מַרְבֶּה
The same root can describe ongoing increase, echoing how the verse enlarges the accusation.
harbeh: Much, many, abundantly.
הַרְבֵּה
This form makes quantity explicit: the verse’s “great” carries the sense of abundance.
THE PATTERN
The scale or certainty of an accusation does not make it true; a charge must answer to sound judgment.
And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.THE THREAD
And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.The LORD’s reply to Eliphaz says that the friends have not spoken rightly, while calling Job his servant. The sweeping accusation in Job 22:5 sounds like a verdict, yet this answer reveals that its certainty does not make it true.
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