What Does Job 24:12 Mean in the King James?
Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.
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 wounded person cries with their whole living self, and the verse does not call that suffering folly.
THE MEANING
The groaning and the wounded person’s cry remain audible in the verse; pain is not hidden or made respectable. God does not lay folly to them, yet the verse gives no explanation of their suffering or its relief.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that suffering itself proves God has charged the sufferer with folly.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nefesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
The living self: a person, creature, or life.
English “soul” can sound like an invisible part separated from the body, but nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ, the living self) names the person who is alive. The wounded person’s whole life cries out; the verse keeps the pain personal and embodied.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living being, person, or life.
נֶפֶשׁ
Here the cry belongs to a wounded living person, not to an abstract part of them.
naphash: To be refreshed or find rest.
נָפַשׁ
The same root also names refreshment, bringing the possibility of relief into view for the very life that groans.
תְּשַׁוֵּעַ
teshavea
GROWS FROM
ש־ו־ע
To cry out for help; to appeal.
“crieth out” in this verse is teshavea. This is an appeal, not merely a sound. The verse lets the wounded person’s plea stand while leaving its answer unresolved.
ALSO GROWS
shava: To cry out for help.
שָׁוַע
It shares the appeal carried by the wounded person’s cry here.
shav'ah: A cry or plea for help.
שַׁוְעָה
This noun makes clear that the cry carries a request for aid, even though this verse does not say what follows.
THE PATTERN
The groaning of the harmed is a real cry that scripture records without disguising its pain.
And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.The Hebrew verb translated “cried” here comes from the same root שוע (shava, cry out for help) as “crieth out” in Job. Psalm 18:6 says the cry is heard; Job 24:12 leaves its answer open.
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